Mars Mission Political Feasibility Survey

Answers given above apply only to USA. They would be different if this were a worldwide survey.

It is almost impossible for what to the US would be "international", "foreign" or "alien" members of the space industry to meaningfully answer this questionnaire, as our perception of the roles and power of e.g. Congress, the President's science advisor, etc. are (thanks to the media) at best tainted and at worst irrelevant.

The set of questions dealing with "likelihood" are unclear - is this seeking space professional real inputs of likelihood, or perceived likelihood given the kinds of factors mentioned?

If the advocacy/interest groups are pro or against - and the survey expressely includes both - the answer to the first part of 'B' has no meaning unless there are specific groups considered.

There is no mention of the value/input/likelihood/impact of the opportunity for international colloboration or competition, which might be considered by many to have more impact than some of the factors discussed.

I have trouble with the "advocacy group" questions because you are lumping together too many disparate points of view. The planetary society is very supportive of planetary research and at times has been supportive of a manned mars mission. The L-5 society, OTOH, is mainly interested in commercial access to LEO. The scientific community is generally unsupportive of manned missions--particulaly so if those missions are perceived as draining funding from genuinely scientific work. I suggest you modify your survey. --JDR

I think that the US has a monetary shortfall in carrying out the proposed mission to Mars. This is due to a couple of major reasons, 1. War in Iraq, 2. Hurricane damage to New Orleans. The american people will want to concentrate on these two major costly events and vote to reduce the US budget. Our politicans hopefully will bring the budget under control before saying that they want more taxes and budget debt put upon the american people. Old sayin Money talks.
I hope that the Mars Mission will happen, but I doubt that I will live to see it happen.

Since Apollo NASA has deteriorated to a level of impotence that is not recoverable. It needs to be converted to a version of NSA, just to fund other's research or purchase services. Access to space can now only evolve from a graduated growth of private ventures, a working "formula" for which must first be found.

We actually have less infrastructure to support a Mars mission now then in the late 1960's/early 1970's at the end of Apollo. then we had a large booster (Saturn V), research was going on in nuclear rockets and its likely one could have operational in time to support a Mars mission, and we had a very experience group of engineers who had practical experience in sending astronauts to the Moon. It won't be until we regenerate that infrastructure with a return to the Moon that we will be ready for Mars.

Fabio,
While I can see some merit in gathering space industry opinion on these matters, I would have to say that I am struggling to contribute meaningfully to your survey. As a European with predominantly second-hand experience of the US political machinery, I do not consider myself to be qualified to respond to your survey which is, as noted by several others, highly specific to the US.

Rather than bulk-mailing members of various online space networks, I feel you should either make your survey more globally accessible or concentrate on those who can add meaningful comment. Any assessment I could make would merely be noise in your data.

Regards,

John Burley
EADS Astrium, Toulouse

The timeframes in the final question set are too nearterm. From realistic financial AND technical perspectives, a "human" mission to Mars is extremely unlikley now or in 10 years and barely possible in 20 years - almost the same answer for three questions. We won't make it back to the moon in ten years. Make the timeframe for a Mars mission 30 years and it starts to become more likely.

I think that a triggering event, like discovering microbial life or fossilized microbial life on Mars would be a huge help. This would bring worlds together and rally support for this important mission.

It seems to me that if you really want to know which factors effect political decisions, it would make better sense to ask those who are influenced, rather than those who hope to influence. Even then, there must be a more reliable tool than an opinion survey.

As for my opinion: In 1960 the "Space Race" was rightly perceived as a critical battle in the Cold (meaning mostly not violent)War. Therefore it had the mind set and resource commitment of a major military campaign. As soon as it was clear that the decisive battle had been won, the cry to, "Forget about Moon and make jobs for people here on Earth!", caused thousands of people to loose their jobs as the lunar program was truncated.

Since, at least for now, we lack the threat of world dominion by an Evil Empire,I think it not likely that the much greater commitment needed for a man on mars mission will be accepted. (I don't think the terrorists will accept a challenge to a Space Race.)

Kenneth Fuller
Science Can Be Fun, Teaching and Learning

Back Yard Biology

The main barrier to human settlement of space, including the precurser human exploration of Mars, is the cost of launch to orbit. Government space programs have little incentive to lower this cost, but could encourage commercial industry to do so. A heavy-lift launch vehicle offers the safety and "efficiency" of fewer launches, but a low frequency of launches (a handful every two years) is guaranteed to keep the price high both in terms of production and especially operation. If instead government used medium-lift boosters for their exploration missions, this would add launch demand to an existing commercial market and help drive launch costs down. With enough commercial space business, launch providers could invest in more cost efficient boosters - evoloving towards reusable and reliable systems that would also increase safety. Utilizing space resources for servicing reusable space assets would then make good economic sense and lead to human-tended mining and manufacturing operations on the Moon and eventually Mars. Science alone is not sufficient to sustain a human presence in space, but exploration missions can nurture a commercial industrial base that can lead to a bright future on the frontier.

