Main Engine Cut Off - T+59: Jake Robins

Episode Date: September 7, 2017

Jake Robins of the WeMartians Podcast joins me to discuss the state and future of the Mars exploration program, lean sample return, and more. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 18 executive producers—Kris, Mike, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, and four anonymous—and 69 other supporters on Patreon. WeMartians Podcast - WeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to Mars WeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | Twitter WeMartians 029 - A Teenage Rover (feat. Mike Seibert) Mars Exploration Program, Thomas H. Zurbuchen, NASA SMD Associate Administrator, Presentation to National Academies (PDF, 1.9MB) NASA proposes rapid Mars sample return architecture - SpaceNews.com NASA considers kicking Mars sample return into high gear | The Planetary Society A future comes into focus for the Mars Exploration Program | The Planetary Society Space Policy Edition #16: NASA's Flagship Missions: Are They Worth It? | The Planetary Society Powering Science: NASA’s Large Strategic Science Missions | The National Academies Press Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Buy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off Shop Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Jake, thanks for joining me. Welcome back. It's been like a year since ISC, right? Too long. That was almost exactly a year ago. Yeah, I think it was late September. Is that what it was? So that's a long time. What's going on? What's been going on?

Big week, big Mars week. Lots of Mars stuff going on. Biggest Mars week in like months, I would say. Yeah, I guess from a NASA perspective. Well, for like future perspective. Yeah, yeah. Some news finally, right? Something to latch onto and write about and have a discussion about.

That's good to see. So it was the National Academies Committee. There's a long name. Committees Review. Yeah, I can't even remember the name. Is there an official title? I don't think there is. I think it's just a review of the decadal survey for the National Academies of Science,

Engineering, and Medicine presented by NASA along those lines. Yeah. So this is, we're halfway through of the, what is it, 2011, 2012 to 2021? What's the date? 2013 to 2022. That's the, I think it's the second decadal survey they've done for planetary science. So we're halfway through. This is like check in, see where we're at, and then a little bit of figure out what's next? Or is that kind of more hypothetical? Yeah. So I mean, basically, just to provide the context, every 10 years, NASA gathers all

of the scientists in the community who have kind of a stake in where they send missions and what scientific priorities they're going to be after. And they make them do a report through the National Academies. So it's sort of, you know, third party. It has that, you know, that oversight kind of perspective from it. And, you know, they do one for every branch of NASA science. So you get planetary, you get astrophysics, heliophysics, and earth sciences.

So they lay out, this is what we want to do for the next 10 years. These are, you know, as scientists, these are the things we want to happen is that the data we want to get and the missions we want to send. And that's their recommendation to NASA. And then NASA generally uses that as a kind of a, you know, a roadmap for planning their strategic missions for the next 10 years. you know, a roadmap for planning their strategic missions for the next 10 years. So this time around, we've got a lot of missions going on right now. But the biggest thing, well, the biggest thing out of the decadal survey was Mars sample return is the number one priority.

Sacrifice whatever you need to make that happen, which given the trajectory, you wouldn't necessarily know that that was the message out of the decadal survey, because it seems like pretty tepid planning in regards to Mars sample return. But this time, all of the future-looking stuff was really focused on Mars sample return, and specifically a leaner version than they proposed, or than they worked out, I guess, originally. They had an original idea for this three three part mission where we collect samples, then we go get them and then we return them. They've got some new plans for lean Mars sample return. Can you explain to us what that means in a general kind of architecture standpoint?

Yeah. So I mean, so you mentioned that this is, you know, was the big priority and I kind of want to just highlight that. So I went back to review the report again, the decadal survey, just to see how the verbiage was and it was literally like underline bold, this is our number one priority of all the large strategic missions. If you can only do one Mars sample return is the one we want, we will sacrifice Europa, we will sacrifice Venus. Everything we want. At certain points, they were even going to sacrifice the rest of Cassini for budgetary reasons. They were prioritizing things clearly Mars first in a lot of ways. Yes. It's a loaded term.

