Mission to Mars (2 page)

In the
second chapter
, he calls for a recommitment to U.S. space leadership via his Unified Space Vision. To support this, he would like to see the formation of a permanent senior executive, nongovernmental advisory group he calls the United Strategic Space Enterprise.

A long time before it became fashionable, my dad was an unstinting advocate for private space travel. In large part this is because he recognizes the importance of creating large, sustainable markets for launches in order to bring down the costs of a single mission. Also, it is because he believes that participation will be the best way of generating broad public interest in an ambitious space program. In
chapter 3
you will read how commercial passenger travel should drive the requirements for reusable Earth-to-orbit transportation systems. Another theme that will come out in this chapter is the importance of utilizing existing systems and infrastructure.

Whether it was taking existing launch vehicles and using them as the basis for reusable flyback boosters, or taking the technology developed by the Soviet Union and United States for smaller, more efficient shuttle-like vehicles, or using existing launch vehicles instead of developing new systems with low flight rates, my dad has always used the technology of today to serve as the basis for revolutionary new systems.

Chapter 4
considers the return to the moon. As strange as it may sound, for the 40 years my dad and I have been talking about space, there have been relatively few times that we have talked about the moon. Been there, done that. The moon seemed a distraction from the real goal—Mars. But over the past several years the moon has come back as a critical element in his thinking. It is the place where the transition from development to exploration takes place. The focus of U.S. policy should be on establishing the transportation, infrastructure, and habitation systems around the moon to enable commercial and international development of the moon. The focus of exploration should be on getting to Mars.

In 2008 my dad began to formulate the idea of using missions to near-Earth asteroids as early precursors to Mars missions. This is the focus of
chapter 5
. I am sure that he was not the first person to consider these missions, but when he combined asteroid missions with the lunar strategy as noted previously, and Phobos as a waypoint to Mars, he created the foundations of the Flexible Path architecture. This approach was later recommended by the Obama-established Augustine Committee as an affordable, progressive path to human exploration.

A key element to the Flexible Path was the concept of landing—docking, really—at Phobos, one of two Mars moons, before proceeding to putting humans on the red planet. I have to admit the logic of this was not immediately obvious to me. Why do you go 99.999 percent of the distance to Mars without completing the mission?
Chapter 6
focuses on how a stop at Phobos creates the basis for a more permanent presence on Mars by allowing astronauts to teleoperate the systems that piece together the infrastructure necessary to sustain human habitation of the planet.

My father has done a great many things in his life. The entire world respects and admires him for participating in the first human spaceflight to the moon. But from what I see, for him, innovative technical concepts matter more: developing key elements of the rendezvous approaches that were critical to the success of early human spaceflight missions; revolutionizing extravehicular training through underwater exercises—these were some of his contributions to human spaceflight that really made a difference. But the idea of cycling spacecraft between planetary objects may be the idea of which my father is the most proud. I think we have been discussing cycling ships for more than 20 years, whether they were between Earth and its moon or the much more technically challenging task of cycling between Earth and Mars.

In
chapter 7
my father discusses how we can create a sustainable transportation system to ferry people, supplies, and equipment to Mars by utilizing a large host spacecraft on a trajectory constantly traveling between Earth and Mars at regular intervals. This system of cyclers establishes the foundation for the permanent human inhabitation of Mars.

Over the 40 years of conversations about space, I really can’t remember a single time that my dad talked to me about his trip to the moon. Sure, there were brief words here and there, but the conversation was always about the future. He cares about where we are going as a civilization, not where we have been. In
chapter 8
he concludes with a discussion about what it will take to get us to Mars. His vision is not just about the technical or programmatic elements, it is about the political and social underpinnings necessary to reinvigorate the nation’s commitment to the human exploration and development of space. He looks to 2019, the 50th anniversary of his historic landing on the moon, as the date on which the American President will make a commitment to establish a permanent human presence on Mars.

That is the clarion call of this book.

