Florida Today July 25, 2002
Let Alpha map path to Mars
By John Kelly
When a high-profile task force sent NASA brass its recommendations this month for prioritizing space station science, the word Mars was nowhere to be found.
Yet in its ranking of broadly defined scientific disciplines, a theme emerged that bodes well for a Mars trip because the task force gave top priority to science that enhances NASA's ability to launch ships and people farther into deep space.
Mars is the deep space target most talked about since the last moon landing 30 years ago, and going there is among the reasons given for building space stations in the first place.
So Mars enthusiasts were pleased to see the Research Maximization and Prioritization Task Force urging NASA to use the space station to research:
--- Advanced propulsion techniques needed to build faster spacecraft. --- How radiation affects humans traveling for months in deep space.
--- Ways to counteract bone loss and other adverse impact of long-term life without gravity.
The scientists, however, said the task force suggestions are not likely to spur a sudden announcement that NASA is going to dedicate itself to the single goal of sending people to Mars -- at least not anytime soon.
The space station was always meant to study almost every angle of long-duration spaceflight and, until that work is done, NASA can't send people to Mars.
"You don't need a space station to go to Mars, but it would certainly give us better insight. There are a lot of things we just don't know," said Patrick Beatty, a technology sciences researcher at the University of California-Berkeley.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe listed reasons earlier this week as to why the space agency is not ready. He gave the explanation during a televised question-and-answer session with the agency's student interns.
First, NASA needs faster spacecraft. O'Keefe said proven propulsion systems available today are about the same as the ones that carried U.S. astronauts outside Earth's orbit more than 30 years ago.
Second, because it would take years rather than months to send a team of astronauts to Mars and back, O'Keefe said the agency needs to know more about what such a long voyage in space does to humans and how to protect them.
Finally, even after sending several reconnaissance craft to the planet, NASA does not have enough intelligence yet about where to land a manned spacecraft on the unforgiving Martian surface.
"It's kind of like going to Nevada and assuming the rest of the world looks like Nevada," O'Keefe said. ". . . Before we go out there like cowboys, trying to figure out where to go, let's do this in a more scientific and analytical way."
For now, NASA's official approach to Mars is limited to unmanned exploration. Next spring, the agency will launch two 400-pound roving robots to Mars to gather more information about the planet.
"It's still at least a decade away before we do anything beyond robotic," said Jim Garvin, lead scientist for NASA's Mars exploration program.
NASA will likely spend this decade, and perhaps longer, learning what it does not know about Mars using robotics, Garvin said.
"If we were to ask the astronaut crews now, 'Would you go?', many are brave and they'll go," Garvin said. "But they are going into a landscape and environment that is so different than anything we've experienced. We have homework to do, and we're doing it right now."
Long distances
Even before the so-called ReMaP task force report came out, science meant to accommodate long-distance space travel was a fundamental part of the space station program.
The space station was not built as a pit stop on the way to Mars but as a scientific outpost where research can be done to make that long-duration travel possible, Garvin said.
"It's like a kid learns to walk," Garvin said. "They don't step up from crawling and start running. We have this foundation to lay for any deep space exploration, whatever may be -- Mars, asteroids, whatever. The station has a pivotal role."
Tony Rusi, a propulsion researcher with the space tourism company Bigelow Aerospace, said one of the International Space Stations' most important functions is doing the "homework" necessary to make possible the exploration and perhaps settlement of Mars.
But Rusi said NASA is moving backward instead of pushing forward as it did in the decade prior to the race for the moon. He said propulsion technology is being developed that could cut the travel time to Mars to weeks instead of months, but that technology needs to get intense support.
"It's a matter of will," said Rusi, who signed a petition with hundreds of other space station supporters urging O'Keefe not to reduce the science to be done on ISS.
Getting funded
However, NASA has to be careful politically when talking about Mars, according to John Pike, director of the Virginia-based think tank globalsecurity.org.
Asking for billions more dollars to fund an ambitious drive to land on Mars might not be a good idea in the wake of $4.8 billion in cost overruns on the ISS, Pike said.
At the same time, he said, President Bush and O'Keefe have expressed a goals-oriented style of management that may demand the agency justify the reason for the station and the science being done there.
"The problem for NASA is there is no foreseeable prospect of getting the political support and funding to go to Mars. But if your program is not premised on that long-range goal, then the question has to be asked: What are you doing up there?" Pike said.
"If the station is not premised on Mars, is it just an adventure trip for rich tourists?" Pike said.
If the program is aimed at Mars, that opens up questions of when it will be done and how much it will cost, he said.
"They are going to walk a fine line between humming a few bars about long-duration flight without bursting into a chorus about Mars," Pike said.
Copyright 2002 Florida Today
