Congress, Lobbying

Mars Society lobbies for NASA budget increase

The Mars Society is asking its members to contact their Congressional representatives and request that they either approve FY2007 supplemental funding for NASA and/or support a budget increase for the space agency in FY08. A key passage from the email sent out by the organization earlier this week:

The Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) is under attack. In a Continuing Resolution (CR), Congress has cut $500 million from the 2007 NASA budget, with $900 million cut from the Exploration mission directorate repsonsbile for implementing the Moon-Mars initiative. This cut will hurt VSE and could be the first volley in a new round of attempts to kill it. There are those in Congress who would like to eliminate human space flight all together. This job will be much easier if they only hear whimpers from supporters of space exploration.

We need to tell Congress in no uncertain terms that VSE is vital to our nation and that they need to restore the funds that have been cannibalized from the 2007 budget. In addition, they need to support a healthy increase in funding in the 2008 budget.

As for the odds of an FY07 supplemental, an article in this week’s print issue of Space News reports that a few Senators, such as Barbara Mikulski and Bill Nelson, are still working to get some additional funding for this year. Nelson will be holding a hearing of the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee next Wednesday on this topic, although as of today no witnesses had yet been announced for the hearing. However, the current conventional wisdom remains that the best chance to get additional money for NASA will be during the FY08 budget cycle as opposed to an FY07 supplemental.

37 comments to Mars Society lobbies for NASA budget increase

  • Shesh! First New Mexico, and now our very own lovable Congress!

    For New Mexico, Hobby Space has the details:

    http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=3411

    Despite my hope that our governments would help support the private sector, we may have to focus our hope on businesses bringing us to space rather than our visionary politicians. Sigh…

  • We need to tell Congress in no uncertain terms that VSE is vital to our nation

    One question: why is it vital?

  • Bill

    >>We need to tell Congress in no uncertain terms that VSE is vital to our >>nation

    >One question: why is it vital?

    History suggests that great nations that either refuse or fail the challenge of exploration are nations that don’t remain great for very long.

  • Yes VSE is absolutely critical, it’s the last chance for the US to restart human exploration of space. If VSE fails it will be a long time before people start to venture beyond LEO and most likely they will be from other countries. The constant denigration of exploration, human spaceflight, science and technology will have terrible consequences.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Bill:

    What is the purpose of exploration NASA style. WE have done it for a four decades and have nothing to show for it.

    Sending NASA back to the Moon is not the same as sending the US.

    Robert

  • canttellya

    The worst thing that Congress could do for NASA is give them more money. NASA will waste it just like they’ve wasted all the funds spent on human spaceflight since the early 70s. NASA needs to shut manned spaceflight down, focus on robotic exploration (which is actually real exploration) and leave manned spaceflight up to the entrepreneurs. They will get it done faster and better, because they will be motivated by actual economic forces, which dictate maximum efficiency, rather than NASA’s motivation of maximum political expediency, which increasingly dictate foolish “solutions” like the Stick.

    I would tell the Mars Society that the fastest way to the Moon and Mars is to get NASA to get out of the way.

  • Anon2

    MARS SOCIETY: We need to tell Congress in no uncertain terms that VSE is vital to our nation.

    SHUBBER ALI: One question: why is it vital?

    BILL: History suggests that great nations that either refuse or fail the challenge of exploration are nations that don’t remain great for very long.

    Is that even the right question?

    Some alternative questions …

    QUESTION 1: Does history suggest there some approaches with much more vitality than others?

    QUESTION 2: Does history suggest that sometimes great nations fail because they refused to adapt (and innovate) in the face of a changing world?

    QUESTION 3: What has more vitality …

    A) Blue Origin, Bigelow Aerospace, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic (and all the others),

    ***OR***

    B) NASA?

    QUESTION 4: If a young bright engineer was given a choice — right out of school — to work for either a company in category “A)” or NASA, what do you think they would choose?

    QUESTION 5: What would you choose?

    – Anon2

    PS — BTW, the answer to such a question to Mike Griffin would be instructive. He has previously worked for Space Industries, Inc., for American Rocket Company, and for Elon Musk.

  • anonymous

    “History suggests that great nations that either refuse or fail the challenge of exploration are nations that don’t remain great for very long.”

    This is an oft-repeated myth in the space community that confuses cause and effect — symptoms with the underlying disease. A closer read of history shows that withdrawal from exploration is a symptom of deeper domestic problems, such an internal strife, economic disruption, failing governing institutions, etc. A withdrawal from exploration does not by itself cause a nation to fall behind — it is merely an effect of the other, real problems that are responsible for a nation falling behind.

    I’d also note that in the case of China’s sailing fleet, the most-quoted example, there are huge differences between a nation’s merchant marine and space exploration, such as human lunar expeditions. The former has a huge impact on trade, foreign relations, exchange of ideas, etc. The latter does not.

    “Yes VSE is absolutely critical, it’s the last chance for the US to restart human exploration of space.”

    It may (or may not) be the last chance for NASA to restart human space exploration, at least for some time.

    The failure of the VSE does not keep private U.S. efforts from pursuing human space activities beyond LEO.

    I’d also note that it’s ESAS that’s failing, not the VSE. To be fair, ESAS did not implement a sustainable human space exploration plan according the intent and strategy laid out in the VSE.

    “If VSE fails it will be a long time before people start to venture beyond LEO and most likely they will be from other countries.”

    I’d argue that ESAS has probably already failed. Contrary to the intent and strategy of the VSE, NASA no longer has a budgetarily and politically sustainable human space exploration plan.

    Whether the next White House allows the next NASA Administrator to retain VSE funding and Shuttle savings and replace ESAS with a sustainable implementation plan remains to be seen.

    But I’m not holding my breath.

    “The constant denigration of exploration, human spaceflight, science and technology will have terrible consequences.”

    I think we space cadets have to be careful not to equate human space exploration with all of science and technology. Infotech, biotech, nanotech, energy research, etc. are all doing fine without any help from the space community. In fact, we benefit more from them than they do from us.

  • al Fansome

    I have to agree with the responses by Ali, Oler, Anon2, and Anonymous. Anonymous’ point about cause & effect is a critical insight that hopefully will become common knowledge among space policy circles.

    “The constant denigration of exploration, human spaceflight, science and technology will have terrible consequences.”