Buzz Aldrin on the moon, July 1969

(
Illustration Credit fm1.2
)

It was April 15, 2010, when I stepped off Air Force One, one of several guests invited to travel with U.S. President Barack Obama to the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Merritt Island, Florida. I had some inkling that he was going to push the reset button on the U.S. space program.

As he began a formal address, President Obama was kind enough to recognize me among those gathered. It was certainly ego lifting to hear him say: “Four decades ago, Buzz became a legend. But in the four decades since he’s also been one of America’s leading visionaries and authorities on human spaceflight.” Welcomed words, but I patiently awaited the punch lines of his speech.

“Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned,”
the President said. “But I just have to say pretty bluntly here … we’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do.”

Obama then called for a series of increasingly demanding targets, made feasible by advancing our technological capacity with each progressive step forward.

“Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. So, we’ll start … we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it,” the President explained, greeted by bursts of applause throughout the rollout of his prospective missions.

President Obama’s rejection of the previous space plan—the Vision for Space Exploration—announced by President George W. Bush in January 2004, was in motion. That Bush space agenda spurred NASA to orchestrate the Constellation Program, one that involved development of two booster vehicles: Ares I and Ares V. Ares I would boost crews into orbit. The Ares V heavy-lift launcher would hurl other hardware into space. Along with these two boosters, the Constellation Program called for a set of other spacecraft to be built, including the Orion crew capsule, an Earth departure stage, and the Altair lunar lander.

Coupled with the retirement of the space shuttle program in 2010, the Bush proposal would establish an extended human
presence on the moon and begin a “sustainable course of long-term exploration.”

President Obama and Buzz Aldrin together in Florida for the President’s space policy speech, April 2010

(
Illustration Credit 1.1
)

As President Obama took the stage, America’s civil space program had been aimed at returning astronauts to the moon by 2020. Also, that Bush plan called for cultivating the technologies that would support human expeditions to Mars, our ultimate destination in space.

Still, I was always worried about a phrase Bush used:
a
mission to Mars. My view: You’re not going to sell
a
mission to Mars.

In the long run, two things happened along the way following President Bush’s outlining of his Vision for Space Exploration. First, Bush failed to fully fund the program, as he had initially promised. As a result, each year the development of the rockets and spacecraft called for in the plan slipped further and further behind. Second, and most important, NASA virtually eliminated the technology development effort for advanced space systems. Equally as bad, NASA also raided the Earth and space science budgets in the struggle to keep the program then named Project Constellation on track. Even that effort fell short. To keep the focus on the return to the moon, NASA pretty much abandoned all hope of preparing for Mars exploration with humans.

Obama’s dismissal of the Bush Vision for Space Exploration was fortified by the earlier findings of a panel of space experts, which concluded that the Constellation Program could not be executed without very substantial increases in funding. That panel was headed up by my friend Norm Augustine, past head of Lockheed Martin and a former government official. Augustine’s team had received testimony and presentations from across
the space community, including mine in 2009, as to how NASA should shape its future. In the end, the Augustine Committee observed that the path established by Bush was not sustainable, and President Obama agreed. Augustine and I both zeroed in on the truth that the Bush vision was unattainable and the country needed something else.

The option clearly was a flexible path, somehow. At the time I felt that we had an option of extending space shuttle flights, perhaps developing a shuttle-derived capability. But soon it became clear that extending the shuttle program was not an economically viable thing to do, so now we have a gap in America’s independent access to space.

I did believe the Bush vision for space was a good, albeit flawed, notion. It moved away from the space shuttle and the International Space Station and back to exploration,
somewhere
—even though back to the moon with government astronauts was not to my liking. I did concur that Constellation required extensive reevaluation. Obama’s action to cancel Constellation, however, has morphed into the Space Launch System (little more than the canceled Ares V booster in the Constellation Program) and Orion, which is ill named as a multipurpose crew vehicle. Why? Overall, it is because of short-term, vested interests in political and industrial circles. It’s my opinion that some of the large aerospace contractors are far from truthful in working with NASA.

At the moment NASA’s own website on Constellation tells the story as an editorial note: “The Constellation program is no longer an active NASA program. The program information on these pages is for historical use only.”