Destination: Mars--This time, a reason for optimism.

TCS ^ | 01/22/2003 | Glenn Harlan Reynolds

[SJackson]

NASA

Recent reports from the Los Angeles Times and Space.com indicate that President Bush may announce a spectacular new Mars initiative, aimed at putting humans on Mars by 2010. Having been through this with a previous President Bush, who announced similar plans only to see them shot down, interestingly enough, by the maneuverings of NASA bureaucrats, I confess to a bit of skepticism. But there's reason to think that this time it could work.

One reason for optimism is that this time around cost, and technology, have gotten a lot more thought. Nuclear propulsion is at the forefront this time - back then, it was a political non-starter. It's possible to go to Mars using chemical rockets alone, but just barely. Using nuclear space propulsion - where a reactor heats gases to form high-speed exhaust rather than using chemical explosions to do so - cuts travel times from six months to two, and, because of better specific impulse (efficiency), allows for higher payloads. (There are no plans, as far as I know, to use Orion-style nuclear-explosive propulsion, of the sort I've written about href=http://techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-091102C>here, and here. Should I turn out to be wrong about this, it will probably be a sign that somebody somewhere is very worried about something.)

The United States experimented with nuclear propulsion as part of the Kiwi and Nerva projects in the 1960s and early 1970s. The results were extraordinarily promising, but the projects died because, with the United States already abandoning the Moon and giving up on Mars, there was no plausible application for the technology. Nuclear propulsion is mostly useful beyond low-earth orbit, and we were in the process of abandoning everything beyond low-earth orbit.

That appears to be changing, and it's a good thing. It has certainly won praise from the Mars Society, whose President, Robert Zubrin, calls the Bush decision a "tremendously positive step. It will greatly enhance the prospects for human exploration and settlement of the Solar System." He's right about that, and like him, I think that the "settlement" part is as important as the "exploration" part. And while exploration is possible based on chemical rockets alone, settlement without using nuclear power will be much more difficult.

Of course, as this article by Ken Silber notes, nuclear space propulsion has had its critics and opponents for years, though weirdly their opposition stems largely from fears that it will lead to "nuclear powered space battle stations." This isn't quite as weird as Rep. Dennis Kucinich's legislation to ban satellite-based "mind control devices," but it seems pretty far down the list of things we should be concerned about. With worries about earthbound nuclear weapons in the hands of Iraq, North Korea, and perhaps assorted terrorist groups, it's hard to take seriously claims that possible American military activity in space, spun off from civilian Mars missions, might be our biggest problem. Indeed, the whole concern about "space battle stations" has a faintly musty air about it, redolent of circa-1984 "nuclear freeze" propaganda. Who would we fight in space today? Aliens? And if we needed to do that, wouldn't nuclear-powered space battle stations be a good thing?

Nor are environmental concerns significant. Space nuclear reactors would be launched in a "cold" (and thus safe) state, and not powered up until they were safely in orbit. And again, compared with the environmental threat caused by rogue nuclear weapons, their dangers seem minuscule.

We also have to weigh the dangers of not acting. Earth, as we have seen, is an increasingly dangerous place. Some years ago I attended a small workshop on high-technology terrorism, focusing on such future threats as bioterror, abuse of nanotechnology, and so on. As we left the room after one session, another participant remarked "I think I just became a fan of space colonies."

She was right. Many of the threats posed by advanced technologies are, for the most part, manageable. But in the aggregate, they are significant. And the increasingly small Earth is, as I have written here before, too tiny and too fragile a basket for all our humanity's eggs.

The administration's Mars proposal is at least a step in the right direction, and its adoption of nuclear space propulsion indicates more realism than the flags-and-footprints approach favored by the previous Bush administrations. What's more, the use of nuclear propulsion, which makes interplanetary travel both cheaper and faster, greatly increases the likelihood of going beyond flags and footprints to true space settlement. It's about time.

[NonZeroSum]

He wasn't reporting. He was editorializing.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I happen to think Rock was one of the greatest actors of all time. Think how tough those love scenes with Liz Taylor, etc were for him...

[Arthalion]

Hmmm don't wanna screw up with black hole tech... be really bad

Potentially, which is why it'll be a while before we actually build one. There's no reason why a stable, positive mass black hole can't be achieved in a magnetically controlled environment, but we'd have to accomplish two things to build one: 1) We'd have to ensure a perpetual power source for the magnetic containment array so that the blackhole could never escape and come into contact with the planets mass, allowing a runaway blackhole to be formed, destroying the planet. 2) We'd have to come up with new materials to support the surrounding magnetic array that could withstand the tremendous stresses it'd be under...forever. There are some theoretical diamond composites that chemists and materials scientists have hypothesized that might do the trick, but until mankind achieves atomic scale construction we won't be able to build them.

