The Mars Society Response To The Augustine Commission Report On Human Spaceflight

Mars Society Review of Augustine Committee Summary Report

by Chris Carberry <http://www.marssociety.org/portal/author/ccarberry> ‹
last modified 2009-09-16 16:12

On September 8, 2009, the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee
(AKA: The Augustine Committee) released its preliminary report of options
for the future of the United States space program. While this report
touches on some very worthy themes - particularly that Mars should be the
goal of the United States space program - it appears to promote the concept
of technology development without purposeful objectives and without a
schedule that would require any effort to achieve its goals.

According to the Augustine Committee, despite spending nearly five years
and billions of dollars on the new Constellation Program, NASA is nearly
twice as far from the Moon today as it was in 1961. At that time, NASA had
conducted only one manned space flight when President John F. Kennedy
committed the Nation to land a man on the Moon before 1970. The Committee
claims that sending humans on a similar mission is a distant goal, even if
tens of billions of dollars of additional funding are added to NASA's budget
over the next 15 years. It presents a decadal plan that will get us nowhere
in the next decade.

The Committee also claims development costs of the Ares 5 heavy lift vehicle
to be $35 billion dollars, and assigns a development cost of $28 billion for
a somewhat lower capacity Shuttle-C type launcher. Both of these incredible
estimates are about a factor of 7 higher than what is generally believed in
the industry to be necessary for the development of this class of system. In
fact, during testimony delivered directly to the Committee by SpaceX
president Elon Musk, Musk offered to develop a heavy lift system for $2.5
billion, while some Lockheed Martin presentations had estimated their cost
to develop a heavy lift (150 tons to LEO) launcher as $4 billion.

While we do not doubt the good intentions of the members of the Committee,
it frankly strains credibility to accept that NASA is incapable of going any
place beyond low earth orbit for the next 15 years or so, even if we spend
over $100 billion during that time on so-called "exploration." American
taxpayers should reject such low expectations.

In reaching its conclusion, the Committee appears to accept endless delays
and massive cost overruns by NASA as unavoidable. Respectfully, we suggest
an alternative approach -- accountability. If the current team cannot
deliver, then it should be replaced by people who can deliver a meaningful
program of exploration at a reasonable level of cost over a reasonable
period of time. Rather than conduct development as budget- and
time-unlimited activities, fixed price contracts can be used to constrain
development cost and schedule to reasonable levels.

Americans want and deserve a space program that is actually going somewhere
and is worth the risk and monetary costs. In order for that to happen, a
radically different methodology to that being accepted by the Augustine
Committee must be employed. A real, purposeful goal, worthy of spending
serious money, must be selected. That goal should be humans to Mars. Then a
minimum cost, minimum complexity, and, critically, fastest schedule plan
must be selected to achieve that goal. In order to minimize schedule and
cost, such a plan should avoid advanced propulsion, on-orbit assembly, or
other futuristic ideas, and instead get the job done in the manner of the
Mars Direct and Semi-Direct missions by employing a strategy of direct
transportation to Mars of required payloads using an upper stage mounted on
the heavy lift launcher.

If the Obama Administration is content spending large sums of money with
limited returns, they will certainly have plenty of options to choose from
in this report. However, if the President really wants to reenergize the
space program and use tax payer dollars most efficiently, the President
should put aside the Augustine Committee's recommendations and select a plan
that will land humans on Mars as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

For further information about the Mars Society, visit our website at
www.marssociety.org <http://www.marssociety.org> . Your donations
<http://www.marssociety.org/portal/purchaseList#donation> are welcome.