House Members Want NASA to Develop Human Space Exploration Roadmap
Artists concept of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission capturing an asteroid boulder before redirecting it to an astronaut-accessible orbit around Earth’s moon. (Credit: NASA)
WASHINGTON, D.C. (House Science Committee PR) – On Wednesday, the House Subcommittee on Space held a hearing titled, “Charting a Course: Expert Perspectives on NASA’s Human Exploration Proposals.” Witnesses shared their viewpoints on NASA’s human space exploration plans – including a human mission to Mars – and the challenge of keeping programs on track through changing presidential administrations.
Space Subcommittee Chairman Brian Babin (R-Texas): “Today we find ourselves at an intersection. Do we, as a nation, retreat from the cosmos, or do we take that next first step into the unknown? There appears to be consensus that the horizon goal of America’s human exploration program is to land on the surface of Mars. But how will we get there? What are the intermediate stepping stones on that pathway to Mars? How do we avoid costly and avoidable detours? How do we ensure a sustainable program rather than a “one-off” stunt? And how do we ensure the next administration does not wipe the slate clean, erasing all the hard work of the last five years.
“NASA’s human exploration program has been through a tumultuous seven years. With a new President to be chosen by the end of this year, we must ensure that there is a constancy of purpose in our planning and a surefooted roadmap in place for the future.”
A full video of Babin’s statement is available here.
In particular, the hearing examined the Obama administration’s plan for its Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) in light of budget instability at NASA that threatens human exploration programs.
Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas): “The administration should develop solid plans for future exploration missions that foster support from the science and engineering communities. However, the administration continues to push plans for an uninspiring and unjustified Asteroid Retrieval Mission. The administration continues to force this mission on NASA without any connection to a larger exploration roadmap and absent support from the scientific community or NASA’s own advisory committees.
“Instead, the administration should follow the advice of the NASA Advisory Council and more fully develop its human exploration plans, including a human flyby mission to orbit Mars. There are many options, but without a roadmap to guide the agency, NASA will continue to be subject to indirection and proposed budget cuts by the White House. For its part, Congress will continue to ensure that space exploration will receive the funding needed to stay on schedule and on budget.”
A full video of Smith’s statement is available here.
Witnesses today testified to the shortcomings of the Obama administration’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission plan.
Dr. Paul Spidus: “The ARM offers no unique benefits beyond providing a place for Orion to visit. In terms of scientific and operational importance, it is barren of real accomplishment and irrelevant to future human deep space missions. And for learning how to use space resources, it can only perform rudimentary reconnaissance of the type already accomplished or planned by a variety of robotic missions, past (e.g., NEAR), present (e.g., Dawn) and future (e.g., OSIRIS-REx).”
The following witness testified today:
Mr. Tom Young, Former Director, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA; Former President and Chief Operating Officer, Martin Marietta Corporation
Dr. John C. Sommerer, Chair, Technical Panel, Pathways to Exploration Report, National Academy of Sciences
Dr. Paul Spudis, Senior Scientist, Lunar and Planetary Institute
Democratic Member Comments
Members on both sides of the aisle and witnesses stressed the need for a credible plan for achieving the consensus goal of landing humans on Mars.
Ranking Member of the Space Subcommittee, Donna F. Edwards (D-MD), said in her opening statement, “This Committee’s inquiries during recent hearings have focused on the need for a clearly articulated plan and next steps, such as the Human Exploration Roadmap that the bipartisan House-passed NASA Authorization Act of 2015 directs NASA to develop. I recognize that this is not an easy task given previous flat funding levels, uncertainty over future budgets, and the need to allow flexibility in planning a multi-decadal endeavor.”
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said, “We are not going to have a human space exploration program worthy of this great nation if we continue down the current path of failing to provide the resources needed to make real progress and failing to embrace a clear goal and pathway to achieving that goal. What we need now is a clearly articulated plan on how we will get to Mars.”
Members and witnesses discussed the budgetary issues associated with achieving the goal of sending humans to Mars, the need for a plan and discipline in following the plan, and the need to ensure the sustainability of the plan through the transition to the next presidential administration and beyond.
Congresswoman Edwards said, “I’m confident that a plan of sufficient detail can come to fruition, but we don’t have time to spare if we are to sustain such a challenging endeavor across the upcoming Presidential transition.”
