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.
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 scientific editor of BBC Online, wrote this week.
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 ambition that space exploration by the United States would continue, but not in the same way it had been conducted so far.
"The president 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. Several senior NASA officials have said privately that they are 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 the initiative of President Bush Sr. "Back to Mars" 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. On one level, this will not 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 an ambitious 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 Star, not everyone is enthusiastic about the President's enthusiasm. "These are illusory moon dreams," defined the program by the "Washington Post".
According to American media reports, Bush is supposed to announce his space vision on Wednesday, which is supposed to usher in a new era. According to the publications, Bush aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon by 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 orbiting Mars in a manned spacecraft. After that, the ambition is to land a person 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 rise 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 never-ending 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", wrote 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 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 US 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 the Vice President, Dick Cheney, and the director of the American space agency, NASA, Sean O'Keefe, the manned flights to the moon will be renewed until 2015, with the aim 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 can be a kind of "training" for sending humans to Mars and that it will enable the 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 plan, and its development will enable the new era of the US 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 programs, 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 said 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 ferry fleet. The President's initiative to set new goals for the conquest of space by the US is the first time that Bush intervenes in the US 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 officials in the White House, 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 budget cuts are being talked about in the US. 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 USA celebrated the 20th anniversary of the moon landing. Then Bush Sr. proposed that the US would commit to a program for intensive research of the solar system and a return to the moon as an intermediate step that would 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.
In Washington, it is difficult to assess whether Bush's announcement is part of an organized vision or whether his advisers sought 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.
But it is not at all certain that it is the European plan 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. The EU seems to understand 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.
The 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 engrossed 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 going to announce his comprehensive space initiative. The political advisers in the White House know that these types of plans, no matter how practical they are, are the ones that will put George Bush in history 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 supremacy of the United States as a superpower, or internal political ambitions. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first. In 1961 he appeared before Congress and called for unity behind a national project to send a man to the moon. "It won't be one person flying to the moon, it will be an entire nation," Kennedy said and won the lawmakers' approval for the plan. In 1969 the mission was completed.
Those were the days of the Cold War and the conquest of space played a central 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 peaks. Howard Dean asked how Bush will finance the program when he is busy with tax cuts 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 act to place a permanent human presence on the moon and to send a man to Mars should excite the American public, after years in which NASA is associated with boring experiments in space and one year after the launch of the shuttle "Columbia" on a mission that ended up crashing. But the grandiose plan could be rejected in Congress on the one hand and thwart less ambitious attempts to restore the space program on the other
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 seven crew members 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, does succeed in igniting the imagination among the scientists at the space agency and focusing the public's eyes once again on the US space programs B, but 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, 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 not yet taken place and the question of whether the American public's trust in the space agency has been restored still awaits an answer.
The report of the investigative committee headed by Admiral Harold Gaiman, which submitted its recommendations at the end of August, dealt with three levels - the immediate technical, the administrative and the policy setting. In each of them, he submitted recommendations that are still difficult to indicate their implementation.
NASA did not internalize
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 of the remaining shuttles, the "Atlantis" or the "Discovery", will be able to complete the STS-114 space mission, which 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 agency's safety procedures and their implementation. The logic behind the recommendation is to ensure 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 an inspection 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 requirements of the Gaiman Commission, but the concern is that the failures pointed out by the internal auditor indicate a deeper problem. In the inspection committee's report, it was stated that NASA has a culture of ignoring safety problems and the lack of openness to criticism and new ideas. The problem with the establishment of the new safety body indicates, according to the critics of the space agency, that NASA has not internalized the need for a fundamental change in the management culture 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, aside from mid-level managers who left on their own initiative, NASA hasn't changed much in the past year. Not only at 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" crashed. Admiral Gaiman stated in the committee's investigative report that the time has come to start a public debate on the very question of sending humans into space. He argued that if the American nation is interested in continuing the program, it must understand what it entails, especially 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 shrinking budget of the organization indicates more than anything that the American public, through its elected representatives in Congress, is no longer interested in the space program. NASA has never been able to maintain the momentum of the moon landing and the immense excitement that moment on July 20, 1969 caused 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 deterioration within NASA. Prominent scientists have left in favor of tempting offers outside or out of frustration that development work has been limited. At the same time, internal morale faded, as the astronauts and the crew behind them were no longer seen as national heroes standing at America's new front in space, but simply as scientists flying 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 program that should inject 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 would be a complicated and expensive project, and it is not clear if it would be much more scientifically effective than the International Space Station that exists today. As for sending a person to Mars - the 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 hard to see elected officials today voting in favor of a program that costs hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years, when their states 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 plans that do not include sending humans into space but only projects that seem less exciting, such as 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 US 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 launching its first satellite in a year and a half. Supporters of the US space program hope that the president's initiative will gain support and 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: Spaceships may be powered by nuclear energy in the future
The journey to Mars
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