[A bit long, but worth reading.] You might remember that, about a month ago, Citizens Against Government Waster (CAGW) issued a press release decrying the Vision for Space Exploration because of “an impending record deficit, chronic management problems at NASA, and unresolved questions about the missions’ cost and feasibility.” (That first point now seems contradicted by news that the budget deficit for FY05, while still high, will be lower than previously predicted.) The press release included a quote from CAGW president Tom Schatz: “A manned mission to Mars is of questionable scientific value and could cost up to $1 trillion.”
Ah, yes, that $1-trillion figure. It popped up almost immediately after word leaked out about the exploration initiative, even though there was little basis in fact for that figure. (See this article from last March about the origins of the trillion-dollar estimate.) When that press release came out I contacted CAGW to see what their source was for the figure. I got this response from CAGW’s media manager, Tom Finnigan:
Schatz claims that the cost of a mission to Mars “could cost up to $1 trillion.” Implicitly, this includes the cost of a base on the moon since the President envisions going to Mars through the moon. Lacking any recent official cost estimate for the initiative, all we have to go by are the educated guesses of experts. The most recent expert to support the $1 trillion figure is Steven R. Dickman, professor of geophysics at Binghamton University.
CAGW considers $1 trillion a reasonable educated guess for the total cost of the initiative in light of: the absence of an official cost estimate; the scientific and technological unknowns that persist concerning the plan; and the federal government’s (and more specifically, NASA’s) history of cost overruns and schedule delays with projects of this magnitude. In general, the more ambitious the project and the longer the time horizon, the more dramatic the cost overrun. Considering that the moon/Mars initiative could qualify as the most ambitious project ever conceived, it is not unthinkable to predict a final price tag many times initial estimates, even beyond $1 trillion.
CAGW does not claim to know how much it will cost to implement the President’s vision. The opening paragraph of the press release states that one of the primary reasons we oppose the initiative is the unresolved questions about its cost.
Okay, fair enough. (You may have read a similar version of this at NASA Watch.) One “expert” on Vision’s cost estimate that Mr. Finnigan cited was Steven Dickman, who is a professor of geophysics at Binghamton University. (The “recent” in Mr. Finnigan’s message apparently referred to an op-ed that Prof. Dickman wrote in the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin last month about the cost of the VSE; that essay is no longer available online.) So I contacted Prof. Dickman, who was happy to share his rationale behind the $1-trillion estimate:
1. George H.W. Bush proposed a Moon/Mars Exploration program in 1989; as noted in the CBO analysis, in current dollars the cost over 30 years was estimated to be about $1 trillion;
2. NASA’s total projected budget for the next 15 years (2005 – 2020) is about $270 billion, of which ~ two-thirds (at least) is related to the Vision for Space Exploration (that includes moneys taken from other existing NASA programs (not relevant to VSE, and thus expendable) as well as moneys for new programs geared to the VSE). The CBO adds about $32 billion for typical cost increases and schedule delays (Chap. 2 of their analysis), and another $61 billion for unanticipated expenses associated with the vagueness and uncertainties of new missions (their Chap. 3). My article referred to the cost “over the next few decades”, i.e. over 30 years; if we naively assume the same level of costs for 2020 – 2035 as for 2005 – 2020 we end up with $550 billion for the 30-year cost — but offhand it seems to be a rule (e.g. with the real needs of the ISS, or with terrestrial science projects) that expenses build as projects near completion, so I’d estimate $800 billion as more realistic.
Clearly my estimates are not rigorous, though I’m reasonably confident that the estimates for Bush I’s proposal *were*. At the time I was researching my article, I recall determining from the CBO website that the costs averaged to about $30 billion/year, thus just under $1 trillion for 30 years; but I was not able to dig up my notes last night to verify that.
So there you have at. Why bring it up now? Well, it turns out that the CAGW’s opposition to the perceived high costs of the VSE will be the topic of their online radio show, Washington Waste Wire, this afternoon at 2-3 pm EDT. In their words: “On this month’s show, we will discuss the disappointments of the space shuttle, the case for phasing out NASA, and the possibility of opening space exploration to the private sector.” Appearing with them will be Rich Robins (hmm, I can hear the reaction already.) They offer a toll-free number and chat option if you want to ask them about their trillion-dollar estimate or other aspects of their opinion about the VSE.
