From Kennedy To Obama: A dream of manned space exploration

Men on Mars by 2030?

Echoing President John F. Kennedy's 1962 speech, given at Rice University in Houston, Texas, where he challenged the US to go to the Moon not because (it was) easy, but because (it was) hard, President Barack Obama laid out his goals to send astronauts to Mars and return them safely to Earth.

Speaking at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the president outlined his new policy and goal for the US space agency. It is a welcome surprise to both NASA and those who thought the President had handicapped the space agency by making major cuts in the US 2011 budget, such as the cancelling of the Constellation rocket program and plans to return men to the Moon by 2020.

However President Obama looks to make up for that now by throwing down the gauntlet to send astronauts to orbit the planet Mars by the mid-2030s and then back to Earth. Anyone familiar with American space history can see the parallels between Obama's challenge to send men to Mars and President Kennedy's to "landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth by decade's end."

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In his speech, President Obama stated that he aimed to give NASA the funding they needed to achieve this aim, including an extra USD$6 billion over the next five years.This will be a welcome relief to the agency whose cancelled plans to return to the Moon may have saved $250 billion, but severely hurt NASA's future goals.

"By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space," he told his audience in Florida. "So we'll start - we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history."

And then he added: "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."

Landing on Mars

Despite President Obama being compared to President Kennedy for his oratory skills, his space vision has not been equally praised... despite the President being a self-confessed science fiction fan.

His decision to scrap the Aries rockets for the Constellation Project was a big blow to NASA and an unpopular move in many arenas. At the time, the President said the project was "on an unsustainable path, costing too much money and taking too long to develop."

He wasn't wrong. The project had been in development for most of the past decade and had seen over US$9 billion spent on it.

Instead the President gave NASA US$5.9 billion over five years in exchange for working with private companies to build, launch and operate their own spacecraft and carry US astronauts to their destinations.

At the time, Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) said, "This isn't a step backwards. I think the step backwards was trying to recreate the Moon landings of 40 years ago using largely yesterday's technology, instead of game-changing new technology that can take us further, faster and more afford-ably into space."

And it looks like that is exactly what the President is proposing.

Getting to Mars

While the outline of getting to Mars is not fully decided, aspects of the mission will utilise commercial companies who the President still wishes to see transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station (whose operation will be extended from 2016 until at least 2020).

However there was a surprise in his speech - the Orion crew capsule, that was set to be carried by the Ares Rocket as part of the Constellation Project was mentioned as being utilised in getting to Mars, however not as the main craft. Instead, the Orion would be parred back to a simpler version of the ship designed to act as a "lifeboat" at the International Space Station, which would no doubt be used as a possible docking/refuelling stop for any mission to the red planet.

Instead the new mode of transport to Mars would be "a new heavy-lift rocket" that President Obama said would begin development no later "than 2015". However, rather then relying on the liquid hydrogen rockets of the past, the President said that it must contain new propulsion technologies. "Mimicking the rockets of the past was not an option", he explained.

"The bottom line is: nobody is more committed to manned spaceflight, the human exploration of space, than I am. But we've got to do it in a smart way; we can't keep doing the same old things as before."

So NASA, dust off the blackboard and getting working. You have two decades to come up with sub-light speed. Get to it.

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Timon Singh

Timon Singh is a graduate of Liverpool University where he received a degree in Social and Economic History. He has previously worked for BBC Magazines on BBC Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, the publication for the popular genealogy show.

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