RIP NASA Part 2

Okay, I know I said that I was going to spend this post talking about how airlines have historically been a flop, but that was before I saw this piece on Ars Technica about what this new direction for NASA means. It is certainly a little too willing to accept the idea that this is a good change for NASA in my opinion.

At current budget levels, the full development of these systems would take us well into the 2020s even if completed on schedule, and arrive after the planned appearance of private-sector equivalents

Key words in that statement are "current budget levels." Many of us have been screaming that NASA's budget was completely and utterly inadequate for quite some time now. Nothing Obama's done addresses this simple fact. NASA's budget should be $100 billion/yr, if you're going to do anything serious with the agency (that's the level it was at during the Apollo era, adjusting for inflation). Additionally, it says "full development," which means not only the development of Ares I, but also Ares V and a mission to the Moon. The author is trying to spin it like NASA wouldn't be sending humans into space again until the 2020s, but the reality is that if NASA had been given adequate levels of funding (i.e. a few billion more per year to finish developing Ares I), they could have been back in the manned launching business by 2015, 2017 at the latest. That's a full 3 years before the 2020 figure quoted by the article, and ample time for us to kick things into high gear if it looked like the Chinese were going to beat us back to the Moon.

"The fact that we poured $9 billion into an unexecutable program does not mean that we should pour another $50 billion after it,"

This leaves out that the reason Constellation was "unexecutable" can be traced directly to the fact that neither Bush nor Obama were willing to put in the necessary development funding.

The budget also includes money for an extension of the shuttle through 2011, which will allow for the inevitable launch delays in its remaining five missions.

This, of course, increases the chances of us losing another shuttle and crew and when that happens, instead of us grabbing our crotches, spitting, and saying, "Well, them things happen some times." there's going to be a whole rash of agonizing with spineless cunts screaming that "space is too dangerous!" with the manned program already on what can best be described as life support, pulling the plug ("It is fiscally irresponsible for us to spend money on something as dangerous as spaceflight when children are starving in America.") will be pitched as the "logical" solution.

The remaining construction, crew exchange, and servicing will be provided by both international partners and private companies if all goes as planned.

"If all goes as planned" famous last words if I've ever heard them. The only place things ever go as planned are in the final reel of a Hollywood movie. Real life is far messier. Note that Rutan (probably one of the brightest minds in aviation today) is behind schedule on SpaceShipTwo flights. They were supposed to have started last year, but that fatal accident with the engine a few years ago caused a delay. (The investigation into the cause of the accident was unable to find a definitive cause.) The Russians are said to be having problems dealing with the increased load that they've had to shoulder since Columbia, wonder how they'll react to having to pick up even more of the load when things don't "go as planned"?

The only change is that we may now be relying on them for manned missions, although a few companies are already in work on manned launches. $50 million in stimulus money is already allocated to private companies to support development work, and NASA appears to be considering contests like the X-Prize.

AFAIK, there's only two companies in the US building manned orbital craft: Blue Origin and Space-X (Rutan's got stuff on the drawing board, as do some others, but BO and S-X are actually working on hardware). Blue Origin hasn't launched dick, near as I can tell. Space-X finally managed to get a couple of unmanned rockets to work. Of course, Space-X is owned by Elon Musk, who also owns Tesla. On the surface this sounds good, but may not be.

Tesla recently announced that they'll be shutting down production of their roadster. Officially, this is because they lack the production facilities to turn out their roadster and the Tesla S model. In reality this is because there's only a finite number of people who want and can afford the roadster, and they've almost all got one now. Roadster production is scheduled to end this year, with S production scheduled to begin in 2012. This means that Tesla will be building nothing in 2011, so in order for the company to keep functioning, Musk is going to be burning through the $400+ million loan from the Feds he's gotten, putting his own money in, and finding backers to prop up Tesla. Wonder what Musk will do if he's faced with having to pour money into Tesla or Space-X (but can't afford to do both)? Between the two companies, Tesla's the most likely to turn a profit in the shortest amount of time, so logically, one would expect Musk to put his money there.

Over the next five years, a total of roughly $14 billion will be spent on three main programs.

