Congress, Lobbying

“Mars is under attack!”

They’re manning the battlestations at the Mars Society, which issued a statement with that title to protest the inclusion of language in the House appropriations bill that would prohibit any spending on human exploration of Mars. “THIS ANTI-MARS LANGUAGE MUST BE REMOVED!” the society argues (emphasis in original.) “Otherwise, the program may turn into [a] MOON ONLY program. We can’t let that happen.” The society is calling on its members to contact their representatives and ask them to remove the offending language from the bill.

40 comments to “Mars is under attack!”

  • In a few weeks a robot will be starting a journey to the fifth planet Ceres.

    The man on the moon and Mars thing is getting pretty old.

    Science has a way of obsoleting old paradigms.

  • Ahahaha, so you got that email also? I nearly fell out of my chair when I got that one: http://blogs.seds.org/roadtriptospace/entry/silly_mars_society. Really, I just copied and pasted that from the email, so not only is the CAPS original, the font size is original.

    I couldn’t help but think of Steve Carroll’s character in Anchorman: “Loud noises!” Maybe Bob Zubrin will also kill someone with a trident; wouldn’t be terribly surprising.

  • anonymous

    What surprises (maybe disappoints) me is the often slow response of these space advocacy organizations. The bill left the subcommittee, and the Mars clause was widely advertised, over a week ago, starting June 13th. It shouldn’t take eight days and nights for the Mars Society (of all organizations) to decide that yes, it will oppose anti-Mars legislation, add a page to their website, and send out an mass emailing.

    If the committee vote had taken place as originally scheduled, the Mars Society would have totally missed that boat. I just hope they’re not paying anyone to track legislation, and if they’re not, that they give the task to a more experienced and/or dedicated volunteer.

    FWIW…

  • David Stever

    Bob Zubrin’s response time was no doubt slowed down by the need to tape all of the runs of the Mars show that quotes him, on the Science Channel. It’s been in heavy rotation in the past two months, and (between you and me) he doesn’t really come across that well.

  • @Quack-
    What paradigm is being obsoleted, the one where humans are involved in the space exploration? If that’s what you meant, that’s a totally ridiculous statement. Man has never been involved in interplanetary space exploration, his doing so would be a new paradigm. Furthermore, that would mean you believe that mankind will forever limit itself to the surface (and perhaps orbit) of the Earth. While it may indeed do so for much longer than many would hope, to assert that human society with another, say, thousand years of technological expertise will choose to limit itself to the Earth’s space and resources is in my opinion highly implausible.

    Or perhaps you mean that the paradigm of government agency-led exploration is being obsoleted. But again, that statement is ridiculous as well. Despite almost a century’s worth of experience there, most exploration of the Antarctic is still government agency-led, because there’s no compelling economic incentive for private exploration (there, perhaps in part because of the Antarctica Treaty). Even when humans are in space profitably, there will be activities and missions that no private organization would venture the capital for.

    Rather than utter cryptic and false platitudes, why don’t you actually fully elaborate your thoughts. Otherwise your comment is merely another useless pile of word-dung clogging the tubes of the internet.

  • marsnut

    Oh I am certain that Zubrin is in a rage and that he is barking out orders to his ever shrinking band of Zubrinistas. At some point we’ll see a scathing newsletter rant in which Zubrin will burn what few bridges to legitimacy that remain. Zubrin has managed to become a charicature of himself. And his ’cause’ has suffered as a result.

  • Thomas Matula

    Hi All,

    I haven’t seen the bill yet, but if it eliminated Mars as a VSE goal I am all for it. Mars has been a worst distraction to NASA then the ISS. The only justification Dr. Griffin has for the ESAS is that the hardware being developed now for the Moon will be used in 40 years to go to Mars. This gives him the prefect excuse to dump the Ares I and Ares V and go to a more rational lunar architecture, one which might even be sustainable.

