O No, not again: The Moon vs. Mars

So far, early signs of the Biden Administration’s likely space policy are encouraging. Moon rock now sits in the Oval Office and NASA’s Review Team was recently filled with space professionals full of credentials and respect. I believe the new administration will take a real place and avoid the one-sided, indifferent analyzes that have so often created false choices and led to sub-optimal programming results for NASA. The most popular of these deceptive dichotomies are the battles over traditional vs commercial vendors, robotic vs human exploration, science vs exploration and the popular Moon vs Mars battle. The last National Space Council and the former NASA leadership team wisely pursued a “full-space” approach by burying these artificial conflicts and rejecting the policy constraints they were pursuing. means. I am confident that President Biden’s space team will also see the wisdom in a holistic space policy.

However, bad ideas die hard. The Wall Street Journal recently published the Battle of Moon vs Mars in an edition entitled, “For, NASA It Should Be Mars or Bust.” Freelance writer David W. Brown portrayed NASA’s Artemis lunar program as a futile attempt to reconstruct Apollo and said that only by sending government astronauts directly to Mars, the group can do anything with achieve value. Brown wrote, “Donald Trump rejected Mars’ plan, opting instead to reach the Moon with Artemis, but NASA still says Mars is on its agenda. Brown’s suggestions are dangerous, and his facts are wrong. Although the Journal published a short letter from me in response, I feel that the record needs to be completely corrected, in case any policymakers accept that scathing thinking.

On the morning of June 7, 2019 as chair of the International Conference for Space Development, I introduced NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine to an overflow room at the Sheraton Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Minutes after the Administrator outlined NASA’s bold plan to return to the Moon, President Trump interrupted the conversation through one of his bad reputations Tweets saying we should talk about Mars.

Those unfamiliar with the context generally replied, “What was that about? ”Whatever Trump’s twitter legacy may have been, the White House was bold in its space record and clear about getting Americans to Mars. The people who worked to develop and implement this plan were capable and hardworking. The program won bipartisan support in Congress and NASA received its first major budget increase in thirty years.

I joined NASA’s Group Review Team in December 2016. That team was made up of qualified space professionals, scientists, industry representatives, academics and an astronaut. Our job was to dive deep into the organization’s plans, programs and budgets and report back to the incoming administration with comments and suggestions. We all had different priorities and perspectives, but we all came to agree on one thing; America must return to the Moon immediately and permanently. The lunar effort would improve technical, economic, political and international support for the study of Mars.

We also agreed to continue the public-private partnerships established during the Bush and Obama administrations. Last year, the SpaceX Crew Dragon was the first new human spaceflight system in America in four decades. The Commercial Crew program, which started wisely under the tenure of NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, supported the development of that system in addition to Starliner Boeing, which will fly this year.

If our team had said, “Who needs Orbit on the Low Earth or the Moon, have we been there?” and we suggested that NASA prepare a flagship and footprint trip to Mars we would have chosen Brown’s “Or Bust” option. It would be tantamount to recommending to President Jefferson that he send Lewis and Clark to Antarctica before he falls to the American west. Furthermore, we knew that a multi-decade expensive program without ROI would be detrimental to taxpayers and would not communicate with our international partners against the next administration. This could have ended U.S. human spacelights and closed the scientific, economic, and strategic resources of a lunar space to an increasingly authoritarian and bellicose China.

The Vice President accepted the recommendations of the movement team and assumed the personal leadership of the revived National Space Council (NSpC). The NSpC is an organization that coordinates cabinet-level officers and leaders of incumbent organizations. The NSpC also included a star-studded Consumer Advisory Group full of top government and space industry officials. UAG members included astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Pam Melroy along with officials from Boeing, Lockheed, Blue Origin, SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and other companies. Coordinating this powerful council was Executive Secretary Scott Pace of the George Washington University Space Policy Institute. Pace led the development of a very sensible National Space Policy.

I have been in contact with the leadership of the NSpC over the past four years. As a nominee for NASA ‘s Chief Financial Officer, I recently received briefings on the progress of almost all NASA programs and had the opportunity to ask NASA leaders difficult questions. In my testimony in the Senate I expressed my confidence that the agency ‘s current efforts include America’ s scientific, economic, and national security interests in space. NASA has devised a multifaceted and affordable plan to put the first American woman on the Moon, develop a sustainable lunar presence, build a space economy, and preparing to study Mars. Artemis embodies our significant investment in the Space Launch System rocket and in the Orion deep space capsule with commercially developed habitats and landlords. The program is augmented by commercial launch services, communications, and In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) tools. The Commercial Lunar Payrolls (CLPS) program is bringing NASA’s Science Mission Steering Group into Artemis.

International partnerships are vital to the success of these operations. Nine spacecraft countries have signed bilateral agreements with NASA under Artemis Accords. They have supported NASA’s open and collaborative approach to sustainable research. These boxes lay the foundation for the development of lunar facilities that will benefit everyone on Earth. They will establish a practical implementation of the Outer Space Treaty and provide a safe and transparent environment to enable exploration, scientific discovery and commercial development in space. The countries involved in these treaties will use the Moon as a test in resolving important issues related to scientific cooperation and peaceful economic competition. The Accords cover issues such as spacecraft registration, emergency assistance, heritage site protection, orbital debris disposal and space resource movement.

NASA has a bold and effective plan for getting to Mars. It begins by returning to the Moon, steadily. Artemis is a program that is technically feasible, economically and politically affordable. It builds on investments already made by the organization. It benefits from private capital in our innovative commercial space companies. It provides for near-term economic development in space, creating thousands of great new jobs. It will engage with like-minded countries in a helpful and progressive international effort and lay the foundation for cooperation in our next big adventure: Mars.

NASA’s Biden Group Review Team seems to have suggested that the President make a significant contribution to Earth Sciences and Education, but I suspect NASA will stay the course on Artemis and I hope the NSpC continues as well. America will come to Mars, through the Moon, and humanity will become richer and more knowledgeable to us after that.