Search this Site

The President's Message

By Steve Bartlett

I write this the day after President Bush unveiled his plans to send humans back to the Moon and then onto Mars. After much speculation and release of "trial balloons" to assess public reaction to different proposals, the plan set forth has NASA completing the International Space Station and retiring the Shuttle fleet by 2010, returning to the Moon no later than 2015 and establishing a permanent base there, and sending crews to Mars by 2030.

While far from what many of us wanted to see, it does seem to strike a fair balance between cosmic aspirations and budgetary realities. The plan gives NASA some much-needed direction to "go somewhere" in its manned space program rather than the proverbial wheel spinning we've been doing in low Earth orbit for the past thirty-plus years. It directs research on the Space Station toward what its best suited for: finding out how the human body reacts to weightlessness and how to counteract those effects; how to get crews in close confines to work together for long periods of time; how to engineer life support systems that operate for long periods of time; and how to build and operate large structures in space.

Going to the Moon before heading off to Mars has a number of advantages. The Moon can be reached in a matter of days. The fuel required to get there is much less than that for Mars. Communications to and from the Moon have a minimal time delay. Hardware can be proven in realistic conditions before being used on Mars. Additionally, lunar resources can be used to support a Mars mission instead of having to lift everything from the Earth's surface. Many have argued that the Moon is a "been there/done that" goal which won't excite people the way that a Mars mission would. But the Moon would serve as a sensible, achievable waypoint on the road to Mars that wouldn't cause the sticker shock that an Apollo-like straight-to-Mars program might entail.

The success of the plan will, of course, depend on getting funding and using it properly. When the first President Bush spoke of "returning to the Moon, this time to stay, then onto Mars," at the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11, it was nothing more than political rhetoric. His administration did not allocate the resources or garner the congressional and public support necessary to make his words a reality. They also did not rally the support of those within the ranks at NASA, who felt that their space plate was already full with the Space Shuttle and Space Station programs. If the current president's plan is to succeed, his administration will have to find enough money and support to do the job right and to get the country behind the program.

Bush has told agency administrator Sean O'Keefe that NASA will have to re-allocate its resources and direct its research toward these goals. Hence, a number of worthwhile programs that don't meet the litmus test of supporting lunar and Mars exploration in the near term may have to be scaled back, stretched out, or eliminated. The most likely targets would be those which haven't progressed to the stage of building hardware, including the James Webb Space Telescope, the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, some planned environmental satellites, and some asteroid or cometary missions. It is an unfortunate situation but one that's necessary if humanity is to expand into the cosmos.

There are some holes in the plan which need to be addressed. These include determining what will happen to the Space Station after 2010, how crews are to get to the Station in the interim between the retirement of the Shuttle and the first flights of the Crew Exploration Vehicle, and how much support the plan will get from our international partners. But these issues may serve as opportunities for some of the smaller space entrepreneurial companies. Private firms could build and operate Gemini-like capsules to ferry crews and equipment to the Station (a la Spacehab with their pressurized cargo/research modules in the Shuttle cargo bay). A private firm or consortium could take over operation and maintenance of the Station, potentially adding to the pressurized volume and using it for space tourism. There are many possibilities here to help move NASA out of space facility operations and back toward exploration and space research.

So I suggest that we get behind this program and make sure that the administration, Congress, the public, and NASA personnel support it with the resources to do it right.

Otherwise, we may never leave the cradle of Earth.