    Again, I agree with Anonymous. What is failing is ESAS, not the VSE. Unless NASA changes its fundamental operating approaches, it could have terrible consequences for NASA … but not for the U.S.

    The American people have huge amounts of vitality. I would argue that America is the most vital nation on this planet, and that our vitality is expressed in the huge amounts of innnovation in private industry, which creates the large majority of U.S. economic growth.

    If even an outside observer like Alexis deToqueville can figure out that vitality and innovation come from the people, not from the government, then I am not sure why Bob Zubrin insists on making simplistic arguments that confuse cause & effect. Well I know why, but he should know better.

    I highly doubt that Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Burt Rutan, and Bob Bigelow are sitting around saying “I am going to give up” if NASA does not get their ESAS budget approved.

    – Al

  • I think we space cadets have to be careful not to equate human space exploration with all of science and technology. Infotech, biotech, nanotech, energy research, etc. are all doing fine without any help from the space community. In fact, we benefit more from them than they do from us.

    What kind of la la land are you living in. Oh, I get it, you read it in the glossies, so it must be true. What you ever read or even written a white paper in your life? Space drives these technologies, probably astronomy more than all the others. It all filters down to condensed matter physics, and condensed matter physics moves at a glacial pace, and is wildly underfunded all across the board, in lieu of crap like high energy physics, nuclear physics, plasma physics, and heavens no, military technology.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Al.

    the saddest thing is that we dont have a “space exploration” program worthy of a great nation and have not for sometime.

    The post Apollo failure was that both decision makers (political), NASA and yes space advocates (and I lump myself in this failure) failed (grin) to understand the uniquness of Apollo and the political effort which motivated it…and instead have continued to see it as sort of a template for future efforts.

    IE great projects that take NASA somewhere but dont take the rest of the national infrastructure with it. As a result the effort or efforts have failed to reach any level of self sustainment. It is as if the United States sent Lewis and Clark out west and then when they came back said “that was nice”, sent the results off to the scientist who constantly argued for more expeditions…but no one else in the nation went west. Oh maybe the military built a few forts there, just to guard it…

    but no people, no industry, nothing else came…

    The US has many fields of exploration, but they are all ones that to keep moving have sustaining back fill by the rest of the nation.

    NASA is almost unique in the “exploration mode” …there is no sustainability outside the pork of simply doing it.

    Robert

  • al Fansome

    OLER: The post Apollo failure was that both decision makers (political), NASA and yes space advocates (and I lump myself in this failure) failed (grin) to understand the uniquness of Apollo and the political effort which motivated it…and instead have continued to see it as sort of a template for future efforts.

    Robert,

    I agree. I made the same mistake. I recall that the fundamental argument by the space community in the 1970s and 1980s was built around “If only we can get President to make a big speech like President Kennedy did …”. I bought into the same line of thinking.

    It was not until the early 1990s, and the flopped Bush 1 SEI initiative, that I stepped back and understood that a repeat of Apollo was not going to happen, and truly understood that Apollo was unique. I believe other space policy thought leaders came to the same conclusion in the 1990s. I recall hearing Tom Rogers speak on this issue several times in the 90s. John Logsden has written papers on it.

    I was hoping, and I continue to hope, that the VSE will be different. The White House, when announcing the VSE, clearly communicated that private industry was critical to the success of the VSE. It was clear that the White House believed that private industry was KEY to the success of the VSE, not the other way around.

    When the Aldridge Commission picked up on this issue, and amplified it, my hopes grew.

    Next, O’Keefe and Steidle appeared to hear what the WH and the Aldridge Commision was saying, as they began seriously reaching out to the new industry, looking for new approaches, and building those approaches into their plans from day one. They certainly were giving out contracts, broadly, to many new companies and attempting to incorporate their approaches in their implementation plan for the VSE.

    Then we got Dr. Griffin. Now I have tried to give Griffin credit where credit was due, and I do love most of his speeches. He gives great speeches about understanding private industry, and speeches about wanting to support private industry.

    He has supported COTS. I have patted him on the back many times here for that support. But COTS was born before Griffin came to NASA, it was not Griffin’s creation. COTS grew out of the original VSE — it had its own budget line that called “ISS crew/cargo services” — you can see this budget in the original White House budget sand chart. All Griffin had to do was support its continuation. Considering that this was a White House priority, and Griffin works for the White House, this was not that hard a decision to make,

    At the end of the day you have to look in the mirror. Griffin’s actions in many ways contradict his speeches.

    While Griffin did support COTS, which was already there, you can’t ignore that Griffin has eliminated real private industry from participating in his stated number one strategic priority — Ares 1 — and more broadly from his lunar transportation system.

    Griffin “My highest priority of course is the Ares upper stage and the whole Ares vehicle.
    http://www.space.com/spacenews/spacepolicy/Griffin_011107.html

    Since Ares 1 (and Orion) is where all the money is, we need to watch what Griffin actually does, not what he says.

    I have listened to Griffin make great speeches about private industry, and then he spends all his money duplicating (and competing with) an existing capability that was partly the result of VERY large private investments by Lockheed and Boeing.

    I have listened to Griffin make speeches DEMANDING that industry “put skin in the game” — which both Lockheed and Boeing clearly did with their EELVs — and then watched as Griffin does not demand ANY skin in the game from the contractors for the Ares 1.

    I have listened to Griffin make speeches about private industry, and then watch NASA’s prize program (created under O’Keefe & Steidle) shrink and whither under Griffin’s regime.

    I have not completely given up hope on Griffin. I am hoping that Dr. Griffin will see the light, and change his strategy soon. Maybe I am just fooling myself.

    But if he does not, I think history will not be so kind, and will note the discrepency between his actions and his words.

    – Al

  • Robert G. Oler

    Al:

    Griffins main concern is the continuation of NASA. He is not a dummy…actually I think that he is a pretty good politician…he recognizes that he serves a few bases, which base is powerful, panders to the other bases and feeds his prime base.

    His prime base is when push comes to shove all the shuttle contractors who give money to their congresspeople who keep the funds going/coming, who stand by the Agency as it stumbles from hither to yon and always spout “the sacared words” when it comes time for the money.

    Space advocates and real geniune private industry he doesnt really care about. He has to do the “cathedrels in the sky” speech because that is part of the territory…but thats as far as it goes. IN that he is no different then “Mr. Newt” or any of the other glad handers on space who talk the talk of private industry and the like but really when they are in power, their heart is where their votes lie.

