Space policy: The Moon and Mars simultaneouslyby Doug Plata, MD, MPH
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| The idea that we cannot go to Mars without establishing a base on the Moon is not obviously true and something that SpaceX certainly does not believe. |
Even though comments by both Trump and Musk indicate a desire to ultimately send humans to Mars, recent testimony makes it clear that Congress will not accept the bypassing of the Moon. Yet, SpaceX has sufficient Starlink funding, the emerging capability, and resolve to go to Mars as soon as possible. Space policy decision makers will not have NASA stand by while SpaceX and other countries go to Mars. Likewise, Blue Origin has sufficient funding and is making steady progress to develop an Earth-Moon transport system. The solution therefore is a policy where countries, led by the US, return and explore the Moon and establish a growing base there while NASA also partners with SpaceX as they go to Mars.
However, for America to have such an ambitious policy, it will need to free up budgetary space. This article proposes that all legacy HSF programs be placed on the table and asked whether each item is the best use of taxpayer dollars considering what could be accomplished for America’s space leadership by guiding the world to expand beyond Earth. This essay proposes that budgetary space be opened by cancelling the following, starting with the least needed: Mobile Launch Platform-2, Exploration Upper Stage (EUS), the Gateway, the Space Launch System (SLS), Orion, and limiting spending to just one billion dollars per year on “Commercial” LEO Destinations (CLDs).
To the Moon and Mars simultaneously
To be very clear, the proposal to go to the Moon and Mars simultaneously is not any of the commonly proposed approaches. It is not choosing one instead of the other, such as the Moon instead of Mars, or the Moon being an unnecessary distraction from Mars. It is also not the idea of safely going to the Moon first, establishing a base, and demonstrating technologies as a steppingstone toward Mars some years later.
First, SpaceX clearly does not believe that establishing a base on the Moon is necessary before going to Mars. With their engine production rate, Starship factory, and the remaining Starship development hurdles, there is a decent likelihood that they will make multiple cargo landing attempts on Mars during the November 2026 launch window, 19 months from now, even if they reduce the number of LEO refuelings needed by reducing payload. And if they miss the 2026 window, they certainly will be ready by the 2029 window. Mechazilla has already caught three Super Heavy booster stages, so booster reuse appears to be a given. The upper stages have had pinpoint landings twice now. If they can be reused, then that saves even more money. If not, SpaceX still has the engine production rate sufficient to complete cargo and crew missions including refuelings of depots even if they have to expend tankers.
As for propellant transfer and storage in LEO depots, this will not be as difficult as many space advocates have presumed. I interviewed Bernard Kutter, who was perhaps the leading applied researcher on the topic. His view was that all aspects of propellant depot storage (including zero boiloff using cryocoolers) and transfer had been demonstrated in the lab or on orbit and that it was more likely than not that docking, storage, and transfer would work on the first attempt. Also, the wildly divergent estimates of the number of refuelings necessary for Moon or Mars landings are not largely based upon firm rocket equation calculations. It’s as though people are picking the estimates that best match what they want to argue. And the number of refuelings can be adjusted by how much payload one chooses to send. Finally, once propellant transfer is mastered once, doing it again and again shouldn’t be particularly difficult as evidenced by the Falcon 9 flight frequency. And one missed refilling just means a short delay until the next tanker arrives.
| SpaceX is not only fully committed as a company to send cargo and crew there as soon as possible, but their level of Starship revenue will likely pass NASA’s HSF budget later this year. |
Another point is that, although not optimized for the Moon like Blue Origin’s lander is, Starships can be used for both the Moon and Mars. So, the Moon and Mars shouldn’t be considered as two separate programs requiring a lot more funding for vehicle development. Likewise, most of the surface systems between the Moon and Mars are the same—not all, but most. This would include habitats, much of the life support, sanitation, potentially food, any centrifuge, surface transport, local satellite constellation, and some in situ resource utilization. Any fission power system could also be the same.
Mars
The first thing to understand about space policy for Mars is that SpaceX is not only fully committed as a company to send cargo and crew there as soon as possible but their level of Starship revenue will likely pass NASA’s HSF budget later this year. Given how much more efficiently SpaceX spends its money compared to NASA, the question of Mars policy is no longer driven by the space policy decision makers in DC but by SpaceX itself. If Congress decides to delay Mars and go to the Moon first, it will be irrelevant because that won’t change SpaceX’s mind, and it is unlikely that government space policy will prevent SpaceX from getting a launch license. In other words, the decisionmakers in DC will be faced with an interesting decision. Will America stand to the side while SpaceX (in partnership with other countries) goes to Mars, or should NASA partner with SpaceX and hence play a role among the nations in this very historic moment? There are few things that the two sides of the aisle agree upon in Washington. But one thing that they agree upon is that our space program is to demonstrate American leadership on the world stage. So, I cannot imagine NASA failing to partner with SpaceX for Mars.
I am estimating that, between the 2026 and 2029 Earth-Mars windows, SpaceX will have made multiple cargo landing attempts with telemetry from any crash being used to adjust the landing software for the next attempt a few days later. With time, SpaceX will have delivered large quantities of cargo before and during crew arrival. Perhaps either in 2029 or 2033—and only after multiple successful cargo landings had been achieved—crew will be landed on Mars.
