"The problem with NASA is there is no coherent vision or purpose," said Paul Spudis, a planetary scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore. " For the first time in the agencys history there is no new human spaceflight mission in the pipeline. There is nothing beyond" the international space station."
Spudis is a proponent of returning humans to the moon and setting up a permanent outpost that will be used to study the universe and to learn more about surviving in space as humans look to move beyond the moon. "The moon has value," he said. "It is close and accessible."
While the cost of any major space undertaking seems daunting, a return to the moon could be accomplished with existing expendable rockets and the space shuttle or shuttle-derived systems, Spudis said. We dont have the money to do a manned mission to Mars," he said. "I dont think that is in the cards, but the agency is looking for a challenge."
Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, disagreed and argued that Mars is the next logical goal for human spaceflight. "It has been staring us in the face since 1973," he said. " It is a critical test to determine whether man can become planetary travelers."
Mars can be reached within the next 10 years, Zubrin said, but the United States will need to develop a heavy booster with capability similar to the Saturn 5 rockets that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon or a derivative of the space shuttle booster rockets that will be capable of carrying 40-ton to 50-ton payloads.
Fred Singer, a former director of the U.S. Satellite Weather Service, agreed that reaching Mars within the next 10 to 15 years should be the goal but that a base should be set up on its moon Deimos rather than on the surface of the planet. From that, astronauts would control robotic probes that would travel to the red planet and collect and return samples to Deimos for analysis, he said.
The Martian moon base could be accomplished for about $30 billion, money that could be found within the existing NASA budget once major space station expenditures begin to tail off, Singer said. "The whole project builds on the [space station] experience," he said. "We can show that we have not thrown away $100 billion."
The effort will prepare humans for more ambitious missions in the future, Singer said. "We need an overarching goal," he said. "We need something with unique science content, not a publicity stunt."
NASA officials disagreed that the agencys current operations are not part of a long-term vision for future human spaceflight.
Gary Martin, NASAs space architect, said the agency is redefining its approach to space exploration and is developing a method that mixes human and robotic missions to move science research forward. "Were looking for building blocks to lay out a long-term vision," he said.
NASAs new strategy would use Mars, for example, as the first step to future missions rather than as a destination in itself, Martin said. Robotic explorers will be trailblazers that can lay the groundwork for deeper space exploration, he said.
"We have changed NASA," Martin said. "We put it on a new course with a stepping stone strategy for increasing exploration, both human and robotic."
Jim Garvin, NASAs lead scientist for Mars Exploration Science, said current robotic missions are doing science not even thought of during the Apollo era, but ultimately humans will need to be inserted in the process. "If the answer is to understand the cosmos, we need to be in the cosmos ourselves," he said.
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