This assumes that the program gets to remain around that long.

More than half of this amount will go to the development of technology for cheaper, extended-range space flight.

Does this restore funding to Prometheus? Because if it doesn't, then its basically just a waste of money, in all likelihood.

This includes in-orbit fuel depots,

Honestly, this is not that difficult a task, and there's oodles of engineering studies they can dust off and use, without having to start from scratch. I'm betting, however, they'll be forced to start from the beginning.

closed-loop life support systems,

Much of the preliminary work on this has already been done, and all that really needs to be done is to build a test platform to bring all the elements together and revise theories as new lessons are learned. Can't see this as requiring a lot of money and time.

and automated rendezvous and docking technology.

Newsflash: The Europeans already do this. Their resupply rockets to the ISS are fully automated. They can't put a human into space and they can do something we can't? WTF?

The goal here is clearly to develop the ability to assemble a platform for long-range human space travel from multiple unmanned launch vehicles.

To what end, however? Is it spelled out clearly anywhere? Has anyone said, "We choose to go to the Moon."? Nope. Bolden's said that he'll be pissed off if we don't make it to Mars before he dies, but Bolden's not the President.

Another $3 billion will go towards the development of heavy-lift engines and propellants. As of the previous plan, development of heavy lift vehicles didn't get any money until 2016, so this is being presented as an acceleration of this capability.

That heavy lift vehicle would have been Ares V, which would have been built based on lessons learned from Ares I. Now, its going to be something else. If $9 billion wasn't enough to give us a functioning small rocket, how is $3 billion going to give us a functioning large rocket?

Finally, NASA will begin to develop what they term "robotic precursor missions," starting with a robotic, teleoperated Moon rover.

Seriously? This is "noteworthy?" First of all, Google's kind of got this one covered. Secondly, if there's some reason why NASA must do this, then why not reuse the blueprints for the rovers we've sent to Mars (or if not those, then the ones currently being built)?

The ultimate goal is to develop a robotic resource processing capability designed for the Moon and asteroids. If the equipment is launched successfully, it will begin prepositioning supplies that can be used by any manned follow-on missions.

And what missions would those be? Is there money allocated in the budget for them? Or are they simply "potential missions" that a future President might decide to undertake? Either way, without the President coming out and saying something like, "We choose to go to the Moon." the odds of seeing any of those things happening are slim to none. There's a whole raft of NASA programs which have gotten the chopping block over the years.

Another planned expenditure that may ultimately lower launch costs will be a major overhaul of the Kennedy Space Center. The modernization, funded to the tune of $2 billion is intended to improve the efficiency of both manned and unmanned launches.

1.) Note the use of the weasel word "may" in the first sentence. 2.) If NASA hadn't been getting the short end of the budgetary stick for the past 4 decades then this particular outlay wouldn't be necessary.

NASA will work with the DOE to restart plutonium production for use in power long-distance unmanned vehicles.

The last time NASA put in a request for this, it got turned down (during the Bush 2 era, hardly an anti-nuke President), and even it gets approved tomorrow, it'll be 8 years before we have enough to be able to do anything with it. (Again, this is all because NASA's the red headed stepchild of the government.)

Money is in place to to launch the Mars Science Laboratory rover in the fall of 2011

The question is: Will MSL be ready to launch in 2011? One of the guy's I know at NASA doubts it. He describes MSL as "too big to fail," but many at NASA said the same thing about Constellation too.

they have the funds to give the James Webb Space Telescope a 70 percent chance of launching in 2014

WTF does that even mean? Will the JWST be ready for launch in 2014 or not? If it is, will NASA have the money to do it? (Will there even be a NASA to launch it?)

The big news for near-Earth missions is that NASA will try again with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, which will provide fine-grained monitoring of carbon fluxes from space, allowing us to monitor sources and sinks of greenhouse gasses. The first OCO failed to reach orbit, and nothing else of the same caliber is planned by any other space agency, so the decision to build a second and "refly" it, in NASA parlance, is very good news for geoscience.

