"New Space Exploration Vision" Distributed to NASA Employees 16 Jan 2004

Mars Today ^ | January 22, 2004

[demlosers]

STATUS REPORT
Date Released: Thursday, January 22, 2004
Source: NASA HQ

Guiding Principles for Exploration

• Pursue Compelling Questions
  • Exploration of the solar system will be guided by compelling questions of scientific and societal importance.

  • Consistent with the NASA Vision and Mission, NASA exploration programs will seek profound answers to questions of our origins, whether life exists beyond Earth, and how we could live on other worlds.

• Across Multiple Worlds
  • NASA will make progress across a broad front of destinations.

  • Consistent with recent discoveries, NASA will focus on likely habitable environments at the planet Mars, the moons of Jupiter, and in other solar systems.

  • Where advantageous, NASA will also make use of destinations likethe Moon and near-Earth asteroids to test and demonstrate new exploration capabilities.

• Employ Human and Robotic Capabilities
  • NASA will send human and robotic explorers as partners, leveraging the capabilities of each where most useful.

  • Robotic explorers will visit new worlds first, to obtain scientific data, demonstrate breakthrough technologies, identify space resources, and send tantalizing imagery back to Earth.

  • Human explorers will follow to conduct in-depth research, direct and upgrade advanced robotic explorers, prepare space resources, and demonstrate new exploration capabilities

• For Sustainable Exploration
  • NASA will pursue breakthrough technologies, investigate planetary resources, and align ongoing programs to develop sustainable, affordable, and flexible solar system exploration strategies.

  • The vision is not about one-time events and, thus, costs will be reduced to maintain the affordability of the vision

• Starting Now
  • NASA will pursue this vision as our highest priority.

  • Consistent with the FY 2005 Budget, NASA will immediately begin to realign programs and organization, demonstrate new technical capabilities, and undertake new robotic precursor missions to the Moon and Mars before the end of the decade.
  Key Elements of New Space Policy

• Space Shuttle
  • Return the Space Shuttle to flight and plan to retire it by the end of this decade, following the completion of its role in the construction of the International Space Station

• International Space Station Complete assembly
  • Refocus research to exploration factors affecting astronaut health, and

  • Acquire crew and cargo systems, as necessary, during and after availability of Shuttle.

• Crew Exploration Vehicle
  • Develop a CEV to travel beyond low Earth orbit, the first new U.S. human space flight vehicle since the 1980s.

  • Undertake first test flight is planned by the end of this decadein order to provide an operational capability to support human exploration missions no later than 2014.

• Lunar Exploration
  • Begin robotic missions to the Moon by 2008, followed by a period of evaluating lunar resources and technologies for exploration.
  • Begin human expeditions to the Moon in the 2015 2020 timeframe.

• Mars Exploration
  • Conduct robotic exploration of Mars to search for evidence of life, to understand the history of the solar system, and to prepare for future human exploration.

  • Timing of human missions to Mars will be based on available budgetary resources, experience and knowledge gained from lunar exploration, discoveries by robotic spacecraft at Mars and other solar system locations, and development of required technologies and know-how.

• Other Solar System Exploration
  • Conduct robotic exploration across the solar system for scientific purposes and to support human exploration.

  • In particular, explore Jupiter's moons, asteroids and other bodies to search for evidence of life, to understand the history of the solar system, and to search for resources;

  • Exploration Beyond

  • Conduct advanced telescope searches for Earth-like planets and habitable environments around other stars;

• Enabling Capabilities
  • Develop and demonstrate power generation, propulsion, life support, and other key capabilities required to support more distant, more capable, and/or longer duration human and robotic exploration of Mars and other destinations.

[Frank_Discussion]

I posted this earlier, but yours is better than mine. Perhaps others will now join in.

I think the graphic at the front of the presentation is very good, and says a lot.

[American_Centurion]

Sorry I missed the other post.

This is interesting info for spacebugs like myself.

[Viking2002]

If we wouldn't have lost our momentum after Apollo, that image would have been reality 15 years ago.......

[Frank_Discussion]

Aye.

[Moonman62]

I wonder how much that graphic cost, and how many meetings were held to approve it.

[Frank_Discussion]

Got an idea: YOU go find out and get back to us, okee-dokee?

[Moonman62]

I wonder if I can get a government grant for doing that.

[Frank_Discussion]

Maybe if you applied under a NEA fellowship or something...

[macamadamia]

Now where does that singing black monolith figure in all of this? I hope we stay away from it...it's freaky-deaky.

[aynrandfreak]

but when do we get the new space exploration vision goggles?

[claptrap]

Hoagland is all over this. Im sure hell want everything placed in a 19.9degree orbit. The shadow government turned spirit off !

[Charles Martel]

I know that's pure "artist's conception", but it sure looks to me like someone is considering buying Soyuz components. If we're gonna get the rocket engines from Russia, I guess it makes sense to buy in bulk.

[Simmy2.5]

Just what I was thinking. Guess Spirit "saw" too much. :-P

[CasearianDaoist]

Do you think that the craft in the upper right is a Lunar Lagrange station?

[Brett66]

First unofficial concept from NASA.

[Brett66]

That seems like a reasonable guess, I wonder what that white capsule to the left is?

[Brett66]

Great, just what Hoagland needs, another conspiracy event.

[Physicist]

Here's what my plan would look like:

First and foremost, a super-heavy lift vehicle, along the lines of the Saturn V, only bigger. Call it the Saturn VI.

Second, build a new, low-tech space station along the lines of Skylab, only bigger with much better solar power. Make it so that additional, identical units could be snapped onto it (by remote control, no EVAs). Build it on Earth. Send it up to L1 (the gravitational balance point between Earth and the moon) in a single Saturn VI launch. Call it Skylab II.

Third (intermediate term), build two types of lunar lander: a low-tech crew lander similar to the Apollo LEM (except reusable), and the other a big, unmanned, single-landing cargo lander. Send three or four crew landers to Skylab II, unmanned, with one Saturn VI launch. Astronauts will go to Skylab II via Soyuz and make excursions to the moon via crew landers. Lander fuel will be resupplied by shipment from Earth. When large-scale lunar activities begin, the cargo landers will be launched from Earth by Saturn VI.

Fourth (longer term), a larger and improved Skylab unit will be launched into a Hohmann transfer orbit between the Earth and Mars. This is called the "Mars Cycler". Loaded cargo landers will be sent to rendezvous with it, along with two crew landers and lots of supplies. A section of the station will rotate to provide "gravity" for long-term crew health and comfort. Crew will be transferred to the cycler from Earth via Soyuz. Once the cycler arrives at Mars, the landers depart, and the cycler departs for an Earth flyby. On the next pass of the cycler to Mars, the crew departs via crew lander, and rides the cycler back to Earth, which swings back towards Mars (perhaps with another Mars crew).

No Space Shuttle, no useless ISS, no complicated space construction, no complicated, high-tech CEV. This should have been the manned space program in the 1980's.

[Physicist]

and rides the cycler back to Earth, which swings back towards Mars

Woah, nice dangling modifier. I mean that the cycler--and not the Earth--then swings back towards Mars. Upon arrival at Earth, the crew would leave the cycler via the Soyuz that took them there in the first place.