>>Reprint of Oct 23, 2008<< <br>On August 19, 2008 the Washington Post reported Mr Obama's plan for NASA that included the 2020 Moon and the one-off Manned Mars plan of the current President and reported that Mr. Obama went on to criticize the Bush administration for "poor planning and inadequate funding" of NASA. Mr. Obama has not denied this position, and I agree with the "poor planning and the inadequate funding" of NASA wholeheartedly, but to have Manned Mars reinstated without a bottom up review of that wasteful, near impossible and crew risking Manned Mars program is not sound. In light of what could be done with a permanent Moon base the one-off Manned Mars Mission is criminal with regard to crew risk and the judicial use of funds.
To me the course that is set in a very few weeks from now is very important, and the part that NASA will play in that furure (not for me, I'm too old) for our grandchildren is very important. If we choose to waste this opportunity to build a permanent base on the Moon instead of a one-off Manned Mars Mission we may loose that chance for another thirty years. We lost one chance to build a permanent Moon base and opted to do a crippled ISS instead and now world and national events have brought a second chance to do the proper thing.
The ISS was planned to be a failure and I'm not saying the people in the ISS program were of poor quality. What I said was that the ISS program has never had ALL the elements of quality people, proper funding and research time in ONE package, at ONE time, and with proper funding. Science takes quality people with funds to spare and unhurried time to think and work. If you take out one element from that unit then very little good happens. So it will be with a one-off Manned Mars Mission; a one-off, one shot mission no matter how successful will not do what a permanent base on the Moon could do. NASA has no plans for a colony on Mars. Oh yes, there are some Disney type NASA PR/propaganda films with metal Mars homes that are played over and over again on PBS,but the Manned Mars Mission is a one shot venture and NASA has never denied that. However, if Mr. Obama will just look at what the money wasted in a one-shot Mars fling could create with a permanent Moon base: untold new technology like data transmission, raw science, tourism, co-op investment, product developement, health research, earth weather research and earth soil research and other discoveries that only time on site and properly funded quality people can create.
I worked in a physics lab as an undergraduate "lab rat" in 1968-69 and we got to rebuild and modify the MHD (plasma) chambers, wire the chmabers, set the resistor banks, tend the generators, change the frequencies, change the gas mixtures, do the test runs, and record the test data, figure out why the cell wouldn't ignite and I have a good idea of power technology required for a Manned Mars Mission. Unless some fantastic breakthrough in physics occuried last night chemical, plasma and centrifical force are not capable of the task of Manned Mars. The only power supply that I know to be capable of a Manned Mars Mission was the KIWI nuclear reactor motor that was blown up in Nevada on Jan 12, 1965, and I don't think America will ever revisit the nuclear motor even if the Russia-Euro space co-op does.
You can say this idea will be developed tomorrow, and that project will come to pass the day after, and you can spend vast amounts of time and billions, but just like the billions spent on the useless Space Plane idea and the tens of billions lost on the hypersonic Concord (yes, I've worked on hypersonic wind cells also) the physics and requirements of taking frail humans to Mars and bringing them back safely can't be changed: unless you are willing to breach Alan Stern's (NASA mission planning head) stated manned safety and flight requirements. SAFE Manned Mars is decades and decades away, and while the aerospace companies and NASA could make even more money and discoveries if they didn't push for the big budget sexy Manned Mars idea now instead a permanent Moon base, the lure of a big budget Mars slush fund is just too hard for them to resist. The idea of Mars billions funding every corner of the NASA network
has made some NASA people put forward the idea that the physical problems in getting man to Mars and back are easy to overcome, but that has never been the truth.
We know what Mr. McCain will do. He'll push for the Manned Mars slush fund. My hope is that Mr. Obama can be persuaded to do a bottom up review of the NASA one-off Manned Mars Mission in light of the money that could be saved and the jobs and science that will be created by a Permanent Moon Base.