The OCO will be joined by Glory, which will track aerosols and black soot (items that can alter the climate, but are poorly monitored) and two other environmental monitoring satellites. These will join 15 Earth-observing systems currently in orbit. As per existing policy, all the data obtained by these systems will be made available to any government or private organization that wishes to use them.

No mention of how much all of this will cost, and a careful avoidance of the fact that all of these missions are at risk because people in Congress don't all believe that climate change is real.

Programs for the identification of near earth objects, which could obviate all worries about climate change were they to become on-Earth objects, will receive another $16 million a year.

And here, another shafting of NASA. $16 million to look out for asteroids on a collision course with Earth. Absolutely no money for R&D on how to divert such a thing were it to be discovered (which sooner or later one will be). IIRC, the figure cited by a NASA scientist that they would need to make sure they spotted everything which posed a risk to the Earth was slightly higher than $16 million, so we're not even doing enough to find the damn things.

Since the dawn of the space age, NASA has been the only way for a human to get to space from within the US. Its problems with the shuttle and work on the ISS have forced it to rely on international partners for manned launch capabilities in recent years, and the Constellation program wouldn't have been ready to supplement Russian launches for several years, even in the most optimistic plans.

I should like to point out that the root of all these problems can be traced directly to the fact that NASA's budget has stayed flat for 4 decades and when you factor in the rate of inflation, NASA's total budget is now roughly equal to what they spent on the unmanned side of things in the 1960s. Not one President, since LBJ, has given NASA a decent budget, and at least one (Nixon) has severely fucked with NASA. The private sector has been touted as manna from heaven and they will somehow "save" NASA from itself. This assumes that all or most of NASA's problems are their own. This isn't the case at all. Certainly some of them are, but many others are caused by a lack of resources and/or meddling by politicians. They don't call it rocket science because its easy, and no matter how good and how efficient the private companies hired to take over from NASA are, they're going to have delays, cost overruns, and accidents. Should we expect that those who've cried out that NASA was a huge waste of money for all these years will somehow be silent when private companies begin having some (if not all) the same problems that NASA's experienced? If believe that, then I've got some beach front property in Arizona I'd like to sell you. I can assure you that at the first sign of trouble all of them will be screaming, "See! Not even the private sector can do it! Its too hard!" Then when the first Chinese astronaut sets foot on the Moon, and everyone else in the world suddenly loses interest in the US and buying its debt, they'll say that America was bankrupted by all the "trillions" (if only) it wasted on NASA.

The heavy lift and orbital assembly technology will be developed without a sweeping vision to support it ("Maybe we'll go to an asteroid at some point" really doesn't cut it in the vision department).

No shit, Sherlock. When Bush I proposed we go back to the Moon and Mars "someday," it didn't exactly inspire Congress to fund NASA to the levels necessary to do this. Without a concrete statement of "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade." you can bet the odds of us going there in this or the next decade to be about the same as those that we had in the previous decade.

R.I.P. NASA Part 1

So, today we are told that NASA's not going back to the Moon, or anywhere else, with their manned rockets.

The space agency's budget would grow to $19 billion in 2011 under the proposed budget released on Monday, with an emphasis on science and less spent on space exploration.

This, of course, is being spun as an "advancement" for the program:

"What this does is open up (space) for more people to be going more places in a way that is not on the back of the taxpayers," NASA's deputy administrator, Lori Garver, told reporters in a conference call.

This is, to be blunt, horseshit. Over the next couple of posts, I will try to show why, no matter what one might think of the Constellation program, this step can only lead to one thing: The end of the US as a spacefaring nation, in both the manned and unmanned fields. Unless there is a substantial change in what is being proposed, by the time the last of the Apollo astronauts has shuffled off this mortal coil, there will be no more NASA.

On the surface, turning over the "routine flights" from Earth to LEO to a private company sounds like a good idea. It sounds so good, that we started doing it in 1995! The idea, of course, was to "fix problems at NASA" and "lower the cost of spaceflight." It has not been a raging success.

