After months of speculation, it now appears that President Bush will indeed announce plans next week to revolutionize and refocus US space efforts: to return to the moon and send human missions to Mars.
After months of speculation, it now appears that President Bush will indeed announce next week plans to revolutionize and refocus US space efforts: to return to the moon and send human missions to Mars. This is what Dr. David Whitehouse, the BBC's science editor, wrote this week. online.
This is an initiative that has been talked about for some time, but the president waited until after the successful landing of the Spirit vehicle on Mars to go public with it. Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that after Aston Columbia, President Bush made clear his desire for US space exploration to continue, but not in the same way it has been conducted so far.
"The president has directed the administration to conduct a comprehensive review of our space policy, including our priorities and the future direction of the program, and the president will add to that next week." McLellan said. Some senior NASA officials said privately that they were excited about the new direction. Others were not so pleased.
Back to the moon to stay there?
As I remember, President Bush Sr. also announced similar things when he stood on the steps of the Air and Space Museum in Washington in 1989 at a ceremony in honor of the 20th anniversary of the moon landing - beautiful speeches do not make a space program.
His speech was full of inspiration and was welcomed, but President Bush Sr.'s "Back to Mars" initiative was so expensive that the entire program collapsed under its own weight.
This time, things could be different. Many are tired of the culmination of the space program being the International Space Station and the space shuttles. Some have commented that the International Space Station is too expensive and lacks focus, and has failed to politically excite the imagination of the American public.
Over the years, the space shuttles became a growing problem, mainly because they consumed most of the resources. For some, given the comfortable level of funding, they have become an obstacle. It's good that astronauts can be put into space, they say, but what's next?
A new program
The problem is that the International Space Station and the shuttles aren't going anywhere. Many say that in order to rekindle the imagination and win public support, space policy needs a goal and there are only two options. The moon and Mars.
A flight to Mars can be a scary venture. First, it is necessary to reorganize the resources and release the necessary funds. This means a reduction in the capacity of the International Space Station and an early retirement of the shuttle fleet.
This means that NASA will have to act as one body towards building a replacement for the shuttles - a drama that went up and down for years, consumed millions of dollars and ultimately led nowhere.
The first scientist will be the moon, it is only 3 days away, as opposed to XNUMX years to Mars, based on the technology available today. A return to the moon will give focus and purpose to manned space efforts and is achievable within ten years.
A manned flight to the moon will be much more expensive and complicated, but it depends on our ability to return to the moon - where it will be possible to try new technologies, and then it will also be politically acceptable, when the public payoff will be relatively close.
A major turning point
In recent years, when NASA Mars scientists have asked about a manned mission, the response has always been to find robotic replacements. At one level, that won't change—such robotic reconnaissance systems will also be essential as a prelude to any manned mission to the Red Planet, but I understand that emphasis will soon change. .
Manned missions that will assist with support from the administration, to the moon and Mars, will become the starting point. And perhaps in this way, the American space initiative will regain some of the momentum it lost when the last man walked on the moon in 1972.
Speculating about what the president will say is unimportant, especially for scientific reporters, we have already been in such situations where politicians and senior officials in the space field said that we are at the dawn of a new era. We will have to wait and see, but next Wednesday may be a turning point in the human exploration of space.
Space according to Bush
The success of the "Spirit" on Mars has returned the enthusiasm to the American space industry * In the coming days, President Bush will announce a pretentious space program that will include the establishment of a training base on the moon, from which the first man will be launched to Mars in the future * Meanwhile, the experts are skeptical ("the plan will not be carried out before 2050" ) and the American media blurts out: "These are delusional and expensive moon dreams"
Alex Doron, 12/1/04
The President of the United States, George Bush, has not yet appeared in front of the cameras to reveal the details of his ambitious space program - and has already received a cold shower from the American media. Almost 35 years since the Americans conquered the moon, in July '69, Bush plans to establish a permanent base on the planet, from which a man will be launched to Mars. But despite the recent success of the unmanned "Spirit" on the Red Planet, not everyone is enthusiastic about the President's enthusiasm. "These are illusory moon dreams," defined the program as the "Washington Post".
According to the reports of the American media, Bush is supposed to announce on Wednesday about his space vision, which is supposed to open a new era. According to the publications, Bush aims to place a permanent human presence on the moon by the year 2013. The permanent space base is to be used for training and also as a springboard for a daring and long journey in space, in a sophisticated vehicle that has not yet been built, for the purpose of circling Mars in a manned spacecraft. After that, the ambition is to land a man on the intriguing planet, whose incredible north and sights are revealed every day with the help of the unmanned "Spirit". According to the plan, none of this will happen before 2020, but other space experts are even more skeptical: in their opinion, we will not see an American on Mars before 2050.
