Hattix

So being the local astronomy type, I’m often asked what I think of NASA’s Ares project. The aim is to put men back on the Moon and eventually to Mars. It’s the same as Apollo, a complete joke that we’ll fly and forget. Strong words, I’ll have to justify those.

In the early stages of Apollo, many within NASA strongly believed that the eventual aim was to build a lunar residency, a full time base on the Moon. Automated versions of the Lunar Module (LM) were kicked around and a smaller rocket to launch it, a step down from the Saturn V, since the Command and Service Modules wouldn’t be required to support human habitation for a week, just to be big cargo containers. After President Kennedy’s vision was realised, when Armstrong stepped out of the Tranquility Base LM, the political climate had shifted remarkably.

The support for Apollo petered off, even a few voices in NASA said “Okay, we’ve done it, let’s not tempt fate until someone gets killed.” Even Congressmen asked why it cost 40 million dollars to design and build a “golf cart”, grossly misunderstanding that said “golf cart” had to be built from scratch to operate in an airless environment with absolute reliability, it had to be tested, astronauts trained with it and by then, that 40 million was looking to be a very good deal; The Ford Mustang of the same vintage cost twice that to develop and design while modern cars cost even more, even if adjusted for inflation.

What started as a bold plan for long term lunar habitation became ten missions and finally only seven were flown, three of them fully built and ready but without the political support and national bravery to send them into the unknown.

Ares will be exactly the same thing. A few training and testing missions to the Moon, maybe two or three to Mars, then it’ll all be nudged under the carpet and referenced only in history books, paradoxically mentioning ‘national pride’ when the lack of that pride condemned the programme to history.

Ares might not even happen at all. While the military could afford quite easily to spend two billion dollars every ten hours in killing Iraqis, the budget for NASA just isn’t there. We’re still at the stage Apollo was at when they were picturing that automated LM and long term lunar bases, the stage where great things will happen, the stage before financial commitments are cut and political support evaporates.