Ranking Member Johnson said, “In just about one year, the nation will transition to a new Presidential Administration. Such transitions have, in the past, led to significant redirections in NASA’s human exploration programs. If that were to happen again, that would be a tragedy, and a wasteful one at that.”
For more information about today’s hearing, including witness testimony and the hearing webcast, please visit the Committee’s website.
43 responses to “House Members Want NASA to Develop Human Space Exploration Roadmap”
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This is to be used to push ula and SLS.
I love this idea that it is more “inspiring” to send a diverse, representative sample of humanity to slingshot past Mars in a tin can than to go lasso a space rock. Never mind that there are Earthbound organizations legitimately interested in the logistics of space mining. Never mind that orbiting Mars still isn’t stepping foot on Mars. Never mind that, even if NASA does go to Mars, the mission will be of the flag & footprint variety.
The primary objective of this committee would seem to be ensuring NASA’s next achievable milestone remains a precise two decades from the present.
Of course, that ensures an unbroken flow of pork to the NASA districts for the next generation of Congress Critters without having to risk any major failures. What could be better 🙂
Let’s be honest with ourselves, Alabama needs all the help it can get.
The primary objective of this committee would seem to be ensuring NASA’s next achievable milestone remains a precise two decades from the present.
I’m afraid they ensured that the moment that they forced the Senate Launch System on NASA.
NASA is never going to Mars until its finally allowed to return to the Moon to exploit polar ice resources. Once that occurs then the road to Mars will become remarkably easy.
Marcel
But the Mars mafia at NASA will never allow it to return astronauts to the Moon for any reason. So the road will never be easy and always in the distant future.
why does NASA have to return to the moon, when it is a massive waste of funds/time and private space is already heading there?
The same could be asked of a trip to Mars.
Because it is harder to go to Mars than to the moon. And as Kennedy said, we do it because it is hard.
Kennedy did it because there was a Cold War. NASA does it because it is funded (but not sufficiently). SpaceX does it because Elon is a crazy mfer with cash. Let SpaceX do it.
Chinese leaders remain in cold war with west, and Russia is headed that way.
I’m not convinced of this. If anything, I think you have it exactly the wrong way round. There are those in the west that are always on the lookout for big bad enemies. These fall into two overlapping camps: supporters and benefactors of the military industrial complex, and paranoid conspiracy theorists. From what I can see, it is elements of the mad moron republican right that believes, and even desires, a cold war with China, and not the other way. Admittedly Putin is some kind of a megalomaniac lunatic, but I’m not really understanding the american paranoia regarding China. What possible (non batshit-crazy) threat do you think that China may pose to the US or the west in general?.
I thought Marilyn Monroe said that.
And as Kennedy said, we do it because it is hard.
Which is not a good reason by itself to do a thing – especially if you don’t have the money to do it. No one is going to cough up the kind of funding Kennedy was able to extract for Apollo.
we have the money to go to mars. We just need CONgress to quit wasting it.
We also need them to do their GD jobs which they refuse to do and simply run around blaming Obama.
we have the money to go to mars.
I think that’s yet to be demonstrated.
Even with heavy commercial involvement, it’s not clear to me that the money is there to do manned exploration of Mars (however keen Elon Musk is on doing so) in the foreseeable future.
But as the Next Gen Space proposal from last July showed, the money *is* there, working with heavy commercial partnerships, to return to the Moon in a sustained way. If so, we just need a clear rationale for doing so – just as we need a clear rationale for going to Mars.
The costs difference between mars and moon is minimal.
And there is NO real reason why NASA should focus on only the moon. They now have private space partners to do the heavy lifting, so to speak, and with this approach, CONgress will not be able to do the jobs program that they have done for the last 30 years.
“Minimal?” Are you serious?
And the risks certainly are not minimal either. It’s a six month journey at minimum, not three days.
Bingo! As the Mars folks have been repeating for 40 years – been there, done that, and it was sooo boring. Let’s make the Great Leap Forward to Mars 🙂
And so 40 years NASA has been stalled from going forward because the Great Leap is just too great in terms of technology and funding.
And if private space is going to move the frontier outward what do we need NASA for? Better to shut it down and divert the money into a tax credit, or tax break, for the private space firms that are pushing the technological frontier forward.
And if private space is going to move the frontier outward what do we need NASA for?
They still do a good job of managing robotic exploration probes.
