Amid the swagger and attention captured by commercial space firms at , the old guard is quick to show it has grand plans of its own — for the red planet.
“We’re closer than we’ve ever been to sending astronauts. ‘Boots on Mars,’ we call it,” Dava Newman, NASA’s deputy administrator, said in a sit-down interview with The Denver Post.
Newman is promoting NASA’s which could launch round-trips to the red planet in the next two decades. Today’s university freshmen could be the Mars astronauts of tomorrow, she said.
To reach that goal will take time, and the tasks might be arduous, she said. NASA and its partners need to solve issues related to radiation, in-space propulsion, fuel depots, life support, landing on another planet and launching off of it again.
“We really need to demonstrate less Earth dependence,” she said.
Newman said that after 15 years of work on the International Space Station, and with all the research and technology development, NASA is well on its way to helping humanity become interplanetary.
And Colorado, she said, is playing and will continue to play a pivotal role in those endeavors.
Colorado companies are involved in all stages of the process — among them , the , and Boulder-based
Firms jumping into commercial space also help with their focus on opportunities closer to Earth, allowing NASA to focus on farther-out exploration, she said.
Speaking with exuberance about her “second-favorite planet,” Newman said the Mars efforts have bipartisan support, but it’s a matter of keeping the public interested, as well.
“It captures everyone’s imagination,” she said.
In an election year, it’s solid policy for a government agency to stress its own importance and drum up public support, said Marco Caceres, senior analyst and director of space studies for Teal Group Corp., a provider of aerospace and defense market analysis.
And when NASA pitches a vision that won’t become reality for decades, it takes even more convincing.
“The idea of going to Mars is a long-term vision that really needs to be sustained over a period of numerous administrations,” he said.
During the past quarter-century, the space program has endured stops and starts as every administration has wanted to put its own stamp on the program, he said. Over the course of the next 20 years, there could be another five administrations.
“NASA doesn’t want to (promise) something unless they believe they have the money to do it,” Caceres said. “It really is an effort to continue to build public interest, particularly at a time when the private efforts are gaining so much interest.”
The rise of commercial space presents a dilemma for NASA, he said. At one end, when private companies take over the work of supplying the space station, that frees up cash for the agency
on the order of $1 billion to $2 billion a year.
“But soon either Boeing (through Centennial’s United Launch Alliance) or SpaceX or both will be launching astronauts to the space station … then the excitement switches away from NASA even more,” Caceres said. “Now you’re seeing private industry dominate the headlines. At some point, the public starts to wonder, ‘What is NASA good for again?’ “
To get to Mars and do more than take landscape pictures, it’ll take far more than NASA’s $18 billion budget, he said.
“You can’t even come close,” he said.
Alicia Wallace: 303-954-1939, awallace@denverpost.com or @aliciawallace
