Fly Me To Mars
Alright, as long as I'm ranting about dumb articles, let me point your attention to this one in WIRED magazine.
The basic arguement is that we should scrap the Shuttle fleet, mothball the Space Station, and use the savings (which he estimates at about $6 billion per year) to go to Mars.
The problems with this concept are numerous. One, even sticking $6 billion in a sock every year, it's still going to take a while to save enough to go to Mars (and a REALLY big sock).
A bigger problem is that we're not ready to go to Mars yet. The technology is getting close, but is not there yet. During the interim, what's the point in not using tools we've already paid for to continue space research.
And even this writer acknowledges that we have to continue doing research. Before we send crews to Mars, we have to learn more about physiological reactions to microgravity and space exposure. So he suggests we build small, Skylab-type Space Stations to do that research on.
Why exactly this would be better than using the larger, far better Space Station we already have, he never quite explains (as he also never explains his comment that ISS is not suited for this sort of research). Nor does he explain how much of the $6 billion a year he thinks we'll have left after designing, building, launching, and operating more space stations. Particularly considering that he also proposes designing, building, launching, and operating new Saturn V-style heavy launch vehicles to carry these stations up and launch crews back and forth from Earth. The cost of these launch vehicles would be even greater for the agency since, unlike current, expendable launch vehicles, NASA would likely be the only customer for these new super-rockets.
And, what exactly would be the benefit to the expendable capsules he recommends building, as opposed to the re-usable Orbital Space Plane NASA is currently designing.
The writer has some decent thoughts, and I certainly would not argue with an initiative to go to Mars. But his tenet that going to Mars means not doing things we're doing now to get ready is completely unsupported, and his ideas for how these would work are unfeasible.
A simple counter-proposal: While I'll never see $6 billion in my lifetime, in the federal budget, it's a tiny drop in the bucket. Why not just add the extra money to NASA's budget, work towards a trip to Mars, and still do the things we're doing now to get ready to go there?

:: :: 10:28 :: David :: [permalink] ::