I shouldn't say Mars first. I'll take it. I don't mind it. But yeah, they were saying, hey, if we could save $200 million ending Cassini three years early, then we could we would do that, too, if we were if we were stuck with it. So back in 2011, which is when this report was written, it affects 2013 onward for 10 years, but it was written a couple of years before that. Back at that time, they outlined very basically like it's the like you said, three components,

right? So you have a rover that lands collects samples and then deposits them on the surface and then you have a intermediate mission which lands picks up those samples and then rockets them into mars orbit that's a verb and then the third mission rockets them as a verb rockets them yeah yeah yeah patent pending um and then the third mission was maybe like an orbiter that would rendezvous in Mars orbit and then return to Earth to deliver the sample. So that was kind of their notional three part mission. And this update halfway through is fundamentally not that different. The same three missions are in their plan. But when you say that they've gone against this lean architecture, what they're really talking about is ways to sort of do it faster, which always saves money because you have fewer operational costs. And then they also want to really leverage commercial and international partners. So that's kind of a way that they can bring extra revenue into it, not revenue, but extra funding to pay for it and then get it done

sooner so that it's not on the books for so long. Yeah, you're hitting on the first response I had in my head was, okay, so it's the same plan. We're just skipping the communications orbiter that was notioned previously that they would need a different communications orbiter to handle those three missions. Because Mars mars 2020 which is the next nasa rover to head up there in 2020 has this like whole sample caching system built into it and that's in fact like the number one priority of that mission is to cache samples for future collection and to this point it had just been like i will leave them out there we'll we'll get back to it sometime they kind of left that pretty wide open.

So that's what, when I first read everything coming out of the National Candidates Review, I was like, okay, this is just accelerating it a couple of years by skipping the communications orbiter, the thought being we have enough infrastructure there to cover a sped up mission in some way. Is that the overall gist? Yeah. So there's a lot of concern right now because the Mars exploration program sort of slowed down. I mean, in its early days, it was really chugging out orbiters and landers and Mars scout missions and all these things to, you know, every launch window they wanted to send

something. It's kind of slowed down a little bit. So there's a lot of concern that the assets that they have at Mars in orbit. So this is the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This is Mars Odyssey. And then there's some backup capabilities in the newest orbiter, Maven, from NASA, as well as the European one, ExoMars. So they're looking at these assets and then they're kind of mapping it out over time and saying, OK, well, if Mars 2020 launches in 2020 and lands in 2021 and gets all of the samples cached by 22, 23, 24, you know, these assets are going to be old. There's maybe no guarantee that they'll even still be around. Like if something happens, then we could potentially, you know, be stuck with a flagship mission like Mars 2020 on the surface with very limited capabilities to actually send any data home. So NEMO or the next Mars orbiter, this new one you're talking about, was sort of the idea to say before we send the sample return retrieval, let's put a new asset there. It's like a dedicated communications orbiter.

We can leverage all the new technologies to stream all the bits as fast as possible. And, you know, it would be helpful in that way. So this lean architecture has cut that out. And it's kind of an interesting play. And I think it sort of underlines the whole strategy of this architecture. So I don't know where you want to start with that, but there's quite a bit to unpack as to why they chose to go that way. So the first thing, maybe as you break all the glasses on your desk and potentially destroy your computer, the first thing you were saying is that there's some backup capabilities on the other missions that have been there that are in orbits that are not necessarily that useful to communications, but hey, there's stuff going to Mars, so let's slap a UHF package on there. And I don't think at this point that NASA would let

anything head to Mars without giving them a package to fly there. That seems like standard issue is, hey, we'll help you out maybe with deep space network stuff or something like that to put some sort of communications package. And who knows, that could have been part of what they were working with SpaceX on, you know, because they said no funds exchange, but we'll help you out in some ways. So that seems to be their strategy as a fallback is anything that goes to Mars, let's slap a communications package on it, and we'll figure out how to use it later, you know, whatever orbit it ends up in. Then the next part is that they are kind of following the lead of the decadal survey by doubling down on sample return at

the expense maybe of future infrastructure at Mars. So saying this is the number one priority. Let's stop thinking about, you know, missions 10, 20 years down the line, and let's just get this one done first before we go wherever. And then I think what you're alluding to is how can we augment the infrastructure at Mars in different ways than we've done in the past? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So NASA's done the smart thing by sticking these,

I think they're called Electra antennas on every mission. So ExoMars got one for free. They stuck one on Maven. And yeah, they can use that in a backup. The orbits, like you say, are not as good. So compared to Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is in sort of a synchronous orbit, so it passes over the rover at the same time every day. It's very dependable. The ExoMars or the MAVEN one is kind of this wonky orbit that they might get every whatever non, you know, doesn't match up to the Martian day.