    Griffin is bad, but he is not alone. I dont know if Okeefe would have followed through with his “bold talk”. I doubt it. When push comes to shove part of the “government” money has to be spent in Utah or the Utah delgation “doesnt do space” all that well.

    when I was a “child” in college a chum of mine (who latter went on to be among other things the chief of staff for a major now gone US Senator) had his DAd come talk to our class. His father was the COS for a major US Congressperson. I asked him about “would the B-1 get built?” That was at the time very important to me (now I dont know why) and his answer was unhesitatingly “yes, eventually”. I asked him how he knew and he said that the manufactor of the B-1 had spread the subs out to every state, and every major congressional district in the country. They were going to build the bomber eventually. They did.

    None of this is going to change and we will never have a real national space exploration until and IF the current program either simply implodes from non performance and/or something “real” in the private sector simply eclipses it and kills all its political support.

    Beal, Musk, etc are why Griffin MUST have Ares. If he doesnt have it, doesnt have it “on the ways” or flying, before Beal, Musk someone actually gets into space, then he knows he will never get it.

    Robert

  • anonymous

    Good analysis by Mr. Fansome regarding Griffin’s words versus his actions when it comes to private sector efforts. Mr. Fansome is correct that NASA’s signature commercial initiatives (COTS precursor and prizes) were started under O’Keefe/Steidle and that they have either been cut in half (COTS) or practically eliminated and disconnected from the exploration organization (prizes) since Griffin took the helm. Less visible but no less important efforts like purchasing commercial services for parabolic and suborbital microgravity research flights have gotten nowhere under Griffin. The only new commercial initiatve under Griffin has been Ames recent agreement with Virgin Galactic, and that’s really due to Worden, not Griffin. Griffin talks a good game, but the execution is MIA, I suspect because Ares 1/Orion is such a budget priority and because Griffin apparently spends most of his management time on STS/ISS.

    A little known tidbit of history is that Steidle’s CEV manager (another Navy pilot turned program manager) actually wanted to turn over all NASA LEO transport to the private sector and make CEV an in-space vehicle only. I’m not sure it would have made sense in the end, and Steidle didn’t want to go that far (just fly CEV on human-rated Atlas) anyway. But it’s a testament to how timid the current NASA leadership is by comparison.

    Mr. Fansome’s analysis bears repeating:

    “Then we got Dr. Griffin. Now I have tried to give Griffin credit where credit was due, and I do love most of his speeches. He gives great speeches about understanding private industry, and speeches about wanting to support private industry.

    He has supported COTS. I have patted him on the back many times here for that support. But COTS was born before Griffin came to NASA, it was not Griffin’s creation. COTS grew out of the original VSE — it had its own budget line that called “ISS crew/cargo services” — you can see this budget in the original White House budget sand chart. All Griffin had to do was support its continuation. Considering that this was a White House priority, and Griffin works for the White House, this was not that hard a decision to make,

    At the end of the day you have to look in the mirror. Griffin’s actions in many ways contradict his speeches.

    While Griffin did support COTS, which was already there, you can’t ignore that Griffin has eliminated real private industry from participating in his stated number one strategic priority — Ares 1 — and more broadly from his lunar transportation system.

    Griffin “My highest priority of course is the Ares upper stage and the whole Ares vehicle.
    http://www.space.com/spacenews/spacepolicy/Griffin_011107.html

    Since Ares 1 (and Orion) is where all the money is, we need to watch what Griffin actually does, not what he says.

    I have listened to Griffin make great speeches about private industry, and then he spends all his money duplicating (and competing with) an existing capability that was partly the result of VERY large private investments by Lockheed and Boeing.

    I have listened to Griffin make speeches DEMANDING that industry “put skin in the game” — which both Lockheed and Boeing clearly did with their EELVs — and then watched as Griffin does not demand ANY skin in the game from the contractors for the Ares 1.

    I have listened to Griffin make speeches about private industry, and then watch NASA’s prize program (created under O’Keefe & Steidle) shrink and whither under Griffin’s regime.”

  • anonymous

    “The post Apollo failure was that both decision makers (political), NASA and yes space advocates (and I lump myself in this failure) failed (grin) to understand the uniquness of Apollo and the political effort which motivated it…and instead have continued to see it as sort of a template for future efforts.”

    I think the key lesson for space cadets from Apollo is that exploration is a means, not an end. And it’s not a recent lesson — anyone who bothered to read Logsdon’s political treatise on Apollo could have learned this back in the 1970s.

    Setting aside feel-good statements about the American character or human inquisitiveness, when the rubber hits the road, no expensive or risky exploration or settlement effort is undertaken without a concrete rationale in mind. In fact, historically, most such efforts are driven by either fear or greed. Leif Ericsson’s father sought to escape political persecution by the King of Norway (fear). Polo and Columbus sought overland and overseas (respectively) trade routes to the Orient (greed). The first New World settlers sought to escape various forms of religious or political persecution in Europe (fear). Any number of other New World and African explorers, even Lewis and Clarke, also sought trade routes (Northwest Passage, Cape Horn, etc.) to the Orient (greed).

    Even Apollo was driven by fear — of Sputnik and Gagarin and a communist Soviet Union that appeared to have more technical prowess than the United States, especially in technologies that were key to the emerging strategic arms race. Logsdon found the smoking gun in White House papers — a note written from Kennedy to Johnson asking for a visible space effort which America “could win” against the Soviets. Johnson came back with a list of several options, including orbital and lunar bases, and a manned lunar landing was the recommended option. I’m exaggerating somewhat, but with such a clear, concrete, fear-driven rationale recognized at the highest levels of the nation’s leadership, the Apollo effort and everything that followed from it was almost a given.

    Although today there is no overriding fear or greed rationale driving our human space flight activities, I think the VSE did an admirable job of tying future human space flight to concrete rationales within a sustainable budget. The VSE laid out a strategy whereby human space exploration could augment and accelerate the emerging astrobiology revolution, stimulate and revamp the commercial space sector, and provide another platform for peaceful foreign cooperation and soft diplomacy. Had NASA implemented the VSE in way that focused on these end-results and actually got some exploration hardware underway within the available budget before the end of the Bush II White House, I would have given NASA’s lunar return plans a better than 50/50 shot of surviving the next election.

