Space analysts say Mars mission needs more funding

Obviously more at home in a spacecraft than on stage at a political convention, former astronaut Eileen Collins nevertheless strode to the podium in Cleveland last week to make her pitch for giving the American space program its due. While her presence alone may have amounted to an implicit endorsement of Donald Trump, her message had to be the least partisan of the Republican National Convention.

"We have been built by the passion of people who weren't afraid to do something first, to step into the unknown, and to pave our own way forward," said Collins, who was the first woman to command a space shuttle mission. "We are a nation of explorers."

Or were. Her complaint to the assembled delegates was that we have lost our way, sending robots through the solar system but no people past low Earth orbit. We cannot not even launch "our own astronauts from our own soil," she said, prompting a chorus of boos.

That, at least, will change soon as two U.S. companies begin taking passengers to the International Space Station. But exploration is another matter. A big new rocket is supposed to be ready to fly by 2018, but there are no firm plans for it to go anywhere after its maiden launch. And as yet no money to send it.

For the record, neither Trump nor opponent Hillary Clinton have brought the space program into their campaigns. The Republican Party platform mentions it in passing. The Democrats don't bother.

Speaking 47 years to the day after astronauts first walked on the moon and planted an American flag, Collins called on Washington, on someone, to restore the agency's full sense of purpose: "We need leadership to ask Americans, 'What's next?' "

Since the end of the space shuttle program, that question has been asked and argued over and never really settled. Congress set forth broad exploration goals in the Space Authorization Act of 2010, but all of them will depend on ever-increasing budgets. Two years ago, a report by the National Research Council said there is no way NASA will reach Mars on current, or even slightly increased, funding levels.

Nothing has changed. John Logsdon, the eminence grise of space analysts, said Mars always has been the dream, seemingly close, but out of reach.

"It will continue to be a dream unless something changes," said Logsdon, a professor emeritus at George Washington University's Space Police Institute.

Neither NASA nor the Obama administration, however, seemed alarmed about the report's emphatic conclusion, asserting that the current course will take us to Mars on time. Nor has Congress expressed great concern that the timetable is unworkable, so long as money continues to flow into the two current big projects of human exploration.

Collins' brief address came a week after a hearing of the U.S. Senate science committee that oversees NASA. Grandly titled "NASA at the Crossroads," the hearing itself suggested no such pivotal moment. There was general consensus among witnesses and senators that the recent commercial partnerships to restore American access to the space station as well as the progress on building the biggest rocket ever - and the Orion capsule that will house the astronauts - showed that things were on track.

"We must continue to expand the domain of free enterprise deeper into space - to do it first - and to ensure that we don't squander the opportunity before us today," said committee member Ted Cruz, whose Texas constituency has a large stake in any such effort.

Lack of pizzazz

Precisely what that opportunity entails was left unsaid. While the commercial crew and SLS contractors remain hard at work on their new hardware, only NASA's science missions reflect a detailed commitment to explore and expand. The Juno mission is orbiting Jupiter, and another Mars mission, InSight, is expected to launch in 2018. Two years after that, a new and more robust rover will head to Mars.

As it happened, Collins' address took place on the 40th anniversary of NASA's first landing on Mars. She was a teenager when the Viking 1 touched down on the Chryse Planitia, a heralded achievement that provided the first close-up photos of the Martian surface. Viking 2 followed a few weeks later.

Coming less than four years after the final Apollo moon landing, it was reasonable to think that the Viking twins would be the first in a series of robotic missions that would prepare NASA for the arrival of astronauts there. But such plans never got very far. We did not even go back to the moon.

As time wore on, the agency settled for the space shuttle and later the space station, impressive achievements even if they lacked the pizzazz of the moon shots. Today, NASA speaks often and officially of its upcoming Journey to Mars as if it were a done deal, including a fancy, artist-rendered infographic portraying its varied elements. Yet there is no planned mission, nor any agreement about when to mount one, or how.

"The goal is not to go to Mars, but to build something and say you are going to Mars," said frequent agency critic Keith Cowing, a former civilian contractor who oversees the NASA Watch website. "It's like Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz' - you click your heels and hope something materializes."

Agency officials have said the rocket and capsule had to come first because they provide the essential infrastructure, the backbone of any mission, regardless of the destination. How soon could they be ready for use? The first mission with people onboard won't launch until after 2020. It is unknown when any subsequent flight will take place.

The date given from the president on down for the Mars missions is sometime in the 2030s. Funds will have to be allotted not only to build each rocket and capsule - they are not reusable - but all the other equipment for such a massive expedition. Preliminary research is being done, but the to-do list will be long.

"We are not doing things that you would if you were seriously planning Mars missions, with a budget that actually exists," Cowing said. "In what universe does this make sense?"

Seeking paradigm shift

NASA insists its Mars program is for real. And one longtime agency executive, Dan Dumbacher, believes it is doable on a limited budget, albeit not so limited as today's several billion dollars a year.

"If (the human exploration budget) were able to grow twice the rate of inflation every year, you could put more missions together," said Dumbacher, a Purdue University engineering professor who once oversaw the development of exploration hardware, including SLS at NASA.

We don't need an Apollo-like commitment, Dumbacher said, but a simple paradigm shift toward consistently more generous funding, perhaps 10 percent a year.

"The TARP program we created to save some of our financial institutions spent more in that one or two years than all of NASA's budgets from the inception of the agency," he said.

Apollo, he noted, was an extension of U.S. foreign policy. Many people don't remember that its last three missions were canceled as interest waned save among space enthusiasts. Since then, money - or the lack of it - has ruled the day.

Over the years, NASA has mounted almost a dozen successful Mars robotic missions, with an aggregate cost less than what one trip with humans aboard would run. Many NASA observers say the Journey to Mars, as envisioned, is not viable given the high cost of the rocket alone, which is sure to go up.

John Strickland, a frequent writer on space policy issues and a member of the board of the National Space Society, has estimated it will take roughly at least $4 billion a year to launch one of the big rockets and its companion Orion capsule.

What Strickland did not include was anything else - all the other equipment and modules that will be necessary for a long mission to a new planet. A few astronauts cannot go far in the Orion capsule, the real purpose of which is simply getting them back to Earth. A separate habitation module will be required. Strickland also warned that the later and more powerful versions of the big new rocket don't have reliable cost estimates yet.

His conclusion that SLS/Orion will end up being "ridiculously expensive" has been shared by some within the agency, and a few have argued for its cancellation. Congress, however, required its continuation. Work goes on as if everything built or learned will find good purpose someday.

'Critical research'

Last week, for example, Baylor College of Medicine announced a new partnership with NASA to research how to make long-duration spaceflight safer. The health implications of sustained weightlessness, as well as radiation exposure, are considered significant obstacles, and the $246 million grant will allow studies to go on for at least six years.

"Without this critical research, we cannot assure the safety of American astronauts on the long flight to Mars and home again," U.S. Rep. John Culberson, a Houston Republican, said in a prepared statement. Other local officials also applauded the effort, with Harris County Judge Ed Emmett adding that it is "only fitting that our hometown medical school should lead the way in safeguarding those who will lead us to Mars in the future."

When that future will arrive remains anyone's guess. The Research Council report predicted 2050, absent a big jump in funding. Collins will be 94.