First, and foremost, it failed to significantly lower the cost of shuttle launches. Had it done so, there would have been a flurry of activity within NASA to do something with that extra money, since the rule which governs budgets (be they corporate or government) is that if you don't spend all of what they gave you this year, you can expect to get less next year. Any time a large emergency arose, NASA needed special funding to handle the matter, they didn't have the reserve capital to deal with it.

Secondly, and most tragically, it failed to prevent the growth of the various cultural attitudes which led to the loss of Columbia. We will never know, of course, if NASA had retained total control over the shuttle if the loss of Columbia would have occurred or not, but it should be noted that there was less attention and political pressure on NASA at the time of Columbia's final flight, than there was at the time of Challenger's final mission.

Third, United Space Alliance are, wait for it, ultimately the ones in charge of the now cancelled Constellation program! In short, we've had a private company dealing with "routine" missions to LEO and the only thing about it which can be considered a "success" is that they've managed to get NASA to take the rap for what's gone wrong! Woohoo!

Of course, we're told that this time things will be "different." (Why do I hear Bullwinkle saying, "Nothing up my sleeve!" all of a sudden?) I'm sure they will be, just not "better" or "progressive." As of this writing, there hasn't been a test of the resupply rockets which are supposed to enable NASA to meet its obligations towards the ISS until someone, somewhere, comes up with a replacement for the shuttle/Constellation. Of course, if the private company rockets don't work (entirely possible, Space X, one of the companies, had a number of failed launch attempts), then the Russians will have to pick up the slack. I doubt if they're going to be really happy about that.

"We are most concerned by the unpredictability of shuttle launches," RIA quoted Russian mission control flight coordinator Valdimir Solovyov as saying.

The Endeavour shuttle blasted off earlier this month after repeated delays. U.S. space agency NASA said it would hold off launching any more space shuttles until it better understands a problem with the craft's insulation.

Solovyov said the uncertainty about the U.S. launch dates meant Russian rocket staff have had to re-calculate ballistic parameters of flights by the Progress spacecraft, an automated Russian cargo vehicles used for the ISS.

Cheer up, Vladimir! I'm sure some bean counter will come up with the bright idea that since you guys can do it really cheap, there's no point in us Americans doing it at all, so they'll be happy to cut you a check for all that extra work they're going to be expecting of you!

In the next part, I'll be talking about how since airlines have been hugely unprofitable in this country, it seems highly unlikely that a private spaceline is going to be at all profitable. Especially when it only has one customer. (Oh, you think that they're going to get the cost down to where "ordinary" people can afford to go to space soon? I wouldn't hold my breath on it.)

Its Time to Raise Some Hell!

Bad news for NASA, and bad news for America.

NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way.

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are going to continue with their plans to send people to the Moon, which means that the best and brightest minds are going to want to live and work in China. So you can expect all the latest and greatest technological innovations to originate in China, rather than the US. We will quickly be joining Hellenistic Greece and Ancient Rome in the dustbin of history. And Neil Armstrong will be closer to Leif Ericson than Columbus in terms of historical importance.

Well, fuck that!!! The contact page for the White House is here. Drop them a note and let them know that you're upset with this decision, and that you'll not be voting for Obama in '12 because of this. Next, the final shuttle launch is scheduled for September 16th of this year, there needs to be a huge protest at this launch (which is going to have massive amounts of media coverage). Everyone should show up in black (Yes, I know, Florida in the September is not going to be a bit warm, suck on it.) and be just as pissed off as possible.

Anyone interested in protesting at the last shuttle launch feel free to drop me a note at director[at]spaceordie.org

So-Called Science "Reporters"

No, I am not about to complain that the media is biased, that's something I've no interest in discussing. What I'm pissed off about is this piece on Science Daily's website.

The North American Space Agency (NASA) defines life as a "self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution." The scientific theories on the origin of life revolve around two main ideas: one focuses on genetics -- with RNA or DNA replication as an essential condition for Darwinian evolution to take place -- and the other focuses on metabolism.

It should be screamingly obvious as to what's wrong with that paragraph.

