{"id":10705,"date":"2015-06-02T15:24:46","date_gmt":"2015-06-02T19:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=10705"},"modified":"2015-06-02T15:24:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-02T19:24:46","slug":"kickstarting-a-plan-for-an-affordable-route-to-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=10705","title":{"rendered":"Kickstarting a plan for an affordable route to Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rand Simberg<\/a> opens a Kickstarter campaign to fund a study and report on how to\u00a0reach Mars within the\u00a0budgets expected for \u00a0NASA for the next couple of decades:\u00a0Clearing The Roadblock To Mars<\/em> by Rand Simberg – Kickstarter<\/a><\/p>\n

Since the end of Apollo, NASA’s human spaceflight program has been more jobs program than space program. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on it in current-year dollars, with little currently to show for it other than a space station that we share with Europe, Japan and Russia, and for which we are currently reliant on the Russians to access.<\/em><\/p>\n

The latest, and most blatant and egregious phenomenon of a NASA program created primarily for the sake of the jobs it provides is the Space Launch System aka the Senate Launch System<\/a>\u00a0(and, to a lesser extent, the Orion Crew Capsule). Proponents of it claim that it is not possible to get humans to Mars, or beyond low earth orbit at all, without them. But most independent analyses (and even internal NASA studies) indicate that not only are they unnecessary for that purpose, but they are chewing up all the budget that could be going to things that are\u00a0necessary, but are not being funded at all. NASA propaganda is that SLS\/Orion are “stepping stones on the road to Mars” but, in reality, they are exactly the opposite; they are a roadblock.<\/em><\/p>\n