This is a project that will consume hundreds of billions of dollars, which was unprecedented in scope, boldness and above all in the mountains of money that would be required for it. At the moment it is not at all clear from where the administration groaning from a swelling deficit of about 500 billion dollars will raise them. His critics in the American media began to wonder if the president lacked the seriousness to properly prioritize his decisions.
The elections and the Chinese threat
This is not the first time that an American president comes up with the idea of sending astronauts to Mars. George Bush Sr. raised it for the first time back in 1989, and then the space agency NASA attached a price tag of 400 billion dollars to this operation. Today, many assume, the cost of the project will soar to at least 750 billion dollars.
"But the son of the first Bush, who has already managed to spend a great deal of money in all directions, including on the endless war in Iraq (far beyond the budget made available to him) and also reduced taxes - wants, in addition to bringing the first American to plant a flag on the Red Planet, also to settle the The moon," said the editorial of the "Washington Post", which expressed the sentiments of many on this issue.
"We are not against presidents who push big and even expensive ideas, but there are more important plans, ideas that are more feasible and necessary," the "Post" wrote. The influential newspaper mentioned, for example, the fight against AIDS - a disease that claims more human victims than those who were killed in World Wars I, II, Korea and Vietnam combined.
"The Bush administration 'doesn't go crazy' over the small Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria, but has its big eyes on a settlement on our bright neighbor, the moon," deans in Israel and in the United States laughed at the new idea. "These are statements of intent, not a road map and a schedule," the president's aides were quick to declare yesterday as a first response to the critics.
It seems that behind the recommendation made by the president's advisers to "go to the moon and Mars" right now, there are three developments. The first of which is the desire to marry on the wave of success of the "Spirit" in Mars. The second reason is Bush's need to present an imaginative, heart-winning and unrivaled national mission, ahead of the presidential elections to be held at the end of the year. To this we can add the news that is multiplying and increasing recently according to which China is preparing to conquer space. Among other things, the Chinese are planning, in great secrecy, to land three people on the moon within three to five years, to establish a completely independent space station that is not related to the space station
The president will announce his plan: a man on Mars within 20 years
By Yuval Dror and Natan Gutman
USA / Bush following Kennedy
The President of the United States, George Bush, is expected to present this week his vision for the continuation of the United States' missions in space. According to sources in the American government, Bush will call for action to place a permanent human presence on the moon as well as to send the first man to Mars. As part of the plan, which was formulated by Vice President, Dick Cheney, and the director of the American space agency, NASA, Sean O'Keefe, manned flights to the moon will be renewed until 2015, with the goal of keeping astronauts on the moon permanently.
At the same time, the agency will work on plans to launch a manned space vehicle to Mars, a plan for which no date has been set, but according to estimates it will take at least 15 to 20 years.
Space experts stated at the end of the week that the resumption of manned flights to the moon could be a kind of "training" for sending humans to Mars and that it would enable examination of new technologies and dealing with the difficulties involved in sending humans into space. Since the missions to the moon in the 70s, the US has been content with sending astronauts to missions in orbit around the Earth and to the space station.
Bush, who is expected to formally present the plans on Wednesday during a visit to NASA headquarters in Washington, will call for decommissioning the aging space shuttle fleet and developing, within four to six years, a multipurpose space vehicle that could be used to transport astronauts to the International Space Station as well as to the moon and later to Mars. The new space vehicle is actually at the center of the new program, and it is its development that will enable the new era of the USA. in space The development team will be asked to examine the methods of acceleration and propulsion of the new vehicle as well as the manner of its return to Earth - two issues that were problematic in the space shuttles of the existing generation.
The White House has so far refused to discuss the costs of the plans, but experts have estimated that they could reach up to $750 billion. The annual budget of the American space agency currently stands at only 15 billion dollars a year. The administration did not say where the budget would come from to finance the new programs, but it was stated that there is an intention to begin gradually increasing the NASA budget by 5% every year. The administration will also save several billion dollars from decommissioning the old shuttle fleet. The president's initiative to set new goals for the conquest of space by the USA is the first time that Bush intervenes in the American space program. After the crash of the "Columbia" a year ago, Bush did indeed call for continuing the space missions, but he did not outline the way to achieve this goal. If the plan is approved by Congress, it will be the most ambitious US space initiative since President Kennedy called in 1961 to put a man on the moon.
According to senior White House officials, President Bush's plan was born after Bush ordered the creation of a special team to review the US space programs following the disaster of the explosion of the shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003.
