NASA can’t afford to send humans to Mars. With its current plans to build a large rocket, the Space Launch System, NASA can’t even afford to go back to the moon.
What NASA can afford to do, in about a decade, is bring a small asteroid to a location near the moon, and then send astronauts to fly in formation with the rock.
This is known as the Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM.
There is little love for the ARM in Congress.
“I don’t think there’s a clear consensus on a lot of things in Congress, but we all agree that pushing a rock around in space is a waste of taxpayer dollars that we don’t have to spare,” John Culberson, a Houston Republican, told me.
On Wednesday, at two separate space policy meetings, the mission was also savaged.
During his remarks Binzel characterized ARM as a “one and done” stunt that did not advance NASA’s efforts to reach Mars. It was perhaps the most savage attack on the asteroid mission yet from the scientific community. Here’s a copy of his presentation.
Across town, during a gathering of NASA’s advisory council, members there were also expressing doubts about ARM. Among them was Thomas Young, former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, president and COO of Martin Marietta and chairman of SAIC.
Both Binzell, Young (as well as many others) are frustrated because they view ARM as make-work for the rocket (SLS) and capsule (Orion) that NASA is building. Because of the rocket building costs NASA can do little else but fly to a space rock.
These points were also made in a recent National Research Council report, which found the ARM mission really wasn’t on the pathway to Mars, as NASA has said it is.
The reality is that NASA came to ARM because with its current budget it can’t afford to do anything else. That’s reality we either live with, we give NASA a lot more money to actually use the SLS and do something meaningful like return to the moon or Mars, or we change NASA’s strategy.
It’s not pleasant to criticize NASA, but it is important to have an honest discussion about the state of the agency and not pretend everything is hunky dory.