I personally believe that we will not be going to Mars, until the United States puts the Federal Reserve System through bankrupsy re-organization and has setup a Third Nation Bank System. The primary reason that we will not be going is because it too expensive. But once we have a Third National Bank, then I believe it would be it both possible and disierable to go to Mars. Who has control over the creation of credit make that big of a difference as to whether we will be going to Mars. The Federal Reserve System is a private bank that generates credit for other private banks and the credit the create out of thin air is loaned into circulation plus they charge 4% or 5% or what ever prime is of the face value of the credit they generated. But, when the US Government owned the Central Bank and generated the credit, they had first use of it and they could direct where it went and how it was used. Before you think this isn't a big issue, consider the fact that who ever controls the Central Bank will be generating between five hundred billion dollars to one trillion dollars worth of credit each and every year that they own the Central Bank. The reason that that credit has to be generated is the US Economy implod on itself if that credit were not created. Traditionally, when the US Government controled the credit generation, they used it to finance building infrastructure like roads, rail roads, dams, power stations, etc. FDR authorized the Treasury Department to generate credit and used that credit to rebuild America.

So now you might say, what does that have to do with Mars? Well, we have a United State that will have generate between 25 to 50 trillion dollars over a fifty year period. Now that a lot of generated credit that has to be used up either building something or developing new technologies. We will be using that credit to build things like subways system and a whole host of government project. We will also be using some of that credit fanance NASA and a major government that we want them to do for us. We will also be using some of that credit to finance private enterprise too. The only way to really understand what going on and what will really be happening is to just run the numbers out for you. This things is going to get pretty thinghy, but that unavoidable. We are going to be generating one trillion worth of credit per year for fifty years. So now divid up our credit and we will place it where we intend to use it. We divid up our credit into two sections. One portion of our credit goes for government infrastruture built project and the other portion of our credit goes for the productive sector in the private sector. The productive sector of the private sector is the farms, manufacturing and the mining sector. We using our credit to finance more efficient machines to increase productivity of the work force, finance building factories, etc. We are interested in improving productivities so we won't get a run away inflation problem when that money paid to the work force. As long as we keep money supply and productivity of the work force in sink with each, we don't have to worry about the large somes of money we just generated and brought into financial system. Now we turn to the rest of our generated credit. We are going to bust it up into three main section. We going to take about 300 billion per year to build subways, super trains and other such projects and we figure that we will generate 900 billion dollars worth of busines with our 300 billion dollar investment and we intend to use it for twenty to thirty before we have to replace or upgrade it. When you invest money or a farmer sell his crops, that money rolls over three to four time before it leave that community. OK, we can appreciate that, three time three hundred billion will give us the 900 billion worth of business activities the we are looking for. We going to use 100 billion this time and we want a six fold return on our credit. We are looking for a 600 billion dollar return on our investment. We are going to go with NAWAPA and try to get our six fold. NAWAPA is an cranim for North American Water and Power Agreement. NAWAPA was a 50's project that didn't get funded, but would have brought water into the western states and made those states serveral times more projuctive per man hour and redeam the desart lands. The water would be coming from the Yukon and Mackinze river from the far North and pumped down the Rocky Mountain trench. Once you get past the Candian border, you can let the water flow down hill from that point on, because it all down hill from that point on. So now we get our three fold increase for investing and we get a second three fold increase those western lands to produce more wealth. We have 100 billion dollars worth of credit to go. All credit that we used so for was put to good use and we got a good return on it, but we would like slightly higher return on our last 100 billion dollars or credit. Yes, we want a 10 to 20 fold return on our investment. We also wanted as science driver project that will push technology forword for us and double the production capability of the labor force every 25 year for fifty years. We will have invested 5 trillion dollars and we are expecting 50 to 100 trillion dollar return on our investment. To achive all that, we are going to have pick a project just outside our capability to accomplish it, but not too far out of our capability to accomplish it. It will have to be something that we will have to stretch to reach it or we can't hit our target, but where we think we can still do it. Just for the sake of the argument, we decided that a Mars landing isn't going to do what we need to have done in any of things that we wanted to accomplish. So we up the antie a little bit. We want to create one million jobs with our project. We call the people from NASA in and start asking question like what would it take to build city on Mars of 100,000 people. They would say, we don't have the technology nor the infrastructure in place to build city on Mars of a 100,000 in fifty years. We also need a space ship that can excerlarate a one G half way to Mars and decerlarate the other half way to Mars. We don't have the technology to do that either and it would take at least twenty years even if we could. We say, OK so it take twenty years to develop technology to do that, but you do have the technology to get back to the Moon or you could develop it in a relitively short period of time. OK, we want you put a base on the moon of say 1,000 people and manufacturing facilities or skunk workes while your developing the technology for Mars. While we are bread boarding our technology on moon for Mars, we will also assemble the city structures and launch it from there to Mars. We will launch Martian ship from the moon too. Now that we set our goals, we turn to NASA to hand them the hot potato. Assuming that we didn't over estimate what we could do and we hit our target for building that city on Mars. Here what the rest of our targets look like. The Moon Mission return 14 dollars for every 1 spent by the US Government in technological spin off in the private with new products and services. OK, 5 trillion dollars time 14 is 70 trillion dollar. I think we hit our target return and we still have our roll over three time 5 trillion return too for 85 trillion on our investment. Not bad, not bad. With over 100,000 people in space also achieved our create at least one million job goal too. We also would also have achieved our desire to produce twice as much per man hour in every 25 year period, because of the technology that we just had to develop so we could hit our stated goal of putting 100,000 people on Mars in just 50 years time frame.

It reason like this, that the US should engage in large infrasturtural both down here and in space.

Larry,

US perspective for responses; other nation's political systems will affect differently.
National Danger only a factor if a newly observed asteroid intercept trajectory results in a