NASA Is Bound for Mars

From a revolution of the public health system to a revolution on the road to Mars.

This was the conclusion of the appearance of the president of the United States, Barack Obama, last April 15 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, during which he expressed his vision of U.S. space policies and its future on other planets.

The new view of the U.S. head of state has provoked a division in the scientific community. The defenders of the continuation of the lunar program have already protested against what they think is the ceding of the leadership in this field to Russia, China and India. The supporters of the presidential plans refute this argument, affirming that its critics will not achieve the ambitious and grandiose goals of the project.

Among the narrow-minded are 27 of the most famous people of the U.S. space community, including three heavyweights of the Apollo missions: the legendary Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon; Gene Cernan, the last man on the moon; and Jim Lovell, the commander of the sadly famous Apollo 13.

In an open letter addressed to Barack Obama, the veteran astronauts called into question his new space doctrine. According to them, the forecast changes will have the result of a total dependence on Russia for certain aspects of the space program.

For example, for five years, the astronauts of NASA have been obliged to travel to the International Space Station on Russian Soyuz spacecraft due to the lack of their own. On the other hand, they warn that the cancellation of manned missions to the moon would be devastating and that this decision leads the country “on a long downhill slide to mediocrity.”

Nevertheless, the development of Obama’s new space program is explained by a budgetary crisis and the impossibility of allocating the same resources as in the 1990s, much less in the 1970s, when the U.S. designated four or five percent of its budget to space exploration. If it had maintained the same level of expenses, today, NASA would receive some $190 million of the federal budget for 2011 ($3.8 billion), compared to the $20 million designated now.

The principle points of the Obama program are the following:

The design of a new technology with more advanced and powerful rockets, which gives priority to the mechanization of flights and to unmanned missions. Manned missions will continue to exist, while the exploration of the moon will become secondary.

The development of a heavyweight rocket in the next five years. This will allow the widening of the margins of space exploration. The plans are to land on an asteroid for the first time in 2025 and, in approximately 2035, orbit Mars.

During the next five years, NASA will move astronauts to the International Space Station using the services of other space agencies.

In September or October of this year, they will definitively stop the use of the Space Shuttle.

The useful life of the International Space Station, which was initially thought to end in 2016, will be prolonged until 2020.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy announced that the U.S. would be the first country to walk on the moon. This happened and since then, twelve citizens of this country have visited the moon. George W. Bush, in his obsession to emulate the success of his famous predecessor in this field, proposed to return to the moon, whatever the cost, and to that end, created the Constellation Program.

However, last February, Obama canceled this manned program to the moon with a total budget of $108 million. The costly Orion capsule would be adapted for work with the International Space Station as a module to move astronauts to and from the station in order to reduce the dependence on the Russian Soyuz ships.

During the next five years, NASA will receive a budgetary increase of $6 million, which they will allocate to private businesses with the objective of co-financing the design of new ships to transport astronauts to the International Space Station. One of these is the private corporation SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk. A test launch of the unmanned rocket Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral will take place next May.

Musk promises NASA that it will not cost more than $20 million for the transport of an astronaut. According to Washington, carrying a passenger on the Russian Soyuz ship costs $56 million.

In the framework of the Constellation program, which forecast the development of new rockets and a new manned capsule, the flight of an astronaut would cost $300 million. So, thanks to Obama, the U.S. taxpayers will save some $250 million per astronaut.

The changes in U.S. space policy towards the development of unmanned devices and the use of robots has been the cause of sour relations between the Russian and U.S. scientific communities for the last 20 years. What is more profitable, safe and efficient: sending man into space or utilizing automatons and unmanned devices? It is evident that the second is cheaper and safer, but logic tells us that it is necessary to develop technology for both the former and the latter.

The optimal combination of men and machines should be the objective. It seems that Obama and his space advisers decided to reduce the role that astronauts play; however, today it is impossible to cancel all manned missions.