At this stage, it is difficult to predict how Congress will react to a plan of this kind at a time when the US is talking about budget cuts. Also, the US lacks the technological knowledge that would allow the establishment of a permanent base or a flight to Mars. The American ferry fleet is grounded following the Columbia ferry disaster and scientists mention that the ferries are becoming obsolete and that their age is 20 years.
Bush Jr.'s plan is not original, and he repeats the statement of his father, George Bush, from 1989, when the US celebrated the 20th anniversary of the moon landing. Bush Sr. then suggested that the US commit to a program for intensive research of the solar system and a return to the moon as a step An intermediate that will lead to a landing on Mars. NASA rushed to prepare a plan and presented the bill, 400 billion dollars, which led to the cancellation of the plan. For comparison, NASA's annual budget currently stands at 15 billion dollars.
In Washington, it is difficult to assess whether Bush's announcement is part of an organized vision or whether his advisors wanted to prepare for him what they call a "Kennedy moment" - named after President Kennedy who announced in 1961 the plan to land a man on the moon. Others claim that Bush sees the program as a national project that will lead to the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs, mainly in Texas, the state where he served as governor and where NASA's control center is located.
Another reason could be the alertness of Bush's advisors to what is happening in the world in regards to the conquest of space. The European Space Agency (ESA) recently sent the Beagle-2 spacecraft to Mars. Despite the failure of the mission, the European Union recently published a working paper in which it proposes to double the investment in space technologies in the next decade. The working paper emphasizes that the purpose of the strategy is to ensure that "the European Union has free access to space." He places special emphasis on technologies in the field of satellites.
However, it is by no means certain that it is the European program that is troubling the US. At the end of December 2003, China launched a satellite to orbit the Earth. The satellite is the result of China's cooperation with the European Union. It seems that the European Union understands that China is gradually becoming the third largest space power in the world.
China's space plans are long-term. In October of last year, the newspaper "Beijing Youth Daily" reported that China intends to launch an unmanned research satellite to the moon within 5-3 years to perform experiments on the lunar soil. A month later, senior officials in the Chinese government stated that China intends to achieve three major goals in the coming decade: establish its own space station, perform a "space walk" and develop docking technologies in space.
US space program
* Permanent presence of astronauts on the moon until 2015
* The flights to the moon: "training" for the launch to Mars
* Development of a multipurpose space vehicle within 4 to 6 years
* Estimate: the cost of the project is about 750 billion dollars
* This is Bush's first intervention in the space program
* The plan was formed due to the Chinese presence in space
* Doubts about the chances of the project being accepted by Congress
President's initiative
Bush wants to go down in history
by Nathan Gutman
Washington. One of the accusations frequently leveled against President George Bush is the lack of vision. His critics claim that the leader of the world's leading power is immersed in the daily war on terror and is not trying, or succeeding, to leave his mark on American history. In the first month of the 2004 election year, Bush proves that he intends to deal with this accusation. Last week the president announced his plan for comprehensive immigration reform to the US, and this week he is about to announce his comprehensive space initiative. As "the president who regulated the status of illegal immigrants", or as "the president who sent a man to Mars".
In a somewhat ironic way, the current space initiative of President George W. Bush is also seen as an attempt to continue in the footsteps of his father, President Bush Sr. Just as Bush Jr. continued his father's work in Iraq, so now the son is returning to the plan to send man to Mars, a plan first conceived by Bush Sr. in 1989.
But the presidents of the Bush family are not the first to dream of conquering space. The vision of Americans in space has been the property of many presidents in the last four decades, whether out of pure scientific interest, whether out of a desire to prove the superiority of the United States as a power, or internal political ambitions. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first. In 1961, he appeared before Congress and called to unite behind a national project of sending a man to the moon. Kennedy said and won legislative approval for the plan in 1969, mission accomplished.
Those were the days of the Cold War and the conquest of space played a major role in the competition between the USA and the USSR. Kennedy's initiative to land a man on the moon was not only a signal to the Soviets about the technological superiority of the USA, but also a shot of encouragement to the American people, who were in the midst of the anxiety that characterized the Cold War period.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon came up with the space shuttle program, which sounded quite revolutionary at the time - a multipurpose space vehicle that could take off into space like a passenger plane, and return safely to Earth. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan proposed his own space program - the International Space Station, which would establish a permanent human presence in outer space. Even this program, which now operates routinely, seemed at the time to be on the border of science fiction.
It is no coincidence that these two proposals came up in January of an election year. Like Bush now, Nixon and Reagan also thought of the voters and the vision, when they came to intervene in space exploration policy.