So they might only get every day and a half or two days or whatever it is. So it's not. And they might only be able to serve certain uh latitudes you know it might not be as useful as something like an mro orbit yeah exactly i mean for the rovers specifically which are usually landing kind of equatorially it's not a super big deal um but yes that would be a case for if they ended up going with a polar lander of some sort. But yeah, and so this new Mars orbiter that was notionally proposed, it wouldn't just be for the Mars sample return. It's also kind of an investment into the rest of your Mars program. So when you say they're doubling down, they're saying, we're just going to go all in on this

mission, Mars sample return, and then we'll figure out the rest after and and that's kind of an interesting decision because it does say you know hey we we think the decadal survey is really important uh what they're saying this is our number one priority we take that seriously we're going to do that um it does worry me in terms of okay well what do you want to do afterwards because if you know these other two missions go in 2026 or something, 2027 or however that launch window lines up, that could mean that you're not going to get a new orbiter until 2030-ish. That's a long time. I mean, even by then, the new orbiters like MAVEN will be in their teens, right? So it's a little scary to think about what they want to do after that.

But in terms of taking the decadal survey and knocking out its priorities, it's a very, you know, it's a smart move. I think it really comes down to budgeting, though, because if you want to have, if you want to squeeze this extra orbiter in before the sample return, you're going to need a huge budget spike in the next two three years like like big right you're going to have all this technology development for mars ascent vehicle which is brand new technology and you've got a new orbiter coming in and you've got to figure out the other orbiter to retrieve it because they kind of need to launch

at the same time and you're wrapping up mars 2020 and you're trying to do europa clipper and all these other you know planetary things you're gonna need 1.9 billion which they're getting kind of right now which is you know a great great budget the best they've had the best they've ever had you're gonna need to increase that significantly more double triple you know all the missions you're you're just throwing around 500 million dollars like i know the canadian exchange rate is like you know you're kind of skewed with your perspective here, but that's like a ton of money that they could not find in the couch cushions

in DC right now. And a ton of money that's not even confirmed too. Like if you say, okay, how much does it take to launch a communications orbiter to Mars? They'll be like, well, it's probably about this much and they'll be pretty close. But when you say,

how much is it going to take to launch from Mars surface to orbit, which we've never done before? And how much is it going to take to make a, you know, a Europa lander? Like they have no idea, right? So it's the margin of error on those costs are huge and you don't want to get stuck canceling half these things because you can't plan it properly, right? And that's sort of the thing that struck me about the doubling down on sample return, you know, at the expense of a future orbiter is that it feels like we're at an inflection point in the future of Mars exploration right now where we need to get this sample back because that is the key pivotal moment right now. We're going to learn

a bunch from it. We're going to be able to actually do ISRU research and figure out how habitable is it for humans and figure out was there life there, is there life there? There's so many questions answered by that, which is why it was the most important thing to solve. But I think the results of that, in both the scientific results, but also can we actually do Mars sample return? The answers to those questions send Mars exploration on different paths depending on how they're answered. Can we actually get a sample back from Mars?

Yes. Great. Let's push on with the human thing and all the other stuff that we currently have planned. We can't get a sample back. This is something that politicians have asked lately. If we can't get a sample back, how can we even ruminate on getting humans back? We need to really figure out the sample thing first. And then you have the whole aspect of what we learn from sample return might lead us

into different areas for what we're going to explore on the surface. So if we don't have that defined yet, how do we know what we need out of a communications orbiter? How do we know how to invest in Mars infrastructure? Because you don't want to send an orbiter out there that has a decade or more of downtime, really. Obviously, it wouldn't be downtime with how much is going on, but say it takes us a couple of years to recover from whatever we learn in our sample return attempts. It feels like we're at a switching point and a fork in the road in a way. And I kind of feel like they're making the right decision here to let's focus on the big

mission first, and then we'll figure out infrastructure as we go. Because that also, the inflection point that we're at with scientific needs, the engineering needs and all that, is also coming at a time when there's an inflection point in the way that spaceflight is working in general. We're having a whole revolution here of private spaceflight, private launch, and all sorts of things. We've got China looking towards Mars. We have SpaceX looking towards Mars. India's got a mission there right now, and they've got some more missions lined up for the future. United Arab Emirates. So there's so many more people looking to Mars that it feels like there's just so many ways this can go. It's hard to decide what