    Hopefully this will also stop the budget drain of endless robitc missions to Mars, allowing some of that funding to be diverted finally to lunar exploration. Its a disgrace that we have maps of Mars that are an order of magnitude better then those of the Moon. If fact Mars is better mapped then most of the Earth. Yes, LRO is finally going to correct this, but it should have been done 20 years ago. As it is the only NASA misison to the Moon since Apollo has been the low budget Lunar Prospector and NASA was basically embrassed into doing it by the DOD Clementine mission trepassing on their “turf”.

    Hear, hear, maybe there is more common sense in Congress on space then we realize.

  • Thomas Matula,
    I doubt it will have any effect at all on the unmanned probing of Mars. These are missions defined by science objectives, not exploration objectives. None of the “follow the water” mantra of the program involves finding exploitable sources. None of the mineral mapping is intended to be for resource discovery. The data produced by the Mars craft may be useful for these purposes, but that is not their intended benefit.

    I am frankly surprised that you view the Mars program in this way. The annual Mars probe budget is well under $400 million, and produces more positive PR for NASA than virtually any other major effort (except for maybe the Cassini and Hubble missions). Even if you think that money is a drain, it gives people “on the ground” views of another planet. It excites kids about space exploration. I gave a presentation to a sixth graders at a school a few months ago, and they absolutely loved the thought of exploring another planet and described the rover images as inspiring that idea.

    An eventual sample return mission would provide people the chance to actually see pieces of Mars up close (meteorites notwithstanding). It would be expensive, but in my view absolutely worth the effort.

    When people describe the successes of unmanned missions relative to manned ones, they are talking about the Mars probes. Even though I believe humans to be far more capable explorers than a few wheeled robots, a big part of the reason that people see NASA as an agency of high profile successes and failures is that those “plucky little” Mars rovers have helped provide the successes. Otherwise, people might just see mostly high profile failures and expensive boondoggles and the like.

    Your point about the lack of quality maps of the Moon is well taken, however. If NASA is serious about resource exploitation there, they will need to do more than the Lunar Prospector. Hopefully additional funds will become available for that purpose.

  • Thomas and anthonares:

    I agree with both of you, and also with Anonymous’ statement here. Any Mars exploration is so far in the future that Congressional pronouncements like this, and Dr. Zubrin’s increasingly irrational responses, are meaningless noise at this point in time. Likewise, the current probes to Mars are sufficiently cheap that I think we should continue them, albeit at possibly a slower rate. (We’re spending an awful lot of our science budget on one body that isn’t even the most interesting place to look for life any more.) However, a Mars sample return steps over the line. Such a mission would have such a high chance of failure, and such a high cost for so little gain, that it should wait for human explorers — or at the very least a logistics base on one of the Martian moons to handle collection, isolation, and return to Earth. It’s worth noting that, unlike a Mars surface mission, flights to the Martian moons are not an overwhelmingly large propulsive step beyond what’s needed to get to the moon.

    — Donald

  • Folks, you better sit down before reading further.

    * * *

    I agree with Bob Zubrin. Jim (aka “an evil O’Neillian”) Muncy agrees with Zubrin about something.

    At least I agree with Zubrin that this limitation should not be in a NASA Appropriations bill.

    * * *
    First of all, what this impacts is NOT Dr. Griffin’s technical choices in ESAS that were driven by the Mars goal, but instead the few remaining tiny Mars-exploration-related technology projects and SBIR grants relating to things like Methane and Mars permafrost ISRU. The language specifically prohibits spending on projects *exclusively* tied to humans to Mars.

    Second, either Congress supports the thrust of VSE — get NASA out of LEO to pursue a continuing strategy of human/robotic exploration of the solar system — or not. Congress enacted legislation 18 months ago to do just that. Appropriators shouldn’t contravene an Authorization Act and undercut the central tenet of the Vision.

    Finally, there is every reason to believe that this language was placed in the bill prophylactically, i.e. to stave off another amendment by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass). Last year he offered one which was pointed specifically against “humans to Mars” research as a political attack on the President. Now I’m a grownup, and one man’s political posturing is another’s principled policy stand.