I know people often complain that reporters get the facts wrong about technical/scientific matters, and that what seems like an "easy to understand" is actually pretty difficult for someone to grasp if they haven't had 4+ years and X number of years working in the field, but this is not one of those instances. This is a case of someone being a fucking idiot. They could be bothered to look up NASA's definition of what life is, but couldn't spare a second or two to check and see what NASA stands for while they were on the site? Even worse, none of the editors who reviewed the piece noticed the mistake.

How the fuck can we expect to have a society which can intelligently discuss important scientific issues of the day, when the reporters, who are supposed to serve as a conduit between various groups (the public, scientists, government, etc.) can't get the simplest facts right? This is on par with CNN's crawl which claimed that "Columbia was traveling 18 times the speed of light" when it broke apart. I hope someone takes those involved with that story and literally beats the crap out of them. At the very least, that's the kind of mistake which indicates a person has such a fundamental lacking of what the job entails that it would be better for all parties if they were simply fired and told to find a new career. Like asking people if they "want fries with that."

Time is a Fire in Which We All Burn

There is much to talk about as there have been a number of news stories which haven't been prominently featured in the media that indicate we are rapidly losing the window where manned missions to anywhere, much less places like the Moon or Mars, are going to be seen as practical. (I would argue that this makes such things more imperative, but I simply don't have the time.)

I have been working on a number of things which will, hopefully, when they are completed, lay out an inarguable position that the time for us to begin our expansion into space is not only now, but that all other considerations must be considered to be of minor importance.

Regretfully, however, I find myself incredibly pressed for time, at the moment. I was fortunate enough to receive a full scholarship to college, and in order to keep it I must maintain a B average. Were I taking a bunch of "fluff" courses, it would be easy to go to school and continue to post updates regularly. As I'm an engineering major, I am having to slave through some rather difficult math and design courses. This makes it nearly impossible for me to do much of anything other than go to school, study, and work.

This raises a particular problem with the ADD nature of the Internet. If I'm not constantly posting something, then people quickly lose interest. Unfortunately, I can't yet turn this over to anyone else because I haven't fully articulated the position I'm advocating as of yet (and I've not seen anyone else expressing it to the degree that I feel it needs to be articulated). Waiting until I have the time to fully lay everything out runs the risk of my losing the ground I've gained to this point.

So, I have come up with what I hope will be an adequate solution. For some weeks now, I have been roughing out a manifesto of sorts in which I attempt to lay out exactly the reasons why I feel it is so imperative that we begin the effort to colonize Mars immediately. It is incredibly raw, just the thoughts that I have been able to put down using my iPod when I've had a few idle moments. There are, as of yet, no footnotes or citations, though when I'm able to polish it and shape it into a cohesive form, every claim will be extensively cited using reputable sources and not simply pointing to the claims of some tin foil hatted crank on the Internet. What I will be posting are merely excerpts from the rough draft of this work, they should be seen as a signpost pointing towards the direction I am aiming for and should not, in anyway, be mistaken for that final direction. Think of it as one looking over Darwin's shoulder while he was making notes on the Beagle and not reading his Origin of Species.

While I hope to be able to correct spelling mistakes and other minor errors before I make a post, I am certain that this will not always be the case and that some mistakes will slip through. Hopefully, however, there will be enough of a glimmer of what I'm driving at for people to comprehend my comments. If someone wishes to assist in the endeavour, then I am more than willing to discuss the matter with them.

America Matters Only if NASA Matters to America

A recent piece by Michael Mealling asks if the suggestions before the Augustine Commission could rival the dawn of the internet.

Prior to 1993, the National Science Foundation ran the Internet as an exclusive tool for university and government research (commercial speech was completely banned from the Internet prior to 1991). The NSF then decided to turn over the operation of the Internet to the private sector. Just two years later, Netscape’s IPO set records for first day gains. Despite the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000, the Internet industry has been one of the largest economic drivers of the last 15 years.

The suggestions coming from the Augustine Commission are somewhat reminiscent of NSF’s decision. By relinquishing its domination of low Earth orbit and partnering with commercial providers for beyond low Earth orbit infrastructure, NASA can better accomplish its exploration goals and foster a whole new industry. While we won’t see a space startup in every garage the way we did with Internet startups, the returns for using and developing space resources can be very interesting.

