Forget Mars, puny humans. That's not precisely the message of a newly released National Research Council (NRC) appraisal of NASA's goal of sending astronauts to the Red Planet by the 2030s. But the 286-page report submitted to the U.S. Congress Wednesday was broadly skeptical of the space agency's ability to do so using its current program planning and budget.
The NRC report actually supports the objective of sending humans to Mars, a goal NASA Administrator Charles Bolden emphatically confirmed was one of the space agency's highest priorities in several public statements made in April.
But the NRC's Committee on Human Spaceflight, which spent 18 months investigating the viability of a NASA-led manned mission to Mars and other space exploration proposals, said current planning and budgeting for that endeavor was unlikely to succeed. Most scathingly, the report said that sticking to NASA's proposed blueprint for landing humans on Mars was to "invite failure, disillusionment, and the loss of the longstanding international perception that human spaceflight is something the United States does best," The Washington Post reported.
"Absent a very fundamental change in the nation's way of doing business, it is not realistic to believe that we can achieve the consensus goal of reaching Mars," committee co-chair and former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told the Post.
One way the U.S. should consider changing how it does the business of space exploration is to foster more international cooperation on major space missions, including with China, the committee recommended.
The NRC committee questioned the usefulness of sending humans on risky, long-haul space flights to destinations like Mars, citing safety concerns in particular, but concluded that "the aspirational nature of the endeavor may make it worth the effort."
Instead of aiming for Mars, the NRC committee suggested NASA focus on more attainable goals like returning astronauts to the Moon and, perhaps, capturing a near-Earth asteroid using a robotic spacecraft. Such missions could also serve as stepping stones to an eventual Mars trip, which should remain a "horizon goal" for the space agency, the committee urged.
And therein lies the rub of the NRC report, the culmination of a $3.2 million, Congress-mandated study of NASA's long-term plans. Many of the Committee on Human Spaceflight's recommendations for alternative, more affordable space missions actually align nicely with proposals NASA itself has already made. The report is outwardly critical of NASA's long-term objectives, but viewed in a different light, it's sort of just saying that the space agency needs more money, statone can easily imagine NASA planners nodding vigorously at that kind of "tough love" amongst themselves.
John Logsdon of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute told the Post that the NRC committee and NASA really aren't all that far apart in their long-term thinking after all.
"They go through all this negative analysis and still conclude we ought to go to Mars. No one ever says, 'Let's lower our ambitions.' It's always, 'Increase the budget,' not 'Lower ambitions,'" Logsdon was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
But actually going to Mars is "a dream," he argued. "It's been a dream forever. And will remain a dream unless something changes."
Still, it was also clear there are some areas of disagreement between the committee and NASA leadership.
The committee only offered lukewarm support for the asteroid-capture mission which NASA has been championing for some time. But the NRC report was very bullish on sending humans back to the Moon, even though President Barack Obama and NASA leaders have been adamant about not wanting to return there just to reprise the original Apollo missions.
Of course, getting to Mars may involve going back to the Moon anyway. One plan for launching longer-distance manned missions involves building a habitable base and spaceport for interplanetary missions either on the lunar surface or, possibly using a captured asteroid, in the Moon's orbit.