Of course, even after building a gravity boosting device, we'd have other problems to deal with. Increasing a planets gravity means increasing the diameter of its gravitational field. How many previously stable asteroids would be displaced and start pounding the planet or planetoid? What would the effect be on the planets orbit or the orbits of the planets moons or neighboring planets? In the case of Mars, as an example, increasing its mass to create 1G would cause its two moons (Phobos and Diemos) to fall out of the sky and impact the planet. Keeping the moons in the sky would require us to change their orbits as the mass increased...no small feat either.

[Constantine XIII]

Let's pray that the Great American Experiment isn't confined to Earth, while dictatorships and tyrants rule the stars. There is only one way to stop our would-be rulers from dominating from on high, and that is to get there first!

And to H*** with the outer space treaty! ;oP

[weikel]

Bribery is fine as long as the God Emperor can turn a profit on the deal eventually. OTHERWISE YOU ARE DOOMED.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

...It is humanity's destiny to control the stars...

You're a, uh...glass half full kind of person aren't you?

[hedgetrimmer]

It would also be very helpful to beat China, Russia and India there. China plans to be on Mars by 2015.

[jpl]

Thanks for the link. This is really bad. NASA doesn't need budget cuts, but it does need a little reprioritization. All of the anthropogenic global warming programs should be eliminated and their funds redirected toward the space exploration divisions.

[NonZeroSum]

One of the things that killed SEI (his Moon-Mars Initiative) was that it intended to do precisely what this guy wanted -- make nuclear rocket engines and establish permanent footholds on both the Moon and Mars. That's why the Democrat Congress killed it.

NASA killed SEI themselves. In fact, Truly had his congressional liaison actively lobby against it. In addition, the people working up the cost estimate used it as an excuse to justify every single thing that NASA was working on in its hobby shops at the centers, and came up with a price tag of half a trillion dollars.

Both Congress and the Administration got sticker shock, and the program died.

[Constantine XIII]

Who ever said they'd want to come back? ;)

[hedgetrimmer]

It should be a big shot in the arm for America. America needs a frontier, has always been part of our cultural psyche.

[weikel]

Lets put it this way. No starfaring civilization then you can't become a space pirate.

[Centurion2000]

A colossal waste of money.

I'm sure that some of the spanish court said that very same thing when Christopher Columbus got approval from the Spanish crown to head west.

[Frank_Discussion]

I understand that, but I suppose he was doing his "Emily Latella" impersonation... Y'know, editorializing on an issue that wasn't mentioned?

[weikel]

Space travel should be privatized as much as possible. There are commericial possibilities there NASA should be reduced to a military arm and that all regulations against citizens and private firms trying to build commericial space rockets should be repealed.

[TomSmedley]

I pray that this is true! GO W!

Likewise. The length of the Martian day (just a shade over 24 hours) indicates that this planet was also designed for human habitation.

[RightWhale]

NASA is not seeking funding to build a nuclear thermal rocket to send men to Mars. They are seeking funding to build a nuclear ion rocket to send robot craft to the outer planets.

[TomSmedley]

Only with God are new creations possible that won't be overcome by sin.

After the fall of Rome, God gave christianity a millenium-long shakedown cruise in Europe, and we managed to invent western civilization. Then, He gave us the new world, and after 500 years it seems that we learned from experience and did even better.

[MeekOneGOP]

Thank you for the ping, my FRiend !

One reason for optimism is that this time around cost, and technology, have gotten a lot more thought. Nuclear propulsion is at the forefront this time - back then, it was a political non-starter. It's possible to go to Mars using chemical rockets alone, but just barely. Using nuclear space propulsion - where a reactor heats gases to form high-speed exhaust rather than using chemical explosions to do so - cuts travel times from six months to two, and, because of better specific impulse (efficiency), allows for higher payloads. (There are no plans, as far as I know, to use Orion-style nuclear-explosive propulsion, of the sort I've written about href=http://techcentralstation.com/1051/defensewrapper.jsp?PID=1051-350&CID=1051-091102C>here, and here. Should I turn out to be wrong about this, it will probably be a sign that somebody somewhere is very worried about something.)

[Frank_Discussion]

Actually, the regulations involving commercial space use are rather lacking, which has been part of the collossally slow buildup of commercial ventures. The regulatory mindset is more geared towards companies ensuring that their projects don't violate export control laws or FAA regs on airspace usage. Otherwise, it's not too bad.

A comapny called TransOrbital has cleared the first hurdle of Export Control, and launched a test version of its TrailBlazer spacecraft. Now that one company has done this, there is a precendent for more to follow.

See: http://www.transorbital.net/