But they only spend a couple of billion on them, and only need JPL and Goddard to keep building them. The rest of NASA could be shut down tomorrow and it wouldn’t impact the robotic exploration. If anything it would probably improve it as they would be able to move beyond the myth they are supporting NASA sending humans to Mars and be able to send more spacecraft to other more interesting objects to explore.
Well, I think there is some real merit to restoring NASA back to something more like the mission of the original NACA.
That said: I could live with a role for NASA in manned exploration if it were, at most, development and operation of actual exploration vehicles used on the “pointy end” of manned exploration. Everything else – launchers, fuel depots, resupply, crew vehicles to LEO, etc. – could be handled by contracting out to commercial firms.
You cancel SLS end Orion, Isnt that what you and up with? Seems Nasa’s Cots as been pretty successful moving us forward?
Well, yes – imagine what kind of landers, hab modules, rovers, ISRU capabilities, etc. NASA could have been building over the last 7 years with all the money dumped into Orion and SLS.
NASA has always done what others can/will not do. That is why they should be allowed to continue work on ARM. It really is more important than most realize.
Lol. You do realize that BO and spacex do not currently pay taxes. Right?
Iow, no incentive there.
And having NASA do things such as ARM as well as putting say 2-4 ppl for abyear or so into a private space station, and then saying that they will do same for a lunar base, pretty much sets that up.
Tax credits have a market value because they are transferable. $12 – 18 billion in transferable tax credits a year will provide a lot of incentive. While tax breaks have an attraction to investors since they are able to use the paper loss in one business to offset the real profits in another, that was the reason behind the Zero G, Zero Tax push a few years ago.
NASA doesn’t appear to have any plans for a private follow on to the ISS which will be wasting NASA money for another decade or so. Same with a lunar base. That was the point of this hearing, that NASA doesn’t have the money to do human space exploration the NASA way.
Why go to Mars and why go to Mars now? Other than planting a flag and collecting rocks, what are we going to do there and how will whatever it is make life better on Earth? I am not anti-Mars. I am just against throwing a huge amount of national treasure to get to Mars now just “because it’s there” or because in a billion years the sun will turn into a red giant or because we could get hit by a big space rock.
why does NASA have to do this when private space is working to do this already?
Rep. Lamar Smith: “…including a human flyby mission to orbit Mars.”
Hmmm, now that’d be a trick, wouldn’t it!
Good thing these guys have a handle on the situation…
We’ve had too many Mars plans for too many years. What we need is substantial progress in the tech areas required. Which means first step is canning SLS/Orion, which they will never do.
It was also said that there would be a great amount of resistance to cancelling SLS or Orion. So on the one hand they want to reserve money to pay for SLS/Orion and on the other hand they want NASA to build an architecture to get to Mars (and back). Unfortunately for NASA all their pocket-money gets spent of SLS/Orion. Got to love those congress jokers.
Meanwhile little SpaceX plugs away on the engines for NASAs ride to explore.
Raptor
You assume they have shame. You also assume the members of the press are able to do the research on the past 30 years and compare that to the progress of private industry, and turn it into a coherent story. Some like Bill Broad of the NYT can do that, but I doubt the editors would appreciate it. Not to mention the US population has been spoon fed crap for so long they can’t absorb the story. A good portion of the population are still waiting for some good to come out of the invasion of Iraq, and they’ve already forgotten who Saddam Hussain was.
Hussein’s retreat to a hidey hole was the entirety of the good that came of the invasion.
The man who kept Iran in check for us? Yeah great move killing that puppet.
The Apollo legacy belief that NASA is best capable of doing human space exploration will last until some private firm, probably SpaceX, sends a crew out further than Apollo went. Then it will collapse overnight and the same members of Congress pushing SLS will have hearings to see who is responsible for all the tax payer money wasted on SLS. NASA of course will get the blame… It will be great political theater as such witch hunts always are.
The SLS debacle belongs to BOTH major parties.
Sadly, Congress will try to hang this on NASA and will likely succeed.
Mother f$&ker
Does that help?
In this context it’s a term of grudging endearment.
“House Members Want NASA to Develop Human Space Exploration Roadmap”
The rest of us want them to develop human space exploration.
Based on the cost/usefulness ratio of SLS&Orion, do you think that “Roadmap” might be translated as “Gravy Train” (sorry for the transportational mixed metaphors).