Mars Flyby Congressional Hearing Set for Thursday
Full Committee Hearing
Mars Flyby 2021: The First Deep Space Mission for the Orion and Space Launch System?
Washington, D.C. 20515Feb 27, 2014 10:00am
Witnesses
Dr. Scott Pace, Director of the Space Policy Institute, George Washington University
General Lester Lyles (ret.), Independent Aerospace Consultant and former Chairman of the Committee on “Rationale and Goals of the U.S. Civil Space Program” established by the National Academies
Mr. Doug Cooke, Owner, Cooke Concepts and Solutions and former NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate
Dr. Sandra Magnus, Executive Director, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
EDITOR’S NOTE
The Obama Administration has NASA planning to send astronauts to an asteroid that would be captured by a robotic spacecraft and brought to a location near Earth. Congress, by and large, doesn’t like this plan and has been reluctant to provide money to fund it.
Dennis Tito’s Inspiration Mars mission had listed 2021 as a backup date to the non-profit organization’s plan to launch two astronauts on a flyby of the Red Planet in 2018. The 2018 mission, which would last 501 days, now appears implausible now due to a failure to raise sufficient funds.
A 2021 flyby would take 88 days longer than the 2018 mission, but it would have the added bonus of a close flyby of Venus.
52 responses to “Mars Flyby Congressional Hearing Set for Thursday”
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Interesting that they’re doing a follow up hearing on this — it seemed from the initial response that the plan was D.O.A.
A flyby of Mars and Venus, while it would require overcoming a number of significant issues, would be like something out of a Wernher Von Braun-inspired Little Golden Book on Space fantasy come to life.
Finishing developing the low cost commercial system for getting cargo and people to orbit, and then expanding that to the moon’s surface and/or cislunar space (such as to service a lunar L-point outpost) will ultimately be more important and that’s where I’d like to see the dollars spent (finish commercial crew!), but regardless, a Mars-Venus flyby would be both an eye-opener and one for the history books.
I wonder what will come of it. I’d guess Congress, if they were to pick it up, would try to extend the program funding to beyond a 2021 departure, at which point the orbital mechanics wouldn’t work anymore, and so even more money will have ultimately been wasted — all while they used the big “Mars Flyby deadline” as an excuse to kill funding for commercial crew…
This is about getting more funding to accelerate SLS and keep that pork wagon afloat and try and get a launch so the new adminstration won’t chop it…
T.
Not with private funding, that is why Tito is coming to congress.
M.
I believe Tito’s aim was for a domestic solution either a direct funding or a SAA and the SLS… bringing in international partners really would add a new layer of complexity to getting it off the ground.
Y.
T.
A) doing a flyby for now other purpose than to show it can be done is utterly pointless.
B) doing it with a broken “architecture” like constellation is pointless and wastefull
C) prediction: if the crew will survive the trip at all, it won’t be without major health problems. 🙁
S.
1. I don’t see any psychological barriers to do this (but plenty of technical ones). However, without reduced travel times there will be a real danger for the astronauts to loose their sanity on this trip, especially if there will only be two of them on board. So you could count that as a “psychological barrier” if you want.
2. Completely wrong. Such a (closed loop) LSS has to be demonstrated _before_ the actual mission is launched. You simply can’t launch anybody into deep space without a system that is known to work. Unless you are psychopathic super villain of course…
3. The effects of radiation exposure on the human body are sufficiently well known. If you want to find out how much radiation actually is out there, you can also collect that data on other missions both shorter manned missions like to the moon and asteroids as well as piggy back experiments on robotic missions (like MSL did).
An Apollo style flyby mission is not at all important and will _very_ likely be a “one hit wonder”, because it will be too expensive to repeat or follow up with a landing mission.
b
E.
Your answers always seem to imply that NASA is somehow an independant agency that can make these decisions on it’s own. NASA does exactly what they get funded for. Some in NASA look to congress some look to the Whitehouse. The executive branch have been pushing commercial since Reagan, congress has been fighting it since reagan… Two different agendas and NASA doesn’t get to call shots .. they make their recommendations to those two entities and then funding decides it.
You would be much better off doing 2 missions sooner. A manned long duration habitat in Earth Lunar region so if something goes wrong you can fix it, and an unmanned flyby to test the rest of the system such as red Dragon. Do it in a more realistic architecture with a multi module craft including Capsule, habitat and propulsion. ie Dragon, Bigelow and Centaur. From the experience you can modify the design from the lessons you learn.
As mentioned by Aerospike you need an affordable system so it is more than a one off stunt or does not get cancelled by the next administration as a too expensive boon dangle.
I.
Lunar is going to happen first.
The reason is that only 1 nation has made it to the moon, while many have made it to LEO.
As such, even moderate wealth nations will pay to send somebody on the moon to avoid losing grounds like what is going on at both poles on the earth.
And keep in mind that the private space will go where there is money to be made.
“The effects of radiation exposure on the human body are sufficiently well known.”
This statement is utterly incorrect. There is almost zero study data on the effects of low-level radiation. What data there is, points to a 10% or less of a lethal dose being harmless and that some amount of radiation exposure is actually beneficial. Since the only “space data” is from the Curiosity transit, talk of safe or deadly or acceptable exposure rates is more in the realms of speculation than knowledge. Until there is repeated and reliable data from a properly shielded hab spacecraft, we can only best guess at what the actual exposure rates might be.
Since when became space the only “source” for radiation and the only location to test its effects?
There are quite a few “low level radiation” environments on earth AND data about it’s effects.
I was not trying to say that we do not need to learn more about the effects of radiation, but simply that there is no need to do a manned mars flyby to get the required data.
“…simply that there is no need to do a manned mars flyby to get the required data.”