    Unfortunately, ESAS and Griffin & Co. have ignored and largely reversed these key underpinnings. NASA has failed to obtain any substantive foreign contributions or commitments to the lunar return effort, commercial involvement has been scaled back and pretty much limited to ISS cargo, and science connectivity has been dropped and relevant science missions terminated or put on indefinite hold — all to build a duplicative and (ESAS and Griffin hope) marginally safer LEO launch vehicle. No actual exploration hardware will be started in earnest until 2011, and what rationales NASA does offer for the lunar return effort are now reduced to a vague list of six inspecific points.

    I still earnestly hope that someday there is a set of leaders at NASA who bother to learn from history and who understand that convincing the nation’s leaders to support a human exploration effort (or any exploration effort) over multiple elections is about much more than jobs in Huntsville and Cocoa Beach.

    In my opinion, it’s a shame that NASA did not get those leaders during the critical window of opportunity opened by the VSE and the Bush II White House.

    My 2 bits on exploration justification… FWIW…

  • al Fansome

    ANONYMOUS: I think the key lesson for space cadets from Apollo is that exploration is a means, not an end. And it’s not a recent lesson — anyone who bothered to read Logsdon’s political treatise on Apollo could have learned this back in the 1970s.

    Logsdon found the smoking gun in White House papers — a note written from Kennedy to Johnson asking for a visible space effort which America “could win” against the Soviets. Johnson came back with a list of several options, including orbital and lunar bases, and a manned lunar landing was the recommended option.

    Anonymous,

    I have read about this memo, but I have never actually seen it.

    Can you (or anybody else) provide a URL to the Kennedy memo? If not, how about a URL on the Logsdon treatise on the subject?

    Thanks,

    – Al

  • Robert G. Oler

    anonymous wrote @ February 24th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

    Hello:

    I cannot find much to disagree with in what you wrote. Indeed I find it relativly (as I do a lot of your post) “insightful”.

    My private hope is that we are going to see the “natural” death of “exploration” ala NASA style and that everything that is going now will die a slow death. The faster the better, but I realize that events have to turn for all this to occur.

    What I would like to see is Ares and Orion all just collapse. In the process “whoever” it is (including Lockmart and Boeing) in the private field that can put together some form of rocket/capsule/resupply get a contract to service the space station…as kind of an “airmal” thing to allow other “efforts” in human space flight and space explotation to occur.

    This will do a few things, it will build a private space industry that can exist absent NASA, it will build a space operations “system” that has “cost” as one of its factors, and it will empower the free enterprise system to try a bit of natural selection in terms of companies.

    I dont think that organizationally NASA can find its way to the toliet anymore. There are wonderful smart people who work there, very motivated people, but they are constrained by a organizational system that is simply dysfunctional. And cannot be reformed, at least by the leaders and Presidential supervision level that this or any future administration is willing to put into the system.

    This is not a NASA problem…this is in my view government wide. I dont agree with Newt on much, but he has I think nailed this…the instruments of national power and implementation are simply broken. They are in a structure that is no longer functioning and really is no longer accountable to “ANYONE”..

    That is partially this administration but it is just the fact that we are still clutczing along with cold war infrastructure in a post CW era.

    At some point when the private infrastructure is capable of sustaining (and semi paying) for long duration and far flung missions…we will give it a go again.

    But unless we fix the structure, they will all fail.

    I am curious of your view on something…do you think that had someone in the Administrators level properly sold it a “COTS” resupply/recrew true effort on the space station was politically possible?

    Robert

  • Monte Davis

    Al — an online starting point re JFK’s actual attitude toward space and the race: http://www.space.com/news/kennedy_tapes_010822.html

    Considerable depth, including Logsdon, in Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, ed. Launius & McCurdy. As Anon says, this has been common knowledge for decades among those who don’t cling to “all we need is another JFK/Apollo.”

    Anon: you’re the best thing that’s happened to this venue in quite a while. I especially liked “we space cadets have to be careful not to equate human space exploration with all of science and technology. Infotech, biotech, nanotech, energy research, etc. are all doing fine…” Blazingly obvious, but frequently overlooked by those who insist that “space slowed down because Evil Environmentalists (or Evil Democrats, or Evil OMB Bean-counters) turned America against technology and innovation and Vision blah blah…”

    It would be healthy to swear off all analogizing between space and maritime exploration — and for that matter, between space and aviation. 99% of the time, those analogies are deployed not in the spirit of “what might we learn from history?” but as “what can I cherry-pick to support my space strategy, and cast my opponents as flat-earthers?”

  • canttellya

    All of these point to the need to get NASA out of human spaceflight. They have no economic incentive to develop the technologies that will actually reduce costs and enhance capability–actually they have the completely opposite incentive–to fill up the budget wedge that they think will be “left behind” by the retirement of the Shuttle.

    I know many space supporters think that NASA is “blazing the trail” for regular people to go into space, but no past history or current plans support that viewpoint. NASA is a big government bureaucracy dedicated to its own self-preservation, and the commercial viability of their approaches has no bearing on their decisions–witness ESAS.

    It’s backfiring against them, and they could lose their precious human spaceflight program. They might lose the whole agency.

  • COTSadvocate

    ANONYMOUS: Mr. Fansome is correct that NASA’s signature commercial initiatives (COTS precursor and prizes) were started under O’Keefe/Steidle and that they have either been cut in half (COTS)

    Dear Anon,

    This is interesting. I had known that Griffin made a number of key decisions, including:

    1) Moved what was called ISS Commercial Cargo Services (ICCS) from SOMD to ESMD,

    2) Officially added “crew” into the acquisition,

    3) Changed the then ICCS from a “cargo services acquisition” to a technology development program (which is when the ICCS name was killed),

    4) Picked the $500M number for the COTS budget, and

    5) Added the requirement for “skin in the game”.

    But I had not known that the O’Keefe was budgeting ~$1 billion for ICCS.

    I am quite interested in this issue, as I was advocating a big budget increase for COTS almost a year ago. The case I made last April is still valid.
    http://www.spacepolitics.com/2006/04/18/more-on-china-cooperation-vs-competition/

    OLER: I am curious of your view on something…do you think that had someone in the Administrators level properly sold it a “COTS” resupply/recrew true effort on the space station was politically possible?

