Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Reader Comments On NASA's Slow Walk To Mars
I appreciate very much the reader comments left on this site. There were two reader commentaries on NASA's slow walk to Mars that I wanted to highlight. Micheal Mealing wonders what the business plan would be for sending a private manned mission to land on Mars. He believes private-government cooperation is the way to go and that NASA changing from cost-plus contracting to fixed-price contracting would go a long way toward speeding up advances in space technology.
This is a point that was made several times at the Space Access Society Conference in Phoenix this year. Cost-plus contracting puts creative people to work figuring out ways to increase the expense of not making things whereas operating under a fixed-price forces creative people to actually make things and do it cheaper. Mealing seems to be on to something with his comment.
Like Mealing, I too wonder what the business plan would be for a private mission to Mars. Space exploration advocates worry about the prospect of a government mission to Mars that is nothing more than a flags and footprints mission in which astronauts go to Mars, plant some flags, leave, and never come back. Sort of like Apollo.
I wonder if private missions to Mars, or even the Moon, could end up being nothing more than "boots and billboards" missions (to coin a phrase) without any plans for follow-on missions either. Perhaps it's my own limited imagination but I find it hard to envision a realistic business plan for profitable private space missions to the Moon or Mars in the near future. Anybody have a suggestion or two they'd like to share?
Science fiction author Brian Enke looks at the cost side of the equation rather than the benefit side and says he'll list some ways to reduce the cost of missions to Mars on his own website (ShadowsOfMedusa.com). His comment about the expense associated with current technology reminds me of a point I've heard made by Dr. Michael Caplinger, a scientist at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS.com) here in San Diego. Caplinger makes the point that given current technology we won't be sending humans to Mars unless we have a really good reason to justify the expense of sending people there, or we'll send humans when we have a propulsion method cheap enough to operate that we can go there for no reason at all. I'm hoping for something somewhere in the middle and sooner rather than later.
-tdr
This is a point that was made several times at the Space Access Society Conference in Phoenix this year. Cost-plus contracting puts creative people to work figuring out ways to increase the expense of not making things whereas operating under a fixed-price forces creative people to actually make things and do it cheaper. Mealing seems to be on to something with his comment.
Like Mealing, I too wonder what the business plan would be for a private mission to Mars. Space exploration advocates worry about the prospect of a government mission to Mars that is nothing more than a flags and footprints mission in which astronauts go to Mars, plant some flags, leave, and never come back. Sort of like Apollo.
I wonder if private missions to Mars, or even the Moon, could end up being nothing more than "boots and billboards" missions (to coin a phrase) without any plans for follow-on missions either. Perhaps it's my own limited imagination but I find it hard to envision a realistic business plan for profitable private space missions to the Moon or Mars in the near future. Anybody have a suggestion or two they'd like to share?
Science fiction author Brian Enke looks at the cost side of the equation rather than the benefit side and says he'll list some ways to reduce the cost of missions to Mars on his own website (ShadowsOfMedusa.com). His comment about the expense associated with current technology reminds me of a point I've heard made by Dr. Michael Caplinger, a scientist at Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS.com) here in San Diego. Caplinger makes the point that given current technology we won't be sending humans to Mars unless we have a really good reason to justify the expense of sending people there, or we'll send humans when we have a propulsion method cheap enough to operate that we can go there for no reason at all. I'm hoping for something somewhere in the middle and sooner rather than later.
-tdr
