NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

In many science fiction books we assume that if an alien planet ever got a whiff of us they'd quickly board their space ships and come see us.

It's somewhat comforting to think the alien planet could also be in a perpetual bureaucratic budget crisis and they've dismantled their space program to make more room for tax cuts.

Politics could save us from an alien invasion!

I had a conversation a few years ago with Buzz Aldrin. He was talking about his idea for a Mars Cycler which would travel continuously between Earth and Mars. I told him that I thought it was a great idea (especially as it would be investing in 'permanent' space infrastructure instead of a single-shot mission) but that I thought it was unlikely that the government would allocate enough resources to build it. He seemed very disappointed with me, as if by making a realistic assessment of today's politics that I was voting in that way. I'm all for spending money in Chryse Planitia instead of Helmand province. So is almost everyone I know. But I feel like the chance of the US government actually funding something serious in space is pretty much nil. And I have no idea how to go about changing that.

I have been watching this since 2000. New president comes in, scraps old programs, declares new "vision". NASA does a few incoherent things and the whole thing restarts after a few years. It's pretty sad. I wish they would commit to something and actually finish it.

I'm a bigger fan of putting a semi-permanent ISS 2.0 on the surface of the moon vs. boots on Mars. I don't work directly in exploration systems, but I'm not the only one at NASA who feels this way.

But more than anything I think we and the other executive agencies would take any strong commitment on an exploration and human spaceflight direction from congress that survives across presidential administrations over any specific technical consideration.

I.e. we're waiting for strong elected leadership.

The main thing NASA needs to land people on Mars (or the Moon for that matter) is a lander. NASA does not have one, nor is one being funded. All the other details for Mars can be done with variants of what already exists or will fly shortly (commercial crew vehicles or even Soyuz, ISS modules for a transfer craft, launch vehicles like the EELVs used by the military or Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, in-orbit docking and propellant transfer which is commonly used on the Space Station, etc). If you see a lander being developed and tested, then you know you have a serious human space exploration program.

NASA has sufficient funding for accomplishing a human Mars landing. But not the political freedom to direct that funding where it's most critical (i.e. a lander).

SpaceX, on the other hand, is developing this technology for a lander. Their reuse technology for Falcon 9 proved for the first time the feasibility of supersonic retropropulsion, a CRITICAL technology needed for a human-scale Mars lander. A vertically landing reusable upper stage, which SpaceX intends to develop next (after block 5 Falcon 9) as part of their Mars rocket plans, is essentially a Mars lander prototype.

SpaceX, even though they have less funding and have to rely on funding from commercial launches (as well as capital used for developing commercially viable hardware, like the constellation) to develop their Mars lander, is thus on a better and surer path to Mars than NASA.

This is SpaceX's Mars architecture in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA

In order to pay for it, they will develop a smaller (but still tremendously huge) and more economical version of the rocket shown in that video to replace Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. They will use it to launch and maintain their 12,000 satellite megaconstellation (thousands of satellites per year), something that would BARELY be feasible with their partially reusable Falcon architecture (but not feasible with expendable rockets) but which fits nicely and economically into the capability of their subscale Mars rocket. This way, they can leverage capital they'll raise for their megaconstellation to build the primary pieces of their human Mars transportation architecture.

I think anyone who remotely follows space exploration or NASA knew this.

NASA has enough funding, they are just spending it on SLS and Orion(¹). It appears that if they were to pay the "new space" companies to get them to Mars, the money would be enough.

(¹) because Congress wants them to, because ... jobs (as if "new space" companies weren't creating jobs, too... even competitive ones)

Better science could be done with automated machines. We could explore entire solar system for a price of single mission.

While this would certainly be a blow for science in general, I don't understand why people are so enamoured with human space travel and think it's a realistic avenue for humanity to get out of the responsibility we have for Earth (there's the strange defeatist sentiment on the internet that we have to leave this planet in the foreseeable future).

Fact is, the laws of physics probably dictate that we won't ever leave the solar system and in our solar system there's not much we can work with to make the other planets habitable. It's comparatively soooo much easier to simply make life sustainable on Earth and then figure out space travel in the thousands/millions of years we have left until some external disaster (asteroid, exploding sun, whatever) threatens us. In the meantime, we can explore space efficiently with robots.

Last I checked, Bolden/NASA has spent time gallivanting around the world trying to be inclusive (Middle East, Asia, Africa, etc.). NASA is a larger allegory for the USA. This entire country is toast in 100 years. It's similar to the last Spanish galleons leaving Cordoba. In 2011, we have a similar Galleon Moment. STS-135 will end up being the flight from NASA, ever. To digest this fact makes me extremely sad.

There is a reason that the UK did not have a space program, but lead the exploration of the West in the 1800s. Britons had intestinal fortitude during the Victorian era, and this same urge moved to Americans after WW2.