you should do. So let's nail down that top priority and then go from there. Yeah. And that's you basically just in about 90 seconds outlined all of the uncertainty and all the Mars exploration program. Like, it's interesting because in one perspective, the, you know, the scientific inflection point, as you call it, it's like, yes, it's kind of there. I mean, what we get from a sample will be great. But at the same time, science moves on much larger timescales than than engineering and also much and which is also much larger than than politics, right? So, you know, going from a congressional cycle to a presidential cycle to, you know, a technology development cycle to what you get from scientific return is huge, right? I mean, I went to Lunar Planetary Science Conference

this year, 2017, and there was an Apollo astronaut presenting a new paper on his sample from, you know, 1971 or 1972 was the last one, Paul 17. So like that's the scale that they work on. Right. And when we get these Mars samples back, we're going to be looking at them for decades beyond. So they're not it's not going to be just some like instant course correction where we get the samples back and and six months later, we're like, OK, we know what we need to do forever for Mars exploration for the next 20 years. That's not how it's going to work. But I can't shake when they have.

This is the thing we were messaging about this last week, like late at one night. I was like, let's save this. They're pushing this phrase in these PDFs that they have. I don't even think these presentations were webcast or anything, but we got to see the PDFs and slides and all that. And they keep saying civilization scale science so they're like that's a pretty weird term i think unless they're leaving the door open that we do find something out that is a massive shift in the way that we think about mars like that is they're saying we can do sample return because what we learn whether it's good, bad, indifferent,

whatever, life, not life, whatever, it is a thing that has potential to totally change our look on it. And I think, like you're saying, yeah, there's going to be decades of scientists that work on this stuff. Like, I think a lot of the Apollo, you know, a lot of the Apollo samples have not been given out yet. Like, there's still a cache of them for scientists that haven't even been born yet to look at. So it's that timescale exists, but there still is a potential for a massive change of direction one way or another in both technology and science. You know, maybe we find out, hey, this dirt is not going to be super great

for ISRU like we thought it is. And there's some problems to deal with, with, you know, all the different things that have been floated out there. But it's just such a tough thing to figure out what to do with when you're looking at it from a theoretical position a decade before it happens. Yeah. And that's kind of the challenge of trying to navigate these scientific questions in a world like you described where spaceflight's changing so quickly, right? I mean, here's another way to look at the timescale perspective. So this decadal survey was written in 2011, outlining this Mars sample return. It's going to launch in 2026 to pick it up, which means that it won't be back in time for the next decadal survey, which will be back in time for the next decadal survey which will be written in 2021 so in 2031 when they write the fourth decadal survey they'll have early results from the sample returns which will return

like literally a year before that so it's decades before that really starts to have an impact right so you know if i have to sit down at the table in 2021 and write that KL survey, what do I say my priorities are? Like, you know, Mars samples are... Five years out from a launch date, like, you could still say, well, our priority is still sample return because we haven't done it yet. So, yeah, you're right. And so in 2031, when who knows what the spaceflight environment's going to look like? Like, what are all these new space companies?

And I always put that in air quotes because it triggers some people. But what are the impact of fixed price contracts going to have on spaceflight? How much cheaper is it going to get? In 2031, are we going to have these big companies you know, companies like Lockheed having finally turned the ship? Like, I don't know. It's going to be really interesting to see. So I think what I'm trying to say is that there's going to be so many other factors

that change our course in that before the science does. So that's where I kind of think it ties back to this decision where NASA is saying, listen, like, we may not have the budget to put this communications orbiter. We don't know what commercial is going to do. We don't know what our international partners are going to do. Let's just focus on what we know we need to accomplish with Mars sample return. In 2026, when we launch this thing, it's going to be a whole different ballgame. We're going to have, you know, we're going to be one more administrator down the line

and we're going to be like, it's all going to be different. Yeah, well, at least one more, at least one more president down the line and we're going to be like, it's all going to be different. Yeah. Well, at least one more, um, at least one more president down the line and, uh, it's going to be a whole new ball game. And, and I think that's the right decision because it is changing so fast that it doesn't make sense to commit a lot of funds to simple things like infrastructure. And that's, that's, I think where they ended up coming from. So that leads an interesting direction, direction, which is,