It’s all very simple, really:
NASA opponents say “trillion” (per X years) (per program).
NASA supporters say “15 cents per day” (per citizen).
Statistics!
“The ISS is expected to be finished in 2010 16 years behind schedule, $92 billion over budget, with perhaps one-eighth of the capability that engineers had hoped.”
Wow, and someday I’ll be able to tell my children I worked on that.
Someone should calculate Steven Dickman’s total cost to Binghamton University:
annual salary x number of years as employee
Statistics, is there anything you can’t do?
Here is Dickman’s original op-ed. I think it is an example of ideology trumping logic (i.e. his argument is not a logical one):
Guest Viewpoint: Suppression of science leads nowhere
by: Steven R. Dickman
The May 22 article by Rick Weiss on shrinking federal support for
science — marking the end, for example, of the Voyager mission to outer
space — presented a depressing picture of the waning of the American
scientific enterprise.
While illustrating the breadth of the cuts in science funding and noting
the importance of basic research, however, Weiss did not really pinpoint
the cause of shrinking federal funding, instead waxing poetic about the
loss of curiosity in our society. A companion article simply referred to
the spending cuts as “part of an overall effort to reduce the federal
deficit.” But the real causes may be much more complex and sinister.
Although many scientists find a place for religion in their lives, some
members of the Religious Right community and their allies in the Bush
administration have declared war on science.
Activists targeting local school boards on up to state departments of
education have intensified their efforts around the country to undermine
the teaching of evolution. A creationist view of the formation of the
Grand Canyon is being promoted by the National Park Service. Medical
research involving human stem cells has been attacked as “going too
far.” Government health Web sites have been rewritten to fit political
agendas rather than science.
What about the termination of deep-space science missions and
high-energy subatomic particle experiments, as Weiss discussed?
Suppression of basic science which endeavors to determine how the world
works fits in well with the Religious Right viewpoint that unfettered
curiosity in such things is a dead end, because it can only reveal
contradictions with a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. When
the Bible holds all the answers, there’s no need for scientific curiosity.
In the culture clash with science and “modernists,” the Religious Right
also has a strong ally in economic conservatives and their advocates in
the Bush administration. If global observations of the environment
document increasing evidence of global warming — and if the pressure on
CEOs to do their part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is similarly
building — why not just eliminate the observations?
In fact, the Bush administration has begun a drastic (and essentially
unprecedented) redirection of the science carried out by the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Manned Mission to Mars program
announced by the president prior to his 2004 State of the Union address,
with costs likely to be in the range of $1 trillion over the next few
decades (so much for reducing the federal deficit!), has already very
nicely resulted in the reduction or elimination of funding for several
current Planet Earth programs and will certainly undercut future NASA
missions that would otherwise record the deteriorating global environment.
With no scientific documentation of increased ozone depletion, for
example, or of worsening impacts from global warming, then pressure to
pursue more responsible economic policies might well disappear.
At an April congressional hearing, two former presidents and the
president-elect of the American Geophysical Union testified on the harm
from re-structuring NASA to the detriment of Earth science. That hearing
was called following the release of a report by the U.S. National
Research Council criticizing the NASA plan for putting Earth science “at
substantial risk,” saying it “jeopardizes NASA’s ability to fulfill
[such] obligations — as the Climate Change Research Initiative and the
— Climate Change Science Program.”
The scientific value of a manned mission to Mars is quite limited
(meanwhile, the Spirit and Opportunity robotic rovers now scrambling
over the Martian surface are still acquiring worthwhile data). And don’t
be misled by the news headlines or orchestrated press conferences:
scientists have known since the Mars Viking Lander in 1976 that there is
currently no life of any kind in the Martian air or soil.
The scientific community was not expecting a space mission of the
magnitude called for by Bush — nor had existing research demonstrated a
need for it. But, as noted by a NASA representative to the Destination
Discovery ’05 conference at Binghamton University a few months ago,
“President Bush is our boss.”
Future administrations may well point to “science,” as defined by the
manned Mars mission, as a contributor to our country’s budgetary deficit
woes, and a drain on financial resources that the populace would prefer
to direct elsewhere — a strategic victory for those who would like to
depict science as an enemy of our society.