    The rumor — and it is a rumor — was that the words “commercial ISS cargo” came off the Vice President’s lips sometime soon after the VSE was announced. It was also rumored that there was a lot of congressional interest and focus on ICCS/COTS, including from Tom Delay in 1995 (when he was quite powerful.)

    My point — I believe it was clearly “politically possible” to have a much more serious COTS program.

    – COTSadvocate

  • anonymous

    “Can you (or anybody else) provide a URL to the Kennedy memo? If not, how about a URL on the Logsdon treatise on the subject?”

    This is not Logsdon’s original political science treatise on Apollo, but his series “Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of hte U.S. Civil Space Program” is better because it’s a collection of the original sources, which is what you want. You want “Volume 1: Organizing for Exploration”, which you can find online at the NASA History Office here:

    http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4407/vol1/intro.pdf

    Kennedy’s memo to Johnson is on pages 423-4 and Johnson’s reply is on pages 427-9. Logsdon puts the memos in their historical context with commentary on pages 379-81.

    Hope this helps.

  • anonymous

    “do you think that had someone in the Administrators level properly sold it a “COTS” resupply/recrew true effort on the space station was politically possible?”

    Sorry, Mr. Oler. I’m not understanding the question. Could you retype/rephrase?

  • anonymous

    “Anon: you’re the best thing that’s happened to this venue in quite a while.”

    Thanks, but I think there’s good nuggets here from lots of folks if we keep the discourse civil.

    “It would be healthy to swear off all analogizing between space and maritime exploration”

    I might argue with you on that one. We can take it too far, but I think there are a lot of parallels between, say, Spanish royalty hocking jewels to pay for Columbus’s new trade route to the Orient, and Kennedy/Johnson putting upwards of 4% of the annual federal budget towards beating the Soviets to the Moon. It underscores and enlightens the importance of national decisionmakers to undertaking these kinds of expensive or risky exploration efforts and what REALLY drives them to make decisions in favor of exploration. Understand that and we’re halfway to a sustainable plan for civil space exploration.

    Even more broadly, I think scientific oceanographic exploration today remains a positive model for what we should be doing in space exploration — leveraging existing/commercial vessels and infrastructure whenever possible, and employing human and/or robot explorers whereever it makes the most sense from a productivity, cost, or safety standpoint.

    [quote]
    — and for that matter, between space and aviation.
    [/quote]

    Aviation (and railways) is interesting as a model for how to create a new transportation mode and private sector industry out of whole cloth. And for those looking to stimulate or create private sector space transportation modes and industries (either in relation to or separate from human space exploration), I think there’s plenty of historical models to experiment with and lessons to relearn.

    But early aviation was about transportation, not exploration. As such, I would argue that early aviation, in and of itself, is not a model for space exploration.

    “99% of the time, those analogies are deployed not in the spirit of “what might we learn from history?” but as “what can I cherry-pick to support my space strategy, and cast my opponents as flat-earthers?”

    Well, in the spirit of full disclosure, if you read back a few threads, Mr. Robertson and others might, if they were feeling ill-tempered, accuse me of doing exactly that with some of my historical analogies. So no one is guilt free. ;-)

  • anonymous

    “It’s backfiring against them, and they could lose their precious human spaceflight program. They might lose the whole agency.”

    I agree that the “Mars all-up or bust” human space exploration strategy is backfiring again for the umpteenth time in NASA’s history (and less than two decades since NASA’s leadership — including Griffin who was there at the time — should have learned the lesson from SEI).

    But I think the absolute worst that will happen is that the budget associated with the ESAS elements necessary to mount a human lunar return will be cancelled by the next White House and redistributed towards other priorities outside NASA.

    I don’t think NASA will lose its human space flight program (or the agency). At a minimum, Ares 1/Orion/ISS or (worse) STS/ISS will keep the eagle and American flag flying in LEO.

    It’s one thing for the President to argue that the nation cannot afford a human lunar return right now. It’s another thing for the President to argue that the United States can no longer afford any human space flight program.

    The former is a matter of budget priorities and debate. The latter is as American as apple pie, and the nation would have to be in some very dire straits to summon the political will to stop funding any NASA human space flight program (or NASA itself).

  • anonymous

    “1) Moved what was called ISS Commercial Cargo Services (ICCS) from SOMD to ESMD,”

    A little history, at least as I understand it (and which any reader should take with a grain of salt since I have to remain anonymous and can’t back up my sources)…

    An effort to get SOMD to purchase commercial ISS cargo transportation services predates even O’Keefe’s tenure at NASA. My understanding is that this was originally shoved down SOMD’s throat by the White House, OMB specifically, when more serious commercial efforts like Kistler started appearing on the scene in the late 90s. It was essentially a side bet to OSP in case OSP ran into problems and to keep the OSP program honest.

    Since O’Keefe came to NASA directly from OMB, and brought a few key OMB staffers who had overseen NASA with him, it’s not surprising that commercial ISS cargo transportation services played a role in the post-Columbia VSE strategy. O’Keefe & Co. continued to let SOMD have the lead on commercial ISS cargo transportation services, which is logical given that SOMD operated ISS and purchased commercial ELVs for SMD robotic missions. But SOMD continued to drag its feet and make the potential procurement overly complex and burdensome.

    When Griffin became Administrator, he expressed dissatisfaction with SOMD’s handling of and slow progress on commercial ISS cargo transportation services. (One result was the transferral and resignation of Poniatowski, who had been heading the effort for SOMD as part of here commercial ELV purchase duties.) Griffin thus had the effort transferred to ESMD (initially led by Steidle, then Horowitz), in the hopes that they could get it off the ground, which they obviously did.

    “2) Officially added “crew” into the acquisition,”

    Actually, independent of commercial ISS cargo transport, Steidle’s CEV managers were exploring the possibility of stimulating the commercial market such that all LEO transport, including crew, for the lunar return effort would be handled by commercial vehicles and CEV would be an in-space vehicle only. I don’t think Steidle himself believed that was possible, but he was still interested in creating competitive pressures on whoever won his CEV contract(s) and that still meant a commercial crew procurement of some sort.

    When commercial ISS cargo transport came to ESMD from SOMD, the commercial crew element of Constellation got fused with it in what eventually became COTS.

