NASA Defunds Trump Administration Supported Mars Ice Mapper Project.

 

Changes in a project to return Martian soil samples has put back the sample return to 2033 and prompted a shifting of budgets. Apparently, as a result, NASA has decided to "discontinue funding for the International Mars Ice Mapper project," a project originally added to NASA's budget under the Trump administration. NASA cites "budget constraints" as its reason for scrapping the project. Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division said, "Mars Ice Mapper originated from NASA agency-level objectives.....Exploring Mars ice reserves emerged as a focusing requirement and thus a need, not only for the scientific value, but also in preparation for human exploration." 

If Elon Musk plans to find a likely place to land on the Red Planet, it appears he's going to have to find a way to pinpoint a likely ice patch for himself. You have to wonder how much this had to do with NASA priorities has to do with politics as much, if not more than science. There's also Musk in the wings champing at the bit to blast off to Mars ahead of our "progressive" government, which at this point doesn't seem to be making much of all that progress they promised.

 

NASA seems to be content with muddling along doing wildly expensive cost-plus contracts with its aerospace contractor buddies. These traditional contracts build expensive single-use spacecraft like the Orion Artemis rocket which for hardware alone will set taxpayers back 568 million dollars at the lowest current estimates. These estimates do not take into account for Joe Biden's inflationary economy or delays caused by government fiddling along the way.  We're talking more than 2 and a half billion for just the spacecraft and boosters, and not including fuel and technical support to launch just 4 missions. And that's just the lowest "reasonable" guess at the cost - such guesses being notoriously short of actual costs. 

 

 

Meanwhile, Elon Musk's ambitious Starship could cost as little as 10 million a launch or less after just a few initial successful launches since the Starship is a reusable ship. Meanwhile NASA's Artemis is one shot and then space junk technology dating back to the early days of spaceflight.  SpaceX's Falcon 9/Dragon launches meanwhile charges its customers just 62 million dollars per launch because it reuses its launch vehicles, one of which has gone up and been recovered a dozen times (as of March 2022) with several other SpaceX boosters set to tie that record soon. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, already successfully launched, runs 90 million if the launch vehicle is recoverable or 152 million for a deep space launch in which the boosters cannot be recovered.  That's still a whole bunch of buckazoids cheaper that nearly 600 billion for NASA's big old baby.

Perhaps a different, possibly less "progressive" government could let NASA pass the Ice Mapper Project off to Musk or one of the eager competitors trailing along in SpaceX's wake. Could be a lot more affordable, especially when it would help Musk move his Mars colony project along.

 

I had always hoped that one day I might catch a ride to space on a rocket. Not very likely now what with my advancing decrepitude, but at least I've had a glimpse of what's becoming possible for us Earthlings as far as ascending into space.

And if that's possible, what might we see someday in the Earth made new. It does give one hope, even if the science guys scoff at the idea of something beyond this life. It just seems to me that with the gift of eternal life, what dreams might we humans bring to fruition, given the time to work them out.

© 2022 by Tom King