Perhaps it will be limited to something like 24 crew split between two ships so that not too many lives are risked early on. Given the very large quantities of cargo already landed, safety will be assured by having plenty of supplies and numerous, redundant equipment and spares. For NASA’s part, they can help lead international exploration and work with SpaceX to establish an International Mars Base. Note that, in terms of the hardware needed, there’s not a lot of difference between a base and a settlement.
The Moon
However, there are multiple reasons why the Moon won’t be bypassed. In fact, establishing a permanent base on the Moon will be considered important. First, from recent congressional testimony, Congress clearly wants America to return to the Moon. As happened with SLS, Congress has everything to say about space policy when it comes down to the funding. Trump likes space because it is where America can shine. But it seems unlikely that he would be willing to burn political capital opposing lunar return when many people point out that China is making real progress to establish their own permanent base on the Moon. And for what it’s worth, it was during Trump’s first administration that a return to the Moon became his very first space policy (i.e. SPD-1).
In addition, practically all the other countries of the world would like to watch their astronaut heroes explore the Moon on behalf of their own citizens and in their own languages. The US may have “been there and done that” but that’s not yet the case for the other countries. So, there is the “huge” foreign policy opportunity to lead other countries beyond Earth. Significantly lower per-seat costs means that America can go beyond the very successful Artemis Accords and lead an international coordinating group to plan an International Lunar Exploration Phase (ILEP). As international astronauts go to the Moon, a large and growing International Lunar Base could be established.
Surface hardware
So, what role does NASA play? Will it be limited to just purchasing flights from Blue Origin and SpaceX? No. America should encourage its Artemis partners to fund their own companies to develop different surface systems including the development of large specialty habs dedicated to a single function given mutually agreed upon standards. I believe that very large, inflatable habs could form the basis for large and growing international bases on the Moon and Mars for the first decade or so. The result would be multiple companies that would compete on price and quality. This competition would bring costs down. Along with increased flight rate, these lowering costs could make expansion of the international bases to include private settlement as a natural outcome.
Funding both the Moon and Mars
Even though we can reasonably hope that transportation and surface hardware companies will make exploration and development much more cost effective, this article proposes two simultaneous programs (Moon and Mars) which means two sets of flight programs and two bases. To the extent that NASA would pay for a portion of these programs, sufficient funding will need to be made available. I am not proposing an increase in NASA’s budget but rather a significant reworking of its current budget.
| Practically all the other countries of the world would like to watch their astronaut heroes explore the Moon on behalf of their own citizens and in their own languages. The US may have “been there and done that” but that’s not yet the case for the other countries. |
To free up the needed funds, this article proposes that all current and anticipated NASA programs be placed on the table to assess whether they really are the best use of NASA funds or not. According to some reports, there seems to be an open-mindedness to cancelling some programs. In my estimation, the lowest hanging fruit would be NASA’s Mobile Launch Platform-2 and the Exploration Upper Stage. This would probably mean doing what Scott Pace suggests by playing out Artemis 2 and 3 and then looking for a transition to commercial transportation architectures. For my part, I would rather cancel SLS immediately, including Artemis 2 and 3, as a way of saving a few billion dollars and making the point that companies will not be allowed to go severely over budget and schedule. The administration should also quickly investigate the question of whether any alternate transportation architectures can avoid the need for Gateway altogether. In a relay race, is a middleman really necessary?
And finally, whereas opinions are much more favorable regarding Orion than SLS, Orion is still expensive to produce and holds just a few astronauts. It would not be easy to transport many international astronauts in the relatively small Orion capsule. It seems that SpaceX believes that many people could be launched on Starship if engine-out capability enables the safe completion of mission in a manner analogous to how airline planes can still land even if one of the engines is lost.
But I would go further: perhaps the greatest risk to this policy of the Moon and Mars simultaneously would be if a decades-long policy were adopted of funding two so-called “Commercial” LEO Destination (CLD) stations. I say “so-called” because there is serious doubts about whether those stations will ever be able to sustain themselves purely from commercial customers. Attempts to commercialize the ISS was such a failure that Paul Martin, former NASA inspector general, said, “Candidly, the scant commercial interest shown in the station over its nearly 20 years of operation gives us pause about the agency’s current plans”.
The LEO station companies seem to be depending on NASA funding rather than seeking a pure commercial business case. So, it concerns me that, after spending money helping CLDs get up and running, the policy makers may fall for the sunk cost fallacy and feel as though they must utilize them indefinitely, for perhaps a billion dollars per year per station for decades.
Nobody is quite certain what will be the killer app for LEO research stations. Some used to think that it would be crystallizing proteins to determine their structures, but AlphaFold significantly damaged that usage case. ZBLAN fibers and 3D-printed organs likewise have factors that question their business cases. Rather than manufacturing or research intellectual property being the killer app, large-scale LEO tourism seems a more likely business case. But the CLDs are not designed to receive a hundred tourists at a time. Rather, a single launch of a Starship, with the propellant tanks vented and opened up, would provide 2.5 times the internal volume of the ISS. If the decisionmakers in Washington still feel compelled to fund CLDs, I would propose that the annual budget for them be limited to no more than $1 billion per year.
Conclusion
We are at a unique moment in human history. Humanity is on the verge of spreading into the solar system. It would do well for America’s space policy to recognize the historic opportunity to be seized by leading our fellow nations beyond Earth. We also have the option to take full advantage of the emerging, very cost-effective super heavy launch systems. A smart and bold policy of Moon and Mars simultaneously is an opportunity we really shouldn’t miss.
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