Of course, they don't have the money. They literally need up to 100 billion UDS to make it happen. Alternatively, partner with China and a few other countries.

We could wait until private enterprises can get us there but that probably wouldn't be a far a long time.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/a...

I don't see the purpose of landing people on Mars. Just to say, "we did it". Wouldn't it be a much more rewarding goal to research and execute systems that could send humans one way to planets in our galaxy. Even seeding organisms on other planets in the hope that they evolve into intelligent life.

Shouldn't we be researching ways to terraform Mars from afar rather than ship a couple humans to go live in the middle of red rocks for a few decades and then die?

If the bean counters at NASA read "Buy Jupiter!" by Isaac Asimov they'd already have the solution at hand. Ok, building flying billboards is still a bit hard, but advertising is the point. What about sending probes and ships named after the highest bidder name/company? Of course they would have also a name for the scientific community and those of us who would never ever accept saying "Coca Cola has landed on Mars".

Bill Nye have a different argument. https://youtu.be/5ekUbzciyKg

If NASA built their manned space program around the SpaceX Falcon Heavy and Blue Origin New Glenn (and future uprated versions of both), they could start launching crewed vehicles into deep space next year at less than 1/10 the cost of the SLS that won't be launching humans for at least 4 years.

It's not just that they have been held hostage by congress to build the SLS as a pork delivery service. They've also become risk averse. The Saturn V was built with "all up" testing, rushed to testing a completed rocket instead of focusing on component testing. They only flew two Saturn V unmanned missions before they launched one with men on it. Today, SpaceX has launched the Falcon 9 over 20 times, and has a capsule with the safest abort mode ever, and NASA still hasn't man-rated it.

NASA could take a fraction of the money they are spending on the SLS, and start doing monthly deep space launches by the end of next year. They could use 140,000 lb capacity Falcon Heavies and Dragon Capsules to do lunar missions. They could put astronauts back on the moon, build a constantly manned moon base, develop and test rovers and other equipment they want to use on mars.

Astronauts would be lined up to volunteer, even if the Falcon Heavy only has unmanned two test flights. They are far more rational judges of what the safety levels should be than the PR department at NASA.

Then within a few more years, NASA could shift to doing Mars missions when SpaceX and Blue Origin or anyone else can start giving them 300,000+ lb cargo capacity launches for less than $1,000/lb. At that price again they could average a dozen or two dozen launches a year. All that launch capacity would enable them to launch a group of Aldrin Cyclers to provide regular transport to mars and back with heavy radiation shielding, supply storage and room for big crews. Other robot launches can pre-cache supplies, equipment and return fuel on Mars.

But they can never do it using the SLS path. It's going to start off costing near $20,000 per lb for LEO access, and even the later versions will still cost over $10,000 per lb. That just makes Mars missions almost economically impossible. The SLS could only do an Apollo style program, where a decade from now they launch a handful of all-in-one missions (two orbiters, a couple that land) before congress wilts under the enormous costs.

From the body of the article, it seems that landing humans on Mars is not the problem. It's bringing them back.

No, they just said they can't give you a date. When did ArsTechnica start abusing clickbait titles?

I like to imagine a world where tax payers can choose where they wish to allocate their taxes.

NSA admits it does have the funding to land humans on Mars - but lacks the A to go there

And it should never have the funding. Let the private sector invest in that venture.

such a waste of time and (other ppl's) money.

Considering NASA costs next to nothing (about 0.5% of the US govt's total budget), and the studies I've seen referenced show its return on investment to be about $10 for every $1 used (granted, it's a difficult figure to calculate, but even if assuming a huge error margin that's still great ROI), it's no wonder you chose to post that anonymously.

Come on Trump! Are you a man or what? Are you really going to allow other countries to beat us in yet another thing? Get these guys the funding we need to make America great again!

Is it possible for NASA to Kickstart this? I'd throw money at them.

Landing humans on other planets is the wrong way to go, at least at this stage of technological development. You combine tele-present robots with upcoming quantum teleportation of photons and you have instant communication between the drone on Mars and the human operator on Earth. Its going to cost even more to terraform Mars to make it even remotely do-able for human habitation.

If NASA doesn't have the funding for landing humans on Mars, this isn't "news" to them.

This is whole article is actually designed to get attention at a time when the CJS (Commerce Justice and Sciences) appropriations bill is being marked up[1]. The CJS subcommittee (of the House and Senate Appropriations committee) decided how NASA money is spent.

It is no surprise that articles like this are popping up - at literally the same time as CJS Appropriations bill is being marked up.

The way things work, is at times like this, even if NASA had the money to go to Mars, they would never admit to it - because appropriators might start cutting (do more with less... yada yada yada...)

I say this as a big fan of science and space exploration, but thought that fellow HN'ers might appreciate a look behind the curtain to better understand what is really going on here.

[1] https://appropriations.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?E...