Dickman of Vestal is a professor of geophysics at Binghamton University.
Dickman’s logic in his message to Dr. Foust leaves a lot to be desired. For starters, note that he admits that he came up with a calculation of $800 billion over 30 years. But when he wrote his op-ed, the figure is $1 trillion. How can he reasonably justify rounding up by $200 billion? (And in this case his defense cannot be that he was factoring in cost increases, because he _already_ did that when he rounded up from $550 billion to $800 billion.)
Furthermore, in his op-ed, he wrote: “The Manned Mission to Mars program… with costs likely to be in the range of $1 trillion over the next few
decades.” But his total figure is for _everything_, not simply “the manned mission to Mars program.”
As I have noted previously, these are two of the most common mistakes that people make to arrive at the $1 trillion figure: they continuously round up their rounded up figures, AND they take the (erroneous) total for everything and claim that it is _only_ for Mars.
Dickman is not the first person to do that. The original AP article that started all this back in February 2004 did it. Gregg Easterbrook also did it. Many others do it. And none of them seem to care about even the slightest bit of accuracy.
I’m a little curious to know where Dickman came to the conclusion that the 1989 cost estimates were “rigorous.” I doubt that he has even seen or understands those figures and what is included in them. For the record, I am the person who provided those cost figures to the fall 2004 Congressional Budget Office report. The figures were generated inside NASA in June 1989 and they include many things that NASA no longer does, would not do, or has already done in the past 15 years (like robotic Mars missions). They also represent several years of human operations _on_ Mars. Right now, the earliest estimated date for a human mission to Mars is 2035, or 30 years away–or at the end of Dickman’s time horizon. So he has taken an estimate that includes many years of human missions to Mars, and substituted it for a projection that would only include the first Mars landing.
Alas, I just consider this to be a typical example of how numbers are commonly abused these days. Somebody will invent a number and publish it, and then everybody will endlessly repeat that number if it serves their political ends. They do not care if it is accurate. Another example is the claim that 100,000 civilians were killed by the US invasion of Iraq. That number has little validity, but it is regularly used by critics of the Iraq war. Nobody cares about the truth anymore; they only care about their partisan political agendas.
Actually, Dwayne, what you noted previously was that it is a myth “that Bush had proposed a human mission to Mars”. Now you have changed your description of the myth from “not Mars” to “not only Mars”.
The truth is that Bush is playing a double game. Manned missions to Mars are clearly part of the sales pitch of the VSE, including in the VSE speech itself. But as you wrote the first time, NASA isn’t actually planning any manned missions to Mars. So no, it won’t cost a trillion dollars, because talk is cheap.
Professor Kuperberg, I don’t understand what your malfunction is. But based upon what I’ve seen of your postings, I’m not interested in debating ridiculous semantics with you and will not do so. Please have fun arguing with the rest of the peanut gallery.
Many Christian fundamentalists believe it is against God’s will to leave the Earth.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Genesis 1:28 KJV
I find that interpretation as frightening as the rest of the “creationism” attack on science. Apparently the fact that “earth” is spelled with a lower case “e” means nothing to them (some printings may vary). Unfortunately our industrial and technical society was built on the institutional philosophies of the main line Protestant denominations, which have largely become the tools of socialism today.
As one of the peanut gallery, I remember just enough of 4th grade math to know $800 billion rounds up to $1 trillion. If NASA is due some benefit of the doubt, it will only come after they have demonstrated some success, both technically and fiscally. Currently their record is abysmal.
“As one of the peanut gallery, I remember just enough of 4th grade math to know $800 billion rounds up to $1 trillion.”
Well Dfens, do you know such distortions are a primary tool of those lobbying to kill NASA manned spaceflight? As long as such dishonesty is acceptable, by all means round away!
Wow, the 1 trillion dollar mission to Mars lie keeps on going..
I believe it was Mark Twain who said that a lie can go half way around the world in the time the truth takes to put on its shoes. Alas, such is the case with the trillion dollar Mars mission canard.
So what you’re say is NASA’s fate hinges not on their failure to perform over the last 25 year, but rather on whether or not someone calls 80 cents a dollar. I did not know that.
