Once upon a time, A guy named Robert Zubrin wrote a great book, called “A Case For Mars”. He outlined a simple plan, called Mars Direct, where two missions could be launched. One would be a supply craft, that would land a bunch of supplies for a crew to use to live on for a while. The other would be a crew canister itself, to land on Mars, near the supply craft. He outlined what seemed like a simple and elegant plan to send people to Mars, and bring them back again.
Then we went through some changes over the years, since around 1996 when that book was written. The Shuttle program was discontinued. We relied on Russian Soyuz to get into space. Until finally, SpaceX came long with their crew dragon. The Crew dragon is great for what it does. But it can’t lift heavy components like the Shuttle did. So Elon & Co are working on their Starship heavy lifter. But it has blown up several times, and is nowhere near ready for prime time. And the Chinese are making slow but steady, regular progress in space, constructing their own complete space station. They are planning on collaborating with the Russians on another space station, and even a Moon Base.
The other day on some TV show, up pops Mr. Zubrin again, spouting some nonsense about using a Star-boat, carried inside a Starship, to bring a crew to Mars and back. No more simple, direct plan. Now it involves multiple ships, refueling, stations along the way, etc. In my humble opinion, a real big mess. I partly blame NASA and the subcontractors, for repeatedly failing to meet targets and get the Artemis booster and other components built and launched. Nothing but huge cost overruns and delay, delay, delay. So the government is forced again and again, to turn to Musk for help.
What can Elon Musk do that NASA cannot? And why is this? What changes could NASA make to achieve the same level of success as Musk & Co?
In any case, it is sad to me to see Mr. Zubrin reduced to parroting some ridiculous space-boat scheme, when at one time he had a stellar plan to get people to Mars. (Disclaimer: Zubrin is a respected scientist with degrees, who has worked for Lockheed, etc, in the past. I have a lot of respect for the man, who is also a well-regarded author. Was just chagrined when I saw him in the aforementioned video clip. Mars Direct was a much more impressive plan.)
In any case, it doesn’t matter – now we are going to try and beat the Chinese and land people on the Moon again. Where is a Werner Von Braun when you need him? Maybe India will beat us all back to the moon. Lol. Thanks for reading my rant.