    But I do not believe space supporters in Congress, however well motivated, should give in to this kind of blackmail.

    P.S. Of course, maybe NASA could just redirect the affected funds into ISRU work on Phobos and Diemos.

  • gburke

    Why would anybdy be so shocked about this?
    For literally decades, the US Government has used Mars as just another political tool. I can think of three Presidents who touted ‘USA to Mars’ to gain numbers in the polls, and quietly shut it down.

    Instead of trying to get the Feds to do it, lobby for the Feds to give serious tax incentives to private industry to do it. And so it’s not another free ride on the gravy train for the United Space Alliance, link this with guaranteed no interetst loans to smaller non-Alliance start-up industries?

  • I can think of three Presidents who touted ‘USA to Mars’ to gain numbers in the polls, and quietly shut it down.

    Really? I can’t think of a single one. What kind of political non-genius would think that “USA to Mars” would provide a boost in the polls?

  • Keith Cowing

    Really? I can’t think of a single one. What kind of political non-genius would think that “USA to Mars” would provide a boost in the polls?

    Answer: The current President…..

  • The general consensus is that, if anything, it hurt the President in the 2004 election more than helped him. But I don’t think it had much of an impact at all, and I was deep in the electoral trenches at the time.

  • Whoops. Screwed up the HTML on that one.

  • What evidence is there that Bush made the VSE announcement (which didn’t feature Mars, by the way–it was just one destination) to “get a boost in the polls”? Silly me, I thought it was just to tell people what the new space policy arising from the Columbia loss was to be.

  • Keith Cowing

    WH clearly thought that they’d get popular support by announcing a revamped space program in the wake of the accident and they were surprised when the media turned on them and ridiculed them. Oops.

  • Thomas Matula

    Anthonares – Wow! $400 million is higher then I thought, that is almost equal to NASA’s budget shortfall. And much more then NASA is spending on space commerce – $500 million for COTS over 3 years, versus $1.2 billion for Mars over three years. Yes, it definitely time to give Mars a rest. Let the research catch up on mining the huge volume of data already gathered while the fund are put to better use preparing for a return to the Moon by funding several lunar missions. Mars is so far off it was a joke to include it in the VSE.

    Also the assumption you are making is that rover pictures of the Moon would not excite kids as well as Mars photos. Unfortunately there are no recent high resolution photos of the, the only surface pictures being 35 year old images from Apollo from landing sites that were selected based on safety (lack of rugged terrain).

    Lunar rovers with high quality modern cameras supported by the high bandwidth available because the Moon is so close to Earth would put the photos of the Mars rovers to shame. And there is the bonus of great views of home when they are on the near side of the Moon.

    Plus lunar rovers are able to cover a lot more ground a lot faster then Mars rovers. Lots more pictures of much more different terrain. People forget that the Lunokhod 2 rover covered a distance of 37 kilometers over 4 months of operation, at speeds up to 2 kilometers per hour. By contrast Opportunity has only covered a distance of 10 kilometers at max. speeds of around 40 meters a day in 4 years of operation. Great vehicles, but just operating under huge technical constraints given the huge distance to Mars.

    And you should remember it will their generation that will travel to the moon, as NASA astronauts, employees of private space firms and as space tourists. By contrast it’s a long shot of even their children will making it to Mars. And the Moon is an object they may look up in the sky and see, not just as a dot, by as a world full or adventure and resources for Earth.

    I feel its no accident the interest of kids in space decline wih the lack of lunar exploration. Mars is only of interest to a clique of scientists who, unfortunately, seem to dominate NASA’s policy making. Meanwhile it just adds the giggle factor to funding for the VSE. Time to put Mars on the far back burner and focus on the first step on space exploration, the Moon. And if this legislation marks the beginning of that type of return to sanity in NASA funding – well, Hear Hear!