The point, Dfens, is that the trillion-dollar figure is both plausible and tempting as a sound-bite criticism of the VSE. It also takes a straight interpretation of “Moon, Mars, and Beyond” as actually including manned missions to Mars. But since the estimate is no more than plausible, the defenders of the VSE can denounce it as wild speculation, a misinterpretation, wrong, a lie, etc.
The real “myth” is not the “trillion-dollar” figure or any other figure, but the idea that the VSE includes manned missions to Mars at all. I read a narrative of the genesis of the VSE (I don’t remember where at the moment) that said that O’Keefe and others presented a plan to Bush didn’t mention manned missions to Mars. Bush just had the feeling that Mars was the ultimate goal of the plan, so they tacked that on to to the sales pitch. Unless Griffin changes it, the VSE is go to the moon and say that it’s on the way to Mars.
So it just doesn’t matter whether it’s 80 cents or a dollar, if you don’t actually plan to spend it.
Kuperberg: “I read a narrative of the genesis of the VSE (I don’t remember where at the moment) that said that O’Keefe and others presented a plan to Bush didn’t mention manned missions to Mars. Bush just had the feeling that Mars was the ultimate goal of the plan, so they tacked that on to to the sales pitch.”
So you read “New Moon Rising” by Sietzen/Cowing? That is the only narrative of those events I am aware of, but it does not describe them as you claim as flippant Bush “had a feeling” /sales pitch BS. If you don’t have the book I suggest you read this 3 part series of articles by the authors that center on the events you mock:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=915
Mr. Day has the right idea in not “debating ridiculous semantics with you”.
You have your pre-conceived ideas of everything and no amount of factual evidence would ever sway you from it.
Cecil, you found it! I was trying to recall part 3 of exactly the history that you read. As Sietzen and Cowing (who must be among the world’s biggest fans of the VSE) say, the White House staff first eliminated expensive stuff like manned missions to Mars:
But then Bush and Cheney had the insight that even if you only send astronauts to the moon, you can say that it’s “really about” Mars:
So there you have it. You can plan a trip to Greenland and say that it’s “really about” going to the South Pole.
Greg, you either need to take a reading comprehension course or you purposely read only the lines that you can take out of context and twist to your liking.
I don’t know, Greg, I think if Bush is anything it is sincere. I like the mission to Mars concept. Actually I don’t care that much about Mars the planet, I think Venus is a better prospect for us eventually, but Mars will do for now. We will certainly go somewhere after we go back to the Moon, and there is a lot we can learn by going to Mars.
I have to agree with you regarding the cost issue, though. Essentially it will cost whatever the US taxpayer will pay. Do you think a stealth fighter has to cost an order of magnitude more than any other fighter? Why would it? Do edge treatments and coatings push the cost that high? Heck no! They found that if they put stealth in, cost was no object. It’s not about pushing the aerodynamic envelope any more, it’s about pushing the economic envelope.
That’s what I object to. This “vision” stuff is always about money. Just open your wallet a litte more so we can pursue this vision. I say, let NASA build a decent vehicle to get a large payload to LEO, then let’s talk about visions. They are spending my money, I don’t think it’s asking too much to want to see some results.
Venus is not a nice place to visit, and you wouldn’t want to live there.
Perhaps we would not want to live there now, but maybe after we generate that “nuclear winter” effect by steering a big comet into it. Other advantages are that it is Earth’s sister planet, so it is easy to make a case that whatever we learn there applies here, and it has significance because of the first three tenets of realtor’s law: location, location, location.
Since Venus has a carbon dioxide atmosphere and a rock landscape, it doesn’t have anything to burn. Therefore a comet strike wouldn’t cause nuclear winter. It also has much more stable weather than the Earth does; a comet strike would not change its fate. Also, the surface temperature on the entire planet is a constant 850 Farenheit due to runaway global warming. So whatever cumbustion you might have hoped for has already run its course.
We certainly can learn some things about the Earth from studying Venus (and other planets). We can learn that the Earth is the hand that humanity has been dealt, and that if we treat it badly enough, it could one day be as useless as Venus.
