|
 |
 advertisement
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Humans to Mars Not in Cards, NASA says
By Paul Hoversten
Washington Bureau Chief
posted: 07:14 pm ET
07 February 2000
|
nasa_mars_mission_000207 WASHINGTON -- It's a subject near and dear to NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's heart. When will the space agency ever send a man to Mars? "First of all, we're going to put a human on Mars, not a 'man' " he told a questioner at Monday's budget briefing at NASA headquarters. "Secondly, there are a number of things we have to accomplish before we put a human on Mars," Goldin said. "We've got to solve the access to space problem. We've got to be able to solve some of the problems associated with astronauts' health. We've got to perform a whole number of precursor missions to build an infrastructure at Mars. This budget does all those things." That may be the easy part. Then, comes selling the idea to the public. "We have to figure out how we could show conclusively to the American people that we can get to Mars for an affordable price," Goldin went on. "Clearly, if we wanted to go Mars today we could make it happen. But could we afford it relative to the priority of what we want to do?" NASA, he said, can't ask for an enormous budget at a time when federal dollars are being stretched thin in many other areas. The last time anyone calculated a human mission to Mars came during the Bush administration, with an estimate of $80 billion to $100 billion. More recent studies in the last five years have narrowed that to between $20 billion and $40 billion. "This is a new economy in America. This is a new direction. It's not the time of just priming the pump for the economy to pick up big programs," Goldin said. "So we at NASA will have to work with the administration and Congress to establish a credibility that we have solved the prior problems I talked about and that we know how to get to Mars for an affordable cost that will not interfere with other national priorities. Ultimately, the question of whether to send humans to Mars will require a national consensus. "This is a decision that's not made by the president of the United States," Goldin said. "This is a decision that's made by the American people."
|
|
|
|
|