    Donald – I would support a study of the Martian moons as we will missions to them long before the planet itself. Indeed, one mission objective of the MRO should be high quality imaging or them, accompany by radar observations from Mars Express. It would be interest to now if they are captured asteroids, consolidated chunks of Mars tossed into orbit by an huge impactor, or an piece of a impactor that glazed the atmosphere and were aerobraked into orbit. Pity the scientists are so stuck on Mars they forget its moons.

    And yes, Mars did give the VSE a high giggle factor, making it an easy target for the media.

  • ColdWater

    The Moon is boring, and VSE is a dead man walking. A better use of time is discussing how the space program will survive in the post-Bush political environment.

  • WH clearly thought that they’d get popular support by announcing a revamped space program in the wake of the accident and they were surprised when the media turned on them and ridiculed them. Oops.

    What does that have to do with “USA to Mars,” Keith? We seem to be talking past each other.

  • To the topic. Now what is the political purpose of forbidding funding on human Mars missions? It’s curious not only in its specificity but also because Mars is the focal point of NASA’s human exploration program. So is this just one more snipe at the VSE or yet another attempt to divert funding away from human space exploration towards robotics? If it’s the former then it’s too little and too late. If it’s the later, the planetary science folks won’t be pleased as many of them favor human missions and they know that it provides substantial justification for their work.

  • Now what is the political purpose of forbidding funding on human Mars missions? It’s curious not only in its specificity but also because Mars is the focal point of NASA’s human exploration program.

    I disagree that Mars is the focal point of NASA’s human exploration program. Both enemies and fans of human Mars missions want to pretend that that’s the case, the former because they they think it a way to beat on Bush, and the latter because it’s the only place in which they myopically have an interest. But the reality is that VSE is a lot more than Mars. The slogan was, after all, “Moon, Mars and Beyond.” That hardly sounds like a “focal point” to me.

    The purpose of cutting off funding for it is the same as it was in the nineties, when they refused to fund things like Transhab, because it had implications for human missions beyond earth orbit. They want to remove the camel’s nose, or even nostril, from the tent, to avoid a commitment to a much larger and more expensive program down the road.

    Which is why Mike Griffin chose to run a stealth Mars program in the guise of his moon program, by “requiring” an oversized heavy lifter. Sadly, he’d probably have done a lot more for future Mars missions if he’d committed to a more robust orbital infrastructure with propellant depots instead, because he may run out of money before he (or his successor) get to the goal line.

  • gburke

    ” Now what is the political purpose of forbidding funding on human Mars missions? ”

    By redistributing the allotted Mars funding to other areas of NASA research, it politically generates short-term popularity of the WH in the Congressional districts that will economically benefit from the addtional cash flow for these programs. In turn, those affected will remember them at election time.

    To me that infers that politically any human Mars missions for the last 40+ years has become nothing more than a slush fund for use by the incumbent’s political party.

    Isn’t it time the Marsheads got off this king-hell bummer of a roller coaster? To coin a phrase: ‘ if not now, when?’

  • “Beyond” has never been defined in terms of human exploration and is clearly on a timescale even longer than that of Mars missions. The Moon is a return journey and the key purpose of going back is Mars forward preparation work.

    Griffin has certainly failed to run a stealth program as he often and very publically refers to both RTTM and Ares as necessary for Mars missions. Ares V is not oversized for RTTM, it anything it’s too small to do the job optimally. It’s only able to deliver about 20 mT of cargo to the lunar surface and far less to Mars. Orbital fuel depots make sense if they can provide fuel for less than $2000 per kg (the price Ares V can deliver to LEO) and they can’t. Yes Griffin may well run out of money considering all the flak he’s getting from the space community.

  • To me that infers…

    No, to you that implies. Sorry, but this is one my pet peeves.

    You infer something that it (or he, or she, or they) implies.

  • Orbital fuel depots make sense if they can provide fuel for less than $2000 per kg (the price Ares V can deliver to LEO) and they can’t.

    Elon Musk (among others) disagrees.

  • I should add that Ares V can’t deliver at that price either. except (possibly) on the margin. Certainly not if you have to amortize development costs.