Agreed, a manned fly-by mission is not required, but data is needed from long duration “human habitat spacecraft” missions. Data on the actual radiation exposure rates that might reach humans inside a shielded inter-planetary transit habitat.
“There are quite a few “low level radiation” environments on earth AND data about it’s effects.”
I don’t think there’s much in the way of high energy particle (cosmic rays and solar wind protons) radiation on Earth. Add to that difficulty, the very specific case of secondary radiation from solar and cosmic ray interaction with any given spacecraft structure.
it is a mistake to send a crew there and back.
The reason is that the amount of radiation that they will get will be huge.
Far better to send them one way and let them live there.
I agree and disagree.
How long do you think they could live there?
Unless you plan on colonization á la Elon Musk, sending people there one way is just as pointless as doing a flyby imho.
I think that somebody could live MUCH longer on mars, underground, then that return trip. The reason is that unless we solve the issues with radiation and space, then mars should be safer.
My one concern is we do not know what will happen at 1/3 G. Before sending ANYBODY to live there, we really need to do a study with 1/3 G. And yes, I would guess that the moon would work.
Not the Moon imho, you’d need a rotating space station set to match Mars’ gravity.
Do something like the year long ISS rotations that are coming up, but then on a station rotating to match Mars’ gravity. Have the astronauts follow a ‘regular’ excercise program that a normal person on Earth would follow (like, maybe 2-3 times a week for 1-2 hours) rather then the 2 hours daily that the ISS crew does now.
Then you could measure how Mars’ gravity impacts the human body!
Is no-one familiar with the concept of “volunteer” ?.
Y.
Oh, I think that if we are going to be successful at this, we will pretty much need submariners on this. Far better than regular astronauts will be.
Yeah, I myself always thought when I was single that I would happily go to mars on a 1-way trip. Now that I am married and with kids, I can not (perhaps when they are grown up, but I will be too old).
But, it bothers me a great deal to send somebody on one that will not give us much science, other than exposure to radiation.
However, I will agree that it will kick things in gear if we do that.
In addition, I would almost rather see us land on one of the moons with a buried BA inside. That at least has more value. In particular, having a base on one of the 2 moons might be useful for a type of a station.
S
Yeah, the best science that SHOULD have come from the ISS was CAM. Sadly, it was kill off in 2002 by W’s admin.
That is the one piece that would have made decent science at the ISS.
Now, it would appear that SpaceX’s bio-capsule would be our best bet. Put some mice up there in a racetrack that lines the inside and then spin the capsule, with automated food and water delivery system.
with multiple race tracks on the edge, and perhaps even in the nose (different Gs), it should be possible to get an idea of the true effect of G vs. radiation on Eurkaryotic cells as well as mammalian systems.
Right now, we really do not know the difference.
T.
are you talking about turning the capsule into a centrifuge to test artifical gravity?
absolutely.
I agree, and have advocated for this for quite a while, test it on the ISS. Astronauts would sleep in it for 8 hours day.
Maybe this image is clearer….
G.
A .
Testing the health effects of 0.165g is not testing the effects of 0.37g.
U are right. It is not the same.
BUT, it is useful to see if there is a difference between the ISS’s micro G vs. the Moon.
W.
well … you know, a fly-by means they aren’t landing at all. they wouldn’t have the hardware to land or stay anywhere. just want to point that out. they aren’t going anywhere except back to Earth.
not that that doesn’t have merits. it would answer a lot of questions about how people handle the long journey and the conditions of deep space.
Oh, I like the IDEA of a fly-by. But, the amount of rads that somebody would incur while being nothing more than a guinea pig bothers me. In my mind, that really is suicide.
And as one that has already had a very unhealthy dose of radiation (p32 and H3) due to a lab accident (first degree was in micro-bio and I worked at CDC), I would rather not see ppl’s live simply thrown away without a reason.
OTOH, living on mars, underground, should allow a person to live most of a normal life.
What do you regard as an “unhealthy” dose of radiation?.
I was exposed to at least 50-200 rems (yeah, yeah, older units) of beta (easy to block, but bad when inside; like a cannon ball).
But, the real issue is that P32, while short lived and tritium (moderate lived), love to go to fat and [RD]NA. And back then, I was a 6’0, 160 lbs runner, with loads of muscles and very little fat.
So, where is the fat on a body like that?
Not good.
BTW, the calculations at that time, showed something like 2-10% increase in cancer risk. But, then again, this was in the pursuit of science, so …..
I agree with you. Mounting a fly-by would be wasteful and dangerous. How could we, in good conscience, send a small crew on an extended mission with no medical support or way to return (ahead of schedule.) This would be nothing more than a stunt whereas the hardware and required technology can be tested in cis-lunar space.
LOL.
Using that as an argument to get to the moon will not work.
OTOH, I would not worry about it.
Bigelow will be on the moon before we launch for mars.
You speak as if ‘living there’ is somehow less risky than returning…
it is.
Unless we solve the rad problem, the dose that the crew will get on the return trip will be quite high.
Man, the moment Tito tried to pin his mission onto NASA and the SLS we all knew it was doomed. Having it announced with only a 5 year window anyway was already a bit sketchy, but now… ugh.
If there were to be a 2021 fly-by mission of Mars & Venus to test out SLS’ capabilities it would never be manned. NASA wouldn’t have the balls for it!
E.
Because he has his own one, which he can reliably manage to success? Ever tried to steer a car two people together? Now imagine there is a committee steering your car…
Musk is planning on sending landing the red dragon on mars around 2017-2019, with NASA paying for it.
And his idea of sending ppl to mars is NOT for a return trip, but a one-way only, until we have a fast system.