It raises some interesting possibilities, but it doesn't mention a much greater issue that is going to become crucial, not only for the US, but the world as a whole.

The fastest growing economies in the world presently belong to a bloc of nations commonly referred to as BRIC, comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Brazil and Russia's economies are on the rise because of their ties to energy. In Brazil's case, its because of sugar cane ethanol, in Russia's, its because of their oil and gas reserves. Brazil's economy can expect to keep growing as the switch to renewable sources of energy intensifies around the world. Russia's economy may not.

While it is unlikely that our demand for fossil fuels will decrease any time soon (as developed nations switch to "green" energy, developing nations industrialize by whatever means necessary, and take up any "slack" that might be introduced into the market by developed nations cutting back on fossil fuels), it is far from certain that Russia will be able to continue its rapid growth. It currently lacks the infrastructure to export much of is energy production outside of Europe (a Europe which is rapidly trying to wean itself from fossil fuels, not only for environmental reasons, but for fear of a repeat of Russia cutting off its exports during its recent dispute with Ukraine over payments). Building up that infrastructure will be costly and take time (its also hindered by geography, with warm water ports being a bit of a problem). Too much time, and Russia will find itself with few customers for its fossil fuel exports. Additionally, its widely believed that the Russians are not properly reinvesting in their existing operations, allowing them to crumble. Which means that as demand increases, Russia will be forced to allow international companies to take over those operations, if Russia's to have any energy exports at all, thus cutting out much of the profits that have been propping up their economy.

Russia's economy (and Brazil's to some extent) is rather "thin." There's only a single point driving it, that of the energy sector. This, as should be obvious to those of us living in the US, is a Really Bad Idea^TM. If that sector has a slowdown, or as in the case of the US, where the economy was driven by the financial sector, completely collapses, your economy quickly winds up on the wrong side of the shitter. Without large scale investment in other areas, its highly likely that Russia will be back begging for help, as it was in the wake of the Fall of Communism.

In the end, however, neither Russia nor Brazil really matter, no offense meant to those nations. China and India both have populations which dwarf the combined populations of Russia and Brazil. As the income levels in China and India rise, they will have the largest economies on the planet. By 2020, it is estimated that the middle class will be some 700 million people. More than double the population size of US. (That date of 2020 is also important for other reasons I'll get to in a moment.)

I am going to ignore the figures about India (and its really only a question of who gets to the largest economy slot first: India or China) for one reason. India's a democracy. If the US can't be the largest economy on the planet, but the number one slot is held by a democratic nation, I'm content with that. Democratic nations tend to give at least token respect for human rights. China? Not so much.

All of this matters, because the nation with the largest economy on the planet, gets to dictate a lot of things. Some of them are rather subtle, such as scan rates for TVs, others of them can have far reaching consequences, as when a country signs an economic pact with another country. While the US has done its fair share of propping up less than pleasant regimes, we did, at least, raise the issue of human rights within those countries. China is unlikely to do that.

With global attention focused on China, what reason will there be for the world to pay much, if any, attention to the US when it objects to a human rights violation in some part of the world? One reason will be because we've got a bunch of nuclear weapons, but let's face it, do we really want that to be the reason? That puts us at the level of Russia in the days after Communism, where people only worried about keeping tabs on nuclear material and the folks involved with it. Nor is the lure of freedom enough to keep immigrants coming to the US in large numbers. Already, thousands, if not tens of thousands, Indians and Chinese (many who were born here in the US) are leaving the US to settle in China and India because they see the greater economic opportunities which those nations are providing.

Since the US cannot hope to compete in terms of economic size, we're left with really only one choice: Technology. The US must lead the world in technology, and it cannot be only in one or two areas, but it has to be in every area. Space exploration, and specifically, manned space exploration is the definition of "cutting edge." The spin offs from that touch every aspect of our lives, in a myriad of different forms, and it is the only one to drive all those areas at once.