It’s hard to get to $1000 billion at $16 billion per year. It would take more than 60 years. And that would mean NASA doesn’t do anything else except VSE. The net present value of the entire NASA budget forever is only $400 billion. The DoD budget for 2003 was $370 billion. We have a $12 trillion economy growing at 4.4% per year. The government is spending 2.3 trillion this year and NASA’s share is about 2/3 of 1%. Our kids will inherit a $24 trillion economy and $16 billion a year will be less than 1/3 of 1% of their federal budget. What problem do we have that we can solve with 100% of the federal budget that we can’t solve with 99% of the federal budget?
Sam, you are buying into the same misdirection as everyone else. The claim is that human missions to Mars might cost a trillion dollars, but you say, no, actually the whole VSE would only cost $16 billion per year if it were the entire NASA budget. But there isn’t any contradiction in that. The VSE, as currently planned, doesn’t include manned missions to Mars.
As for the federal budget, you have it backwards. There is a campaign in Washington, both intentional and unintentional, to create a fiscal crisis. As Grover Norquist has said, to drown the government in the bathtub. So it’s not that federal budget will be available to solve this or that problem. It’s that the budget will be the problem, and NASA’s appropriation will be used to help solve it.
Combustion is not always part of the cooling effect. For instance when Krakatoa blew, it was almost purely the volcanic ash it threw into the air that cooled the Earth slightly. I think, though I am no expert (and I’ll politely apologize for my stupidity if I am off base), the same effect could be achieved with the debris thrown up from a large comet strike. Plus the comet would provide some much needed water.
Since the atmospheric pressure on Venus is 90 times that of Earth, the year-long or decade-long effect of a comet strike is just a completely different question. You are right that I shouldn’t guess the answer either. But I would note that if the stable temperature is 850 Farenheit, you have a long way to go to get to anything livable. Wading through 90 atmospheres is no picnic either.
Greg Kuperberg said on July 15, 2005,
“The VSE, as currently planned, doesn’t
include manned missions to Mars.”
We, as of 15 July 2005, DON’T KNOW what VSE has planned, whether it includes manned Mars missions, whether it has developing Mars-applicable technologies as an integral part of a return to the Moon, whether going to Mars is a can that is being kicked down the road for whoever is President in 2021 to think about once the Moon has been returned to.
We need to wait and see what Griffin comes up with before any of this stuff can be discussed reasonably.
FWIW, if we regard VSE as starting in 2004 and extending to the first manned Mars landing, I’ll be surprised if the tag comes in a lot short of a terabuck in 2004 dollars. But, to repeat, we’ll have to wait and see what the VSE really is.
Allen,
I guess what I meant was that the VSE that Sean O’Keefe planned does not include manned missions to Mars. I concede that Mike Griffin might well plan a completely different VSE.
And I agree with Sam Dinkin that whatever really happens, it probably won’t cost a trillion dollars, just because NASA is unlikely to see that kind of money.
Greg Kuperberg said,
> I guess what I meant was that the VSE that Sean O’Keefe planned does not include manned missions to Mars.
I don’t think that O’Keefe planned anything. He, presumably providing the primary input to da Prez’ VSE, sort of thought (mostly rightly, IMO) that if we’re going to continue to do manned space flight, it needs a better goal and inspiration than flying circles around the earth . “Back to the Moon, on to Mars and Beyond” was the result which, again, I’d say is not bad as a slogan.
> I concede that Mike Griffin might well plan a completely different VSE.
No, I’d say that Mike Griffin, luck fellow, has to translate the VSE into a plan, with attendant programs, schedules and budgets. What he will come up with is the current subject of interest.
>And I agree with Sam Dinkin that whatever really happens, it probably won’t cost a trillion dollars, just because NASA is unlikely to see that kind of money.
There’s the rub. I really don’t see how a sustained manned Moon program, let alone a manned Mars one is going to be feasible with the monetary resources available and the other demands on those resources.
But Mike Griffin is a smart guy with lots of credentials and experience, and (I think I said this before) we need to wait and see what he comes up with. Maybe he’ll pull a really handsome rabbit out of the hat. Or not.
If we scrub ISS and shuttle, there is $10 billion per year to handle Moon and Mars. I think both could be done for $20 billion altogether if the money was posted as prizes.
While I would be delighted to have $1 trillion spent on space, naysayers can’t have it both ways. Either VSE will come out of existing funding and be {slow, failure, steal from aeronautics, be unpopular} or just happen after 20-30 years or there will be a big budget increase and wouldn’t that mean that the public becomes very happy with it or their congressmen would vote for it?