The Bush space program, after it is introduced this week, will go to Congress. Bush's father failed when he tried to get lawmakers to approve huge budgets for his plan to put a man on Mars and it is doubtful that his son will have more success. The Democratic presidential candidates have already attacked Bush for his plan, which involves huge costs as the US deficit reaches its peak. Howard Dean asked how Bush will finance the program when he is busy cutting taxes all the time, while Joe Lieberman claimed that Bush's budget priorities prove that "he is from another planet".
But the political commentators estimate that Bush will have a hard time losing with such a proposal - at most he will be portrayed as a leader with a vision, who was unable to realize it because of petty considerations of the politicians.
A small step for clothing, an expensive and ineffective step for the US space agency
by Nathan Gutman
President Bush's initiative to put a permanent human presence on the moon and send a man to Mars should excite the American public, after years in which NASA is associated with boring experiments in space and on the anniversary of the launch of the space shuttle "Columbia" on a mission that ended in a crash. But the grandiose plan could be rejected by Congress on the one hand and thwarted Less pretentious restoration attempts of the space program on the other hand
Harold Gaiman, head of the committee that investigated the "Columbia" disaster, testifies in the Senate on September 3, 2003. Most of the recommendations have not yet been implemented
Photo: IP
Washington
On Friday, it will be one year since the launch of the space shuttle "Columbia" for its last mission, which ended 16 days later when, during its attempt to return to Earth, the shuttle crashed and the seven members of its crew perished. Last week, after NASA celebrated the successful landing of the "Spirit" space vehicle on the Martian soil and the launch of the rare photographs from it, the heads of the space agency announced that they decided to call the piece of land on which the "Spirit" landed on Mars the "Columbia Memorial Station". In memory of the seven astronauts who were killed in the disaster.
On a white board placed on top of the "Spirit" are written the names of the seven, with the mission symbol, the US flag and also a small Israeli flag next to the name of Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space.
In the year that has passed since the "Columbia" disaster, the American space agency NASA is trying to recover. The shot of encouragement by President George Bush, who is supposed to announce this week a new vision for the conquest of American space and plans to place a permanent human presence on the moon and even send a man to Mars, is succeeding While igniting the imagination among the scientists at the space agency and refocusing the public's eyes on the US space programs, the road to recovery is still long In fact, NASA suffered two blows this year - one is, of course, the loss of the "Columbia" on its crew members, and the second is the publication of the report of the investigative committee that examined the circumstances of the disaster and exposed the failings of NASA and the American space program.
Almost a year after the American public watched in amazement the smoke trail over the Texas sky that symbolized the tragic end of the STS-107 space mission, not much has changed at NASA. The shuttles are grounded, the major structural reform has yet to happen and the question of whether the American public's trust in the space agency has been restored is still pending for the answer
The report of the investigative committee headed by Admiral Harold Gaiman, who submitted his recommendations at the end of August, dealt with three levels - the immediate technical, the administrative, and the policy-making level. In each of them, he submitted recommendations whose implementation is still difficult to determine.
NASA did not enter
On the technical level, the investigation team called for developing methods that would prevent the insulation tiles from falling from the shuttle, installing systems that could report damage to the external insulation in real time, using satellite images during the flight in space to check possible damage to the shuttle and developing ways to repair faults and rescue in space. NASA says that it will be possible to complete the restoration of the space shuttle fleet, which currently only has three shuttles, by this September at the earliest. The estimated cost of meeting the technical requirements set by the Gaiman Committee reaches 280 million dollars. NASA hopes that by September one will be able to of the remaining shuttles, Atlantis or Discovery, to complete space mission STS-114, which was It was supposed to take off already last spring but was frozen along with the other manned space missions after the "Columbia" crash.
But while on the technical level there is some progress towards the implementation of the recommendations, in the administrative and organizational field NASA is still faltering. The main recommendation of the Gaiman Committee was to establish an independent engineering body that would be responsible for the safety procedures in the agency and their implementation. The logic behind the recommendation is to bring about that decisions on safety matters are made by a body that is not subject to budget or schedule limitations and therefore will not feel pressure to cut corners in order to meet the set goals. NASA did indeed promise to establish such a body, but the agency's internal auditor warned in an internal memo last month that the management does not understand the meaning of the requirement. It turned out that NASA chose to turn a body within the organization into a testing unit, even though the committee demanded the establishment of a new body that is not subordinate to the agency's managers.
