As a follow up on my blog suggesting that NASA’s so called plan for a human expedition to Mars in the 2030’s is absurd and will never happen since it is primarily a jobs program, the NASA advisory committee has indicated huge doubts that such a Nasa sponsored Mars expedition is realizable and has suggested concentration on the even more absurd, politically motivated and essentially pointless (except as a way to justify huge funding in the districts of certain powerful Congressmen) “Asteroid Redirect Project.” Absent a major technological breakthough or a major political shift NASA will never (yes NEVER!) achieve the goal of a manned expedition to Mars. Las Vegas oddsmakers rate SpaceX as the most likely to accomplish such a mission, with Russia (despite an economy that is near collapse), the somewhat crazy Mars One proposals, and China as being far more likely to achieve such a goal.Personally, my money is on the Chinese. Sad.
September, 2026:
My opinion has changed rather radically in the years since this post. It now seems that Space X has a reasonable chance to reach Mars with a human crew perhaps as early as 2030 although a major setback could delay a landing by 5 years or so. The change in my analysis, of course, is the developing ability of Space X to design boosters and craft that can be reused many times rather than being expended in each usage. The cost of each launch should be reduced by many orders of magnitude. A moon landing utilizing a weird combination of NASA’s expendable technology and a rapidly developing “Starship” perhaps as early as 2028 now seems feasible. Also likely is that Space X will abandon this relationship within a few years with NASA’s future role limited to advance research and regulation of private companies. My bet now is that Space X will succeed in making a human landing on Mars, although a determination of whether the ultimate goal of making the human race a two planet civilization remains possible but not certain. The long term viability of this plan depends on the resolution of a number of technological challenges, especially shortening the duration of each Earth to Mars transport from a year or more to no more than 60 days. As far China, the technical progress they have made in the past decade is impressive although much of it seems to have copied from Space X (there seems to be a major security problem there). Which nation will make the first Moon landing of the 21st Century is n doubt although the progress made by Space X suggests they are in a good position. As for Mars, my first reaction is that there is a viable space race underway much as in the 1960s with the Soviet Union; however, the stability of the Chinese economy and political system (or the lack thereof) raises questions as to that countries long term ability to compete. We shall see. The next decade promises to be very interesting for space enthusiasts.
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