I’d love to see a poll that asks “In terms of percentage of total federal budget, how much do you think NASA’s budget is and how much do you think it should be?”
As to getting it done on the money we have. Other then prizes similar to Gingrich’s Mars Prize, (Which Bigalow’s American Space Prize is modeled after or seems to be) Griffin will have to switch to the fixed cost method and of DOD style, “you get paid only when you do X, then when you do Y and then when you do Z”.
Boieng and Lockheed may be resistant to this, but will conceed to it once there are enough of the little guys doing it this way and succeeding.
t/SPace has also a good idea with how to do the Moon:
http://www.transformspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=projects.welcome
THough would love to hear the full presentation.
Isn’t it hard NOT to derive lots of inspiration from how Citizens Against Government Waste basically advocated pro-entrepreneurial space reforms in their recent monthly online talkshow program? Specifically mentioned during their program were:
1) a more fortified Centennial Challenges (competitive prizes) program at NASA;
2) space-related tax incentives; and:
3) the recognition of private property rights in space.
Considering how Burt Rutan has correctly mentioned for years how competitive prizes often leverage as much as 40 times their amount in terms of total private sector investment pursuing such prizes, CAGW’s activism’s embodiment into greater prizes can mean the emergence of more competing approaches, a lowering of prices, and more opportunities for more folks to participate. Who can find this alternative scenario objectionable except for the most unmarketable of NASA’s “workers”?
Rich Robins
What, and pay companies for success instead of failure? I hope if they decide to do that, they allocate some funds to retrain old engineers to do engineering. Otherwise, I might still be able to get a job at Home Depot, or just about any place where they commonly recite the question, “do you want fries with that?” I’d better cut the education section out of my resume, just in case.
>We need to wait and see what Griffin comes up with
… perhaps Mike Griffin was selected based in part on what he came up with in this July 2004 paper he co-authored:
http://planetary.org/aimformars/study-summary.html
Bonus! here’s a paper abstract by Mike on NASA Management for exploring the Moon and Mars (1995) and I recommend getting the entire paper:
“Chapter 6 from the book Strategies for Mars: a Guide to Human Exploration
C. Stoker and C. Emmart, Eds.
AAS Science and Technology Series Vol. 86, 1996
MANAGING THE EXPLORATION OF THE MOON AND MARS
Michael D. Griffin*
Space Industries International, 800 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 1111,
Washington D.C., 20006
Final Draft 4/17/95
* At the time this paper was written, Michael Griffin was the NASA Associate
Administrator for the Office of Exploration, the office responsible for implementing
the Space Exploration Initiative, a program with the goal of establishing a permanent
Lunar base and human landing on Mars.
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the key ingredient for a successful program of exploration and habitation of
the Moon and Mars: effective program and project management. There is no technical issue that
would preclude establishing a Lunar base within five years, or a Mars landing within a decade, if
proper management principles were applied. These principles, which have been applied to past
successful projects including the space program of the 1960s, include: maintain flat organizations
and short chains of command; specify outcome rather than process; select the best people and put
them in charge; delegate decision authority down to the lowest possible level. In addition, a
successful program will require clearly defined goals, and accepting appropriate risks. The order of
priorities must be set among the three basic project parameters: cost, schedule, and performance.
Finally, it is essential to select good project and program managers and vest them with the
responsibility and authority to manage. A national program office should be put in charge of the
program, and it must be able to control the funding for the effort. Space exploration should be the
single unifying focus of America’s space program and other programs should be judged from this
perspective. The exploration and settlement of the Moon and Mars will be so demanding that
managing it properly, or not, determines by itself whether the effort is affordable and can succeed.
If we cannot agree among ourselves, within government, to direct the program appropriately, then
we had best not start.”
NASA has the right administrator and he is walking the talk.
David posted most usefully and opined,
“NASA has the right administrator and he is walking the talk.”
So it appears — NASA is unlikely to get a better administrator if giving purpose and direction to manned spaceflight is a national goal to be carried out by NASA. Let us wish him well and see how his walk goes as it traverses the fields inside the Beltway.
I still think that the probability of substantial success is small for various intertwined technical, financial and political reasons, but would much like to be proved wrong.