Remember that 2020 date? Here's why it matters: Because that's the date NASA is supposed to return humans to the Moon. And right now, that's not going to happen unless funding levels for NASA are increased. To make it happen, NASA needs to have its budget boosted to at least $25 billion/yr. Ideally, what should happen is that NASA's budget should be immediately bumped up to $25 billion, with incremental increases given to their budget so that by the time 2020 rolls around, its double present levels. Neither of those things are going to happen, however, unless people start screaming at their elected representatives. And I mean screaming. NASA is the red-headed step-child of the US government, and people think that money spent their is a waste because they're too stupid to realize the impact that it has on their lives. If we want a decent space program, if we want the US to still matter in the coming decades, then we have simply no choice but put the national focus on the space program and keep it there, like our very lives depend upon it, because they surely do.

How a Manned Mission to Mars Can Help With Health Care in the US

Right now, everyone is obsessed with the high cost of health care, and there is much weeping and wailing about the costs and how to solve the problem. It sounds absurd to think that sending humans to Mars could help with this, but there is a connection.

One of the requirements for sending humans so far away from home is going to be a small, compact, medical diagnostic system. If any of the astronauts becomes ill, they can't run to a doctor for treatment, they need to have a way of running all the standard tests on the mission. A med unit would solve this problem.

It would also be a huge benefit here on Earth. Such devices are slowly being developed for Third World nations, however, the potential profits from sales to those nations would be rather small, so the amount of R&D being devoted to them is minuscule. Furthermore, since the primary application of those devices is seen as being in the Third World, most Americans are unaware of research efforts in that area.

Now to the debate on health care in the US, one of the issues being raised is how much it all costs. An automated system, which works well enough to perform standard diagnostic tests millions of miles away from home, or in a developing nation, is certainly capable of replacing a doctor visit when one has something like the flu.

Since it is highly likely that any manned mission to Mars will be closely followed by the general public (not merely in the US, but all over the world), astronauts using a med unit will attract a great deal of attention. This will inspire both individuals and insurance companies to bring pressure to bear and make these machines available to the general public.

No doubt there will be considerable opposition to the widespread use of the devices from groups like the AMA, but with the combined weight of the general public and the insurance lobby, it seems almost certain that this will fail. A side benefit, besides lowering the cost of health care for the general public, the greater demand for the machines will lower the cost of each individual unit, making it easier for developing nations to purchase more of the devices.

Granted, it may not immediately occur to people that such a device could take the place of their doctor for most routine visits, but it certainly will occur to someone in the insurance industry, and if an astronaut says something like he wants one of those things when he gets back home, many more people will pick up on the idea.

If the units are relatively ubiquitous, and having a series of tests run costs a modest amount, like say $5, not only will people be inclined to use them when they know they are sick, but if they're at the pharmacy (or somewhere else one might expect to find one of the machines), they're liable to give it a whirl, simply for entertainment value. If the machine spits out a result indicating that they have a potentially serious condition, even though they haven't begun to display any symptoms, the machine might well be a lifesaver for them. Many cancers and other illnesses are easily treatable if caught early enough.

Additionally, by collecting data (stripped of any personal identifiers to help preserve privacy) on large groups of people, epidemiologists can better track the spread of disease, as well as being alerted to potential outbreaks of new strains of flu, or other diseases far earlier than they are now.

Doctors will still be needed to oversee treatment of a number of different illnesses, as well as handling such procedures as surgery or setting broken bones, but the machines will reduce much of their workload, enabling them to spend more time with each patient that they see. Additionally, the diagnostic machines will help individuals better manage their health, in conjunction with their doctor. They will be able to do more frequent monitoring of their health, and this will enable the doctor to better adjust the treatment based on more frequent test results.

Again, there are those who will argue that none of this requires a manned mission to Mars to happen, but this ignores the reality of human behaviour. The need for such devices, in the developing world at least, is great, and probably obvious to the people who provide medical care in those areas. It is not, however, obvious to enough folks with the necessary resources to design and build such a machine. Nor is it readily apparent that such devices could benefit those in the developed world, who have more or less ready access to medical care. Putting it up on the world's radar by showing it being used on a manned Mars mission will drive home the fact that everyone on the planet could benefit from such machines being readily available.