    “3) Changed the then ICCS from a “cargo services acquisition” to a technology development program (which is when the ICCS name was killed),”

    You may have a different definition of “technology development program” than me, but I would not characterize COTS and its predecessors as such. In the final form of COTS, funding was provided up front for development, and the selection criteria favored new, cheaper, domestic capabilities (versus existing Ruskie or EELV systems), but again, I wouldn’t call that a technology program.

    4) Picked the $500M number for the COTS budget, and

    Actually, if you go back to the infamous VSE sand chart, there’s a considerably larger budget for ISS transport. That also had to include payments for foreign ISS vehicles (i.e., Ruskie Progress/Soyuz), but even when you subtract out the likely costs for those vehicles, the budget is still considerably larger than what we have today for COTS.

    As I understand it, Griffin allowed the ESAS study team to vacuum up all the spare VSE dollars in the sand chart, including ISS transport, at the outset of the study. When he realized what he had done late in the game, Griffin had the ESAS team skinny down their recommendation a little and reallocate dollars back to ISS transport. Once the Ruskie vehicles were paid for, all that was left was $500 million for COTS Phase 1 and some spare change for commercial service purchases in the far outyears. By my accounting of what was originally in the sand chart and what those Ruskie vehicles would likely go for, that was a cut of at least half to what COTS could have been.

    “5) Added the requirement for “skin in the game”.”

    I don’t recall private financing being a requirement to compete for the COTS procurement, but there were questions about private financing in the procurement and the strength of such financing (if needed) was a selection criterion.

    Although I have nothing but the best of hopes for COTS, I think Griffin has underfunded the effort. If you just look at what the USAF put into the EELVs ($500 million per vehicle) then COTS Phase 1 (the cargo requirements) is underfunded by half (only $250 million in government funding per vehicle). Worse, COTS includes requirements for on-orbit rendezvous and docking and cargo return that EELV never had to deal with — so we’re probably talking about an effort underfunded by three-fourths or more. (I’d WAG that each vehicle probably needs $750-1,000 million in government funding alone and may top $1.5-2 billion total — government and private financing for each vehicle — by the time docking and return requirements are addressed.) And even worse than that, COTS must compete with what is essentially a heavily funded, in-house competitor in Ares 1/Orion. Again, I wish only the best for COTS, but I don’t see private financiers ponying up the additional $500-1,750 million necessary when the government has only put down $250 million and is pouring all its remaining dollars into an in-house competitor.

    Going back to some of my earlier posts, Griffin is really bad at large-scale “strategery”, and I think what happened to the COTS money during the ESAS study is a prime example.

    “But I had not known that the O’Keefe was budgeting ~$1 billion for ICCS.”

    I think that’s a bit of an overstatement. O’Keefe would not recognize a $1 billion figure for commercial ISS cargo transport services. But when you subtract out a conservative figure for Ruskie vehicles out of the proper sand chart line, that’s about what you get through the relevant five-year budget runout.

    “The rumor — and it is a rumor — was that the words “commercial ISS cargo” came off the Vice President’s lips sometime soon after the VSE was announced.”

    I can’t confirm that, but I would note that those words (or words close to them) had existed for years before the VSE and were a key part of the VSE strategy. If the Veep did express an interest, it was post facto and probably didn’t change much of anything.

    “My point — I believe it was clearly “politically possible” to have a much more serious COTS program.”

    As long as NASA had work for the centers and primes on CEV and heavy-lift, I don’t think politics would figure into COTS much at all and that’s largely what we’ve seen to this point. And if NASA had put CEV on EELV, I think that would have largely continued to hold true indefinitely — ULA would have been competing for ISS business the same as Space-X and Kistler (or whoever won COTS in this alternate reality).

    Unfortunately, due to the duplicative investment Griffin is making in what is essentially an in-house competitor to COTS in Ares 1, I think COTS is likely to run into some politics when tough budget choices need to be made regarding the Ares 1 development schedule and eventually production for ISS transport. It will be interesting to see if those political choices emerge sooner rather than later due to the $500 million-plus shortfall in ESMD resulting from the 2007 budget resolution.

    These political choices won’t emerge soon if Griffin keeps his word about keeping the $500 million for COTS fenced off. But Griffin also said “not one thin dime out of science” and we all know how that ended up…

  • Monte Davis

    I think there are a lot of parallels between, say, Spanish royalty hocking jewels to pay for Columbus’s new trade route to the Orient, and Kennedy/Johnson putting upwards of 4% of the annual federal budget towards beating the Soviets to the Moon.

    As long as you keep in mind

    (1) the quantitative disparity (the “crown jewels” myth aside, Spain’s financial commitment to Columbus was nowhere near 4% of crown spending)

    (2) the qualitatively different context: when Columbus showed the way, there were hundreds of European ships already making money at other things that could duplicate the trip. And settlement in Hispaniola, Cuba, and Mexico required a tiny fraction of the resources per Spaniard that human presence in space will require, at least for decades to come.

    scientific oceanographic exploration today remains a positive model for what we should be doing in space exploration

    Agreed. Even though that and Antarctica are obviously better analogies, they’re less popular with spacers than Columbus or the Wright brothers because they don’t carry the same connotation of “…and look what a booming success that was…”

    But early aviation was about transportation, not exploration

    Exactly — and as such it was able to skim the cream from effectively unlimited existing demand, a very different situation from that facing space entrepreneurs. It also benefited from

    (1) sustained military demands for faster/higher/bigger — and during WWI and WWII for big production runs — that haven’t had a counterpart in space since ICBMs matured

    (2) mail and “imperial” subsidies (the latter in quotes because it covers US-supported airline extensions to Latin America and the Pacific as well as BOAC, Lufthansa etc) that were the difference between profit and loss for almost all airline operations before WWII.

    I believe space entrepreneurs can and will bootstrap new markets. But there are solid reasons why that process will be slower than the growth of aviation was.

  • al Fansome

    ANONYMOUS: This is not Logsdon’s original political science treatise on Apollo, but his series “Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of hte U.S. Civil Space Program” is better because it’s a collection of the original sources, which is what you want. You want “Volume 1: Organizing for Exploration”, which you can find online at the NASA History Office here:

    http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4407/vol1/intro.pdf

    Anon,

    Thanks for the pointer, unfortunately this only accesses the “Introduction”. I went to NASA history website, and although NASA says that this entire series is online, I can only find the introductions for all of these volumes.

    http://history.nasa.gov/series95.html

    http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4407/sp4407.htm

    I actually have these books buried in a box somewhere in storage.