  • I should add that Ares V can’t deliver at that price either. except (possibly) on the margin. Certainly not if you have to amortize development costs.

    It’s marginal cost that NASA will pay to buy propellant on orbit and marginal cost for them to supply in their own vehicle. Griffin has made it clear he will buy propellant (as well as cargo and crew transport to the ISS) if it’s cheaper than they can provide it themselves. NASA is working with SpaceX so once Musk actually puts something into orbit he may be able to make an agreement but not at his current prices, they are too high ($3500/kg)

  • To get back to the original subject…

    the Appropriators put this language in as a symbolic slap at Bush and to avoid a floor amendment that would have done the same thing.

    I think it is a mistake, because it undercuts VSE to legislatively rule out any exploration destination.

  • kert

    Griffin has made it clear he will buy propellant
    Except that he cant, without going back to square zero and rearchitecting the whole thing, including the CEV, Ar(s)es I and V and all the other bits and pieces.
    Refuelling is not something you “tack on” to your transportation architecture later on.

  • gburke

    “the Appropriators put this language in as a symbolic slap at Bush and to avoid a floor amendment that would have done the same thing.”

    Absolutely.
    Was this even mentioned in the mainstream news at all?
    Maybe the senators can give Griffin a few pointers about running an effective stealth progran.
    If in fact Griffin really had one in the first place.

  • Thomas, I agree with your moon versus Mars rhetoric, although, as usual, I’d emphasize returning humans and leave rovers to private efforts or nothing. Mars is too difficult a goal to tackle without the all-or-nothing crash-program-funding kind of effort that Apollo got and is not in the cards today.

    Kert: Refueling is not something you “tack on” to your transportation architecture later on.

    Why not, especially if you have a modular architecture? So, the first generation lunar lander uses storable propellants (a mistake, I think, but let’s move on). What’s to prevent you from replacing it with a methane stage later on?

    — Donald

  • “the Appropriators put this language in as a symbolic slap at Bush and to avoid a floor amendment that would have done the same thing.”

    Quite true. But by adopting an attitude of VSE=Bush, the Democrats will make it harder for Nick Lampson to win re-election next year.

  • Donald,

    why ever use storables in a lunar module? why spray hypergolic poison into the cold shadowed craters at the poles, where it will condense out, turning whatever water ice (or volatiles) is there from precious real estate into a Superfund site?

    instead, design the LSAM with LOXLH2 for descent and LOXCH4 for ascent and then plug in lunar lox when it is available. otherwise, you’re talking an entire redesign of the LSAM, which would require money NASA won’t have (different propulsion=different sized tanks, etc…) .

    – Jim

  • Adrasteia

    Um, where exactly did that bullshit $2000/kg cost for Ares V come from? The support infrastructure alone on that monster costs $3B per year, they would have to launch 100 per year to get down to those rates.

  • Jim, I fully and absolutely agree. I opposed the decision to go with storable propellants, and you make a key point about contaminating any water that I hadn’t thought of. That said, I’d rather go back to the moon with storable propellants than not go at all, and that decision has been made far above my pay grade. I hope that the combination of the delay in lunar infrastructure development, and progress in methane rocketry, will cause this decision to be reversed later on.

    — Donald

  • Donald,

    my point is that the LSAM design process is still at the concept level, and *no* decision has been made to use storables. the ESAS study said use LOX-Methane.

    a decision was made to use storables for the Orion service module (instead of LOX-Meth) for “block 1″, i.e. to ISS. LOX-methane can be inserted for block 2 of Orion, i.e. to the Moon.

    NASA has indeed made huge progress with LOX-Methane this year working with multiple contractors. It is one of the real success stories that a precursor engine for the lunar module ascent stage has been fired nearly 40 times. Amidst all the understandable focus on Ares 1 and Orion, there’s actual moonship hardware being tested.

    (I don’t always get to be positive about NASA, so when I can, I try to indulge the opportunity…)

    – Jim

  • Thanks for the details, Jim.

    — Donald

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