Manned Spaceflight: My Advice for Obama Team

Regardless of your opinion on whether we should or should not persue manned spaceflight as a national goal there is no denying that it is a period of immense transition and perhaps uncertainty for the future of manned spaceflight.  The same could be said for many of our national priorities and chalked up to the normal realignment that occurs when two administrations pass quietly (or not so quietly) in the night.  However in the case of NASA and the nation's manned spaceflight system a period of transition and change, in a scope not seen since perhaps the Apollo to Shuttle transition, is already underway. 

For those who aren't familiar after the Columbia accident in 2003 President Bush set out a new course for NASA.  NASA was directed to start preparing to do two things in terms of manned spaceflight.  One, begin preparing to decommission the remaining shuttle fleet by 2010.  Two, begin developing a new launch system capable of meeting the requirements of the space station, keeping the astronauts safe, and traveling to the moon and eventually Mars.  It is worth noting that President Bush is to be commended to listening to many of the space policy experts hear who for a long time have generally agreed that post-Apollo the United States has been stuck in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

As a result of the back to the moon goal NASA began developing the Shuttle replacement, a craft that would eventually become known as Orion, part of the Constellation program or launch system. This transition in itself would be an ambitions undertaking even without the intense scrutiny placed on NASA in the post-Columbia era and a presidential transition as well.  In principle the Ares Launch Vehicles use a launch platform similar, derived from really, to the Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters, obviously using similar technology and processes should help NASA leverage the knowledge base it developed launching shuttles for the last 30 years.  The crew vehicle draws heavily on older era Apollo capsule designs, something the Russians have used in the Soyuz program with great success for decades. It's of course easy to argue in hindsight that NASA perhaps should have stuck with the versatile Apollo platform but that could easily be another post entirely.  Of course the Constellation program has come under fire from both internal and external critics. 

In addition to general criticism the Obama transition team has been crawling through the program and giving mixed signals, ostensibly under the pre-text of "exploring all options." There is also recent news that a "rouge" group of engineers has met with the Obama team to pitch an alternative launch system that uses "off the shelf" Shuttle SRBs and External Tanks, known as the "Jupiter Direct" design. Add to this that the current administrator of NASA, Michael Griffin, has announced his resignation.  Several reports emerged that Griffin, a adamant proponent of the Constellation program, and Obama officials were butting heads. Rumors have surfaced as well that Obama NASA transition officials appear to favor using military rockets as the launch platform for some, presumably scaled down, capsule based spacecraft. There was also a report recently that the transition team has been looking into the idea of some how merging military and civilian space efforts into some kind of join effort.  This report shines in a new light as a result of today's report that Obama has decided to appoint a former Air Force General to head NASA.

What has come out from the Obama transition on NASA is interesting on a few fronts.  There have been reports that they favor the idea of using military or commercial launch vehicles and then "human rating" them.  There has also been talk that they have started running the numbers for additional shuttle flights beyond the current 2010 end date.  The question is what does all of this mean?  Well I can't see how either piece of news is particularly good for any future Moon/Mars exploration programs.  Moon and Mars missions require some kind of heavy-lift-vehicle (think Saturn V), which the U.S. currently doesn't have.  Extending shuttle flights, which would delay Constellation development, or scraping Constellation for military rockets casts very serious doubt on the commitment of the Obama administration to funding the development of an HLV.  No HLV essentially means no Moon and no Mars which means the U.S. is once again effectively stranded in LEO.

Recently Obama asked for advice, so here goes. What would I do if I could wave some kind of space policy wand? Well the first thing is I would increase NASA budget and keep the Shuttle flying until whenever the next launch system was ready and flight capable.  It just seems wrong to me that the United States, a country born of the frontier's womb, would cut itself off from the biggest frontier of all.  The next thing I'd do is I would appoint Robert Zubrin as NASA administrator, with a few stipulations.  Those being that we need to maintain the valuable work NASA does in terms of earth science, and deep space exploration. We'd continue a presence on the International Space Station but it would cease to be the focus of manned U.S. efforts. We then immediately focus the manned space program on implementing Zubrin's Mars Direct program as laid out in "The Case for Mars."  The HLV capability for this mission could be developed from Shuttle components, perhaps ala "Jupiter Direct".  The key thing here is that this plan is MARS Direct, there's no real reason to pit stop on the moon, been there done that lifeless rock. Target for a booted foot in the Martian soil would be approximately 2017 but no later than 2020.  An additional mission would be planned shortly after to establish a full-time outpost on Mars with the goal of a full colonization program ramping up as we approach the mid-century mark of 2050.

Of course there would be great outcry at such an ambitious program in the face of an economic recession, two wars, etc.  However it seems to me that if ever the world needed something to unify it now is the time.  American needs a rallying cry and I'm sorry but service and renewable energy, while worthy goals, will never capture the imagination like looking up at a reddish pin prick in the sky and knowing that humans are have left the cradle.  One needs only to look back to the Apollo 11 moon landing for validation of this point.  In addition we've stagnated and the frontier can once again jump start an era of incredible innovation the likes of which we can't even dream about.

Perhaps the most compelling reason though is that with each passing year we're not on Mars my goal of retiring to a small homestead over looking Valles Marines becomes just slightly less achievable :-D