    The reason I asked is that “easy access” to these key documents, by a broader community, would inform the space policy discussions that take place here and elsewhere. As Monte said, it is “common knowledge” that Apollo was not for exploration, or settlement, or any justification that us space cadets care about, … but I think it is only common knowledge to those who pay serious attention to this issue and have been around for awhile. I think it is useful to remind those who have not paid as much attention, or who are new to space policy discussions. Also, it may not really sink in for some, unless they look at the original documents.

    I recommend that people listen to
    http://www.space.com/media/s010822_kennedy_audio_2.mov

    You need to listen to the end of the recording of this debate that took place in the White House. At the very end of this tape recording, President Kennedy makes his position quite clear.

    If anybody can find a URL to to the FULL text of Volume 1 of the “Exploring the Unknown” by Logsdon, please post here.

    – Al

  • Anonymous,

    You give O’Keefe a lot of credit for COTS and support for commercial ISS cargo/crew services. He deserves very little.

    It is definitely true that the predecessor to COTS, Alternative Access, was an initiative by OMB way back in 1999. In fact, I was a congressional staff person at the time and worked with OMB to argue that NASA should take a commercial approach for *all* post-Shuttle transportation.

    To be sure, NASA screwed up Alt Access, in part thanks to Dan Goldin giving the Aerospace Technology czar Sam Venneri the lead, rather than Human Spaceflight AA Joe Rothenberg. Then, when O’Keefe came in, he was in general opposed to “stimulating commercial space” as akin to “industrial policy”. In fact, it was under O’Keefe that Alt Access was cancelled, and he defended this cancellation, even after Columbia showed the value of having ALTERNATIVE means of ACCESSING the ISS.

    Fast forward to the VSE announcement. Coincident and consistent with VSE, but not really “part of it”, the FY2005 NASA budget submission included funds for ISS Transport as part of the “sand chart”.

    Completely independent, however, was the idea developed under Steidle late in calendar 2004… that if it were possible for NASA to enable a commercial Earth-to-Orbit human transport capability that would evolve enhanced safety/reliability through private as well as NASA demand, then NASA wouldn’t have to do what we now know as Ares 1 *or* a human-rated EELV.

    When ESMD was given control of ISS crew cargo, both of these got smooshed together into COTS. and COTS was awarded to companies promising crew.

    And so here we are, hoping that NASA chose well, because we all know that the detractors of commercial space will use the failure of one or both COTS awards as *evidence* that commercial companies just can’t do this really hard orbital space stuff.

    – Jim

  • anonymous

    “To be sure, NASA screwed up Alt Access, in part thanks to Dan Goldin giving the Aerospace Technology czar Sam Venneri the lead, rather than Human Spaceflight AA Joe Rothenberg.”

    You may be right, Mr. Muncy, but I don’t recall that. AFAIK, it was always in Poniatowski’s shop prior to Griffin’s transfer to ESMD.

    “In fact, it was under O’Keefe that Alt Access was cancelled, and he defended this cancellation, even after Columbia showed the value of having ALTERNATIVE means of ACCESSING the ISS.”

    Again, you may be right, but I don’t recall that. Not that O’Keefe or any other NASA Administrator is free of contradictions, but it makes little sense to cancel the effort and then resurrect it in the VSE sand chart a little later on.

    “When ESMD was given control of ISS crew cargo, both of these got smooshed together into COTS. and COTS was awarded to companies promising crew.”

    One part I left out was the efforts of one of your clients, t/Space, to convince Griffin to reallocate some funding to commercial ISS transport funding after ESAS had scooped it all up. It’s too bad they didn’t get a piece of the action in the end.

    “And so here we are, hoping that NASA chose well, because we all know that the detractors of commercial space will use the failure of one or both COTS awards as *evidence* that commercial companies just can’t do this really hard orbital space stuff.”

    Per my earlier post, I think COTS is more likely to fail from government underfunding and in-house competition from Ares 1 than any selection choices.

    But you’re probably right that such a failure will be displayed as proof of the private sector’s inability to develop and operate human space flight systems, rather than poor program formulation and funding from the outset.

    Thanks for commenting.

  • Anonymous: when the rubber hits the road, no expensive or risky exploration or settlement effort is undertaken without a concrete rationale in mind. In fact, historically, most such efforts are driven by either fear or greed . . . today there is no overriding fear or greed rationale driving our human space flight activities

    While I agree with most of your analysis (which is why I think the way forward is a synergy between government projects and the likes of SpaceX), I’m not sure I agree with this. The fear today, as expressed by a number of politicians, is the fear of our leaving the human spaceflight realm, either because of political inaction (or ineptitude) or because of technical and financial failures. This is why, now that the Space Shuttle is largely discredited, I think the VSE may change it’s spots but it is not likely to go away. The unfortunate thing (which you have observed) is that this particular fear will keep the Space Station alive, our access to LEO, and hopefully COTS, it is unlikely by itself to take us back to Earth’s moon. For that, we need a different fear or economic reason. I have argued that the need to supply heavy oxygen to the ISS and other orbital facilities may someday provide the latter reason, but, short of a government return to the moon, it’s a reason for the relatively distant future.

    Mr. Robertson and others might, if they were feeling ill-tempered, accuse me of doing exactly that with some of my historical analogies

    If so, I can’t think of what it was. I for one think you have played far more fairly than anyone else here, including (in my more honest moments) myself.

    That said, I still think the early (Neolithic and on) ocean-going model is the best one because it most closely models the extremely alien environment and the relative difficulty. It took us some 10,000 years to learn to travel confidently over our world’s oceans, and I see no reason to believe it should be any easier to tackle the Solar System. The good news is, we achieved the former, so we may well be able to achieve the latter.

    the nation would have to be in some very dire straits to summon the political will to stop funding any NASA human space flight program (or NASA itself).

    This is very true. But, what many of us miss, is that it is also relatively new. As recently as the Clinton Administration, I think the entire human space program was at risk. This is a sea change, and not just in this country, and it is one that probably has dramatic import for the future.

    I think COTS is likely to run into some politics when tough budget choices need to be made regarding the Ares 1 development schedule and eventually production for ISS transport. It will be interesting to see if those political choices emerge sooner rather than later due to the $500 million-plus shortfall in ESMD resulting from the 2007 budget resolution. . . . These political choices won’t emerge soon if Griffin keeps his word about keeping the $500 million for COTS fenced off. But Griffin also said “not one thin dime out of science” and we all know how that ended up.