NASA claims that the new body will indeed meet the Gaiman Commission's requirements, but the concern is that the failures pointed out by the internal auditor indicate a deeper problem. The inspection committee's report states that NASA has a culture of ignoring safety problems and of a lack of openness to criticism and new ideas. The problem In the opinion of critics of the space agency, the establishment of the new safety body indicates that NASA has not internalized the need for a fundamental change in culture administrative and treats the conclusions as a list of technical matters only.
Sean O'Keefe, the director of NASA, remained in his position even after the difficult report of the investigative committee. In fact, except for middle-level managers who left on their own initiative, NASA has not changed much in the past year. Not only in NASA, the conduct of "business as usual" continued in the past year. Even among the decision makers in Washington and the American public opinion, not much has changed in the attitude towards the space programs and their implementation since the "Columbia" crash. Admiral Gaiman stated in the committee's investigative report that the time had come to start a public debate on the very question of sending humans into space. He argued that if the American nation wishes to continue with the program it must understand what it entails, especially in all that is said about the financial cost of the project.
Children will return to dreaming
NASA's annual budget is about 15 billion dollars a year, an amount that allows the continued existence of new programs, but cannot finance a conceptual revolution in the question of conquering space. The organization's shrunken budget indicates more than anything that the American public, through its elected representatives in Congress, is not Still interested in the space program, NASA has never been able to maintain the momentum of the moon landing and the huge excitement it caused on July 20th. 1969 for an entire generation of Americans. In many respects, the peak moment of the American space program was also the moment of the beginning of its decline. The pursuit of space became, from that moment on, more scientific and less adventurous, and the American public had a hard time understanding why it should finance with billions of dollars plans for geological exploration of the surface of Mars or a joint space station with the Russians, which is busy with physical and medical experiments and looks like a large floating scaffolding.
The decline in interest and budgeting also led to a decline within NASA. Prominent scientists left in favor of tempting offers outside or because of frustration that development work was limited. At the same time, internal morale waned, as the astronauts and the crew behind them were no longer seen as national heroes standing at America's new frontier in space, but simply as scientists. who fly into space in a kind of large and cumbersome vehicle to perform various experiments.
Against the background of these feelings, one should see President Bush's new plan, which centers on the renewal of manned flights to the moon, the placement of a permanent human presence on the moon, and later manned space flights to Mars. Publicly, this is the program that should re-energize America and unite behind its space agency. Bush knows that with the new plan he can return space exploration from the realm of science to the realm of imagination, when generations of American children will once again dream of flights to the moon, of living on distant stars, of friends from outer space.
The scientists are more reserved. On the one hand, they welcome the plan that should breathe new life into NASA and increase public interest in it. But on the other hand, they see Bush's plan as almost problematic. For them, it is not urgent to relaunch humans to the moon or Mars. Establishing a permanent research station on The moon will be a complicated and expensive project, and it is not clear if it will be much more scientifically effective than the international space station that exists today.As for sending a man to Mars - space scientists believe that The unmanned spacecraft such as the "Spirit" can at this stage bring no less benefit than a human presence on Mars.
Sending humans into space is indeed an exciting task, but also very expensive and dangerous. The main concern is that after the initial enthusiasm of the American public for President Bush's Mars and Moon plan, the matter will stall in Congress. It is difficult to see elected officials today voting in favor of a program that costs hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years, when their countries do not have enough budget to finance health services or education. What may happen is that NASA will remain bald here and there. Congress will not approve the funding for President Bush's grand vision and the administration will not fight for partial or smaller programs that do not include sending humans into space but only projects that seem less exciting, like the "Spirit" on mars
In the 60s it was easier to mobilize the public to support the space programs. The competition with the Soviet Union for the conquest of space made the need to finance NASA's projects a matter of course. Now, it is more difficult to explain to American citizens why it is important that the United States be the one that goes into space and not another country. That's why the lead in the field of space is being lost. For a year, American astronauts have been forced to rely on Russian spaceships to get to and from the International Space Station, and other countries are also biting into the US's control of space - China sent an astronaut into space for the first time this year and will do so again in two years, India announced that it intends to reach the moon by 2008 And even Iran enters the field of space with a statement about the launch of the first satellite in a year and a half by the supporters of the American space program It is hoped that the president's initiative will be supported and will catapult the US back to the top of space control. They also hope that she will succeed in making NASA forget the last year, one of the worst and most difficult in its history.
For information on the BBC website
Arthur C. Clark laments the slowdown in space exploration on the 40th anniversary of Kennedy's speech
NASA's bold plan to land a man on the Red Planet
Yadan Adim - preparation for manned flight
NASA: It is possible that spaceships will be powered by nuclear energy in the future
The journey to Mars
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