Planetary News: Mars (2005)
New NASA Administrator Michael Griffin Cites Planetary Society Report in First Press Conference
20 April 2005
On Tuesday, April 19, less than a week after his confirmation by the Senate, Michael Griffin attended his first press conference as NASA Administrator. In answering questions from reporters, Griffin took the opportunity to outline his vision for NASA in the coming years.
One of the top issues Griffin addressed was the feasibility of a human mission to Mars as part of the administration’s “Moon, Mars, and Beyond” initiative. In response to a question from an Orlando Sentinel reporter, Griffin said: “Everything that I know to date about what it will cost us to do a Mars mission . . . is summarized in a Planetary Society report that Owen Garriott, an old and good friend, and I chaired on behalf of the Planetary Society with numerous coauthors.”
The report, entitled “Extending Human Presence into the Solar System,” was commissioned by the Planetary Society in 2004 in an effort to assess the feasibility of a human mission to Mars within reasonable budgetary constraints. It concluded that a staged approach, focused on developing a capable Crew Exploration Vehicle and increasing existing heavy launch capabilities. This would allow for human missions to the Moon and Mars beginning around 2020. In addition to team leaders Griffin and Owen K. Garriott, the authors included William Claybaugh, John Garvey, Thomas D. Jones, Charles Kohlhase, Bruce McCandless II, William O'Neal, and Paul A. Penzo.
The following is a transcript of Griffin’s exchange with the reporter:
Reporter: Tammy Lytelle from The Orlando Sentinel. Looking down the road, have you had any time to think about the economic feasibility of the Mars portion of the president's space vision, and given the constraints that Congress is dealing with how you afford up?
Griffin: Well, I'm on record on more than one occasion of saying that I don't think missions to Mars are unaffordable with the budgets that we have if they're utilized appropriately. Everything that I know to date about what it will cost us to do a Mars mission, frankly in concert with colleagues, is summarized in a Planetary Society report that Owen Garriott, an old and good friend, and I chaired on behalf of the Planetary Society with numerous coauthors. That report included a section on costing.
The costing analysis was done at a very high level. It was basically weight-based costing which at this point, because we don't have mission architectures to point to, nor do we have specific designs, nor would it be appropriate in this time to have specific designs because we're not going to Mars next week or next year, the costing analysis that we've done was based on--on order of magnitude weight estimates that would be required as well as assuming certain productivity gains that have been characteristic of the U.S. economy as a whole.
Now, that's a very labyrinthine statement, sorry. What it adds up to, though, is I think we have a pretty good first order effort of what it takes to go to Mars, and that estimate is summarized in that report. And, frankly, that is the best knowledge I have of what it ought to take if we do it right.
The answer came out to be that in present-day dollars you could probably go to Mars for about what we spent on Apollo over--and talking about Apollo now over the total period of its performance. There is no need to go to Mars in an eight-year period, eight years and two months the way that Apollo was done. It is a--as President Bush said--a journey not a race. So I view that at a few billion dollars a year, spaced out over a number of years, voyages to Mars are imminently doable, and I would urge you to download that report from the website because I don't have any better thinking to offer you than what I put into that report. I wish I did. It would be nice to be smarter, but that's the best I got right now.
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