    It is interesting to note that Dr. Griffin appears to be attacking the automated lunar lander before COTS (which, as I argued a few months ago in Space News is exactly the correct choice).

    — Donald

  • Monte: when Columbus showed the way, there were hundreds of European ships already making money at other things that could duplicate the trip.

    Well, we do have the EELVs, Soyuz, Proton, Ariane, et al, and the satellite markets they serve. Maybe if Dr. Griffin’s bosses do hoch the nation’s jewels to show the way (which, given Mr. Bush’s national “budgeting,” they are doing), some of these will be there. But, I doubt it. The space divisions at Boeing and, to a lesser degree, Lockheed Martin, have shown very little interesting in looking beyond the government teat.

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    This blogger thinks NASA should get out of human spaceflight too.

    http://chairforceengineer.blogspot.com/2007/02/getting-out-of-business.html

  • anonymous

    The final report of the Congressionally mandated ISS Independent Safety Task Force is out:

    http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/170368main_IIST_%20Final%20Report.pdf

    There are seven “Principal Recommendations” on page 12. The fourth recommends that:

    “The Administration, Congress, and NASA should promote a proactive and phased post-Shuttle logistical transportation program, including adequate funding of approximately ONE BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR ABOVE CURRENT ALLOCATIONS [caps added] to ensure that adequate logistics and spares are available to maintain a viable Station.”

    Although I doubt that the report will get more than a mention or two at NASA budget hearings, if taken seriously, the fallout from this recommendation could be very big. There’s at least three possibilities:

    1) Increase COTS and Foreign Partner Vehicle Budgets — The most straightforward result would be an augmentation of the ISS transportation services budgets, including COTS Phase 1, COTS Phase 2, and purchases of foreign partner vehicle flights. Consistent with earlier posts in this thread, the report lists nine “Principal Observations” on p. 11, and the eighth reads:

    “Design, development, and certification of the new Commercial Orbital Transportation System capability for ISS resupply are just beginning. If similar to other new program development activities, it most likely will take much longer than expected and will cost more than anticipated.”

    I doubt a full billion per year is in the cards, but a budget more in line with what was in the original VSE sandchart for ISS transportation (also mentioned in earlier posts in this thread) is a possibility. But whether Congress would find or reallocate such funding against so many other competing priorities on the basis of just this one report is unclear and probably not likely.

    2) If the Ares 1/Orion 2014 readiness date is still salvageable after the $500 million cut in 2007, Griffin and Horowitz will likely use the report to argue for more Ares 1/Orion funding to bring their favored ISS transport capability back to the left, circa 2012. They’ll have to get such a proposal through the White House first, though, and given unrealized VSE budget promises and tepid support in the last SAP, I doubt OMB will allocate more funding to NASA on the basis of this one report.

    3) Senators Hutchison and Nelson may use the report as an argument to extend Shuttle operations, especially if the recent hail damage makes the ISS 2010 completion date even more uncertain. Although Griffin, the White House, and even other Congressmen will oppose such a move, this could provide the first camel’s nose under the tent for extending Shuttle operations in the 2008 budget. Hopefully the final ISS configuration would be reduced before such a costly and risky course is taken.

    In the relatively zero sum game that will likely be NASA’s budget through the next election, pressure to put more dollars into ISS transport results in further delays to getting actual exploration hardware underway in most scenarios. Some very tough trades may need to be made in the coming year or two between Ares 1, COTS, ISS, and exploration.

  • Adrasteia

    The space divisions at Boeing and, to a lesser degree, Lockheed Martin, have shown very little interesting in looking beyond the government teat.

    Didn’t Boeing buy Hughes, the worlds largest commercial satellite manufacturer? Sounds to me that they’re VERY interested in commercial space. Lockheed and Boeing also spent a metric shitload of their own capital on launchers for the commsat market. Boeing even funded two.

    What Boeing and Lockheed Martin aren’t interested is a useless barren rock at the bottom of a 2.4km/s gravity well.

  • Jeff Foust

    Didn’t Boeing buy Hughes, the worlds largest commercial satellite manufacturer?

    They did, but if you follow the market you’ll find that BSS now lags behind other commercial satellite manufacturers. Those problems with the solar concentrators on the 702 series didn’t help during a time earlier this decade when there was a during dip in demand.

    Lockheed and Boeing also spent a metric shitload of their own capital on launchers for the commsat market.

    Boeing took the Delta 4 off the commercial market in 2003 because it couldn’t compete on a price basis with other vehicles, and won’t bring it back even though the market, and launch prices, have rebounded. The Atlas 5 only attracts a smattering of commercial business.

    However, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are less dependent on commercial satellite and launch business than other companies because of their strong government business.

  • Adrasteia: Jeff has provided essentially the same answer I would. There was a time when what you said was true, but that was years ago. Today, neither company (and especially Boeing) shows much interest in commercial space. It’s too bad, because today there is a significant under-supply of commercial launch vehicles and the Delta-IV is needed. The Delta-IV is designed to achieve economies of scale with a large launch rate, so commercializing this vehicle would have benefits for everyone. Since the RS-68 is used both by Dr. Griffin’s Ares vehicles, and the Delta-IV, and increased launch rate probably would benefit the current design of the VSE.

    It’s much easier to over-charge the government than commercial entities, and that appears to be Boeing’s space division’s primary interest.

    None of us are interested in a useless barren rock at the bottom of a 2.4km/s gravity well, however quite a lot of us are interested in Earth’s extremely interesting sister world, a type-example of what is probably one of the most common types of planetary body in the universe, a mystery (why is Earth a double-planet?), a natural space station, a location to find samples of Earth’s earliest crust, an ideal site for radio telescopes, and the closest and cheapest place to get oxygen used in space.

    — Donald

  • Tim

    Please. Your fantasies are wasting funds that are desperately needed for atmospheric and oceanographic research needed hear on earth. Are you lost on the 1950’s? Let us learn what we are facing here on earth in terms of rising temperatures (whether man created or not) and try to find a way to avoid starving a billion human beings. NASA started as an effort to outdo the communists and it succeeded, but freedom in a collapsed economy and world starvation is like MAD MAX. Do you think mars has the answers?

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