um, given that there is a gap in infrastructure in a way, I mean, MRO, I was surprised to learn has 20 years of fuel reserves left. Uh, that is pretty incredible. And,

uh, you talked about this on your little secret patreon uh off the cuff things that you do which you all should check out if you do not listen to we martians yet uh but you talked about the fact that they've figured out how to have an all stellar uh alignment of mro so that if you know imu's fail or anything like that it doesn't completely destroy the spacecraft they're actually in good shape so that seems to be a pretty robust thing, but there is going to be somewhat of a gap in some way. We are going to want to upgrade the infrastructure there. It gives NASA a good chance to flex their creativity a bit and see maybe they can do something like a fixed price contract to put a communications orbiter

at Mars. And then you've got people like SpaceX, Boeing, whoever, interested in developing that and contributing to the robotic exploration program in ways that we've never seen before. What do you think the likelihood of that is? And how do you think that would play out if it did come onto the table? Yeah, likelihood of, I don't know, I don't think I can speak to that. I mean, there's a lot of politics that are standing are standing between us and that that achievement. But it is certainly possible because, you know, the reason that that fixed price contracts have started to, you know, enter this crew or commercial cargo, NASA has said, listen, building a rocket and going to low Earth orbit, we've done it thousands of times. Commercial companies have been doing it for a long time.

We know how to do this. You can go about it different ways. So let's take off this cost plus and go at fixed price. And then we'll outsource that to commercial companies. So, you know, a communications orbiter is not really the kind of thing where we need a lot of technology development. I mean, you can go into, sure, laser communications is newer.

There's different ways you could develop that. But the fundamental idea of putting a satellite with some solar panels and an antenna into space is not, and that's not difficult. Yeah, it's like 50 to 60 years old at this point yeah i don't want to trivialize the effort that those people know absolutely but it is one of the routine things that we do yeah i mean we if you are the kind of person that follows every launch that happens and watches every launch live you'll notice that

19 out of 20 of them are just you know, satellites that send TV channels to somewhere in the world. Right. So it's a known issue and a known problem rather and how to how to accomplish it. So why wouldn't we move that to fixed price? That's a perfectly good question. And if you have a company like the obvious one is SpaceX, who's got all these Mars ambitions. Why wouldn't you want to give them the opportunity to get their feet wet in putting something into Mars orbit, which they want to do? They've tried, you know, a couple ideas of sending red dragons there on their own, but they've all fallen through now. So maybe this is what they

need. And, you know, SpaceX has a history of leveraging like a NASA contract to do their R&D, right? So why wouldn't they want to take that opportunity? I'm sure that if you asked SpaceX, they would be up for that. So really, if NASA can get the political will, and you know, they can make the business case that this is, we shouldn't be sending communications infrastructure into space, that's, that's a, you know, we're above that for a better, or lack of a better term that then I think that's something that's certainly possible. And I'm fascinated by I think it would be amazing. Yeah, the SpaceX connection makes so much sense in so many different ways. They have Mars ambitions, but they also have an active office up in your neck of the woods in Seattle

working on a satellite internet constellation. They're working on communication satellites every single day. Not a huge amount of people at SpaceX, but a significant portion, so much so that they are looking to that project to fund their Mars ambitions. So if given a chance to do the SpaceX thing, which is have another project contribute to their R&D, they built the landing of Falcon 9 on the backs of commercial missions that they've flown and all that kind of stuff. They bake in R&D to the services they offer.

So I can't imagine how excited they are about the possibility of it because it fits their formula so perfectly. Have a NASA program that helps them develop technology. Pretty robust communication satellite would be needed at Mars. So that would definitely help their satellite satellite constellation Internet. I don't know what words I'm saying in a row here. It'll help their plans here at home and give them some experience at Mars. It is just the perfect project for them to go after. Obviously, they would have competition from the Boeings of the world and everything else.

Obviously, they would have competition from the Boeings of the world and everything else. But, you know, it's just such a good idea for NASA to partake that I would really hope that SpaceX and others start lobbying for that to happen, more so than lobbying for moon bases, because it is a much more immediate need in that way. And maybe it is only one or two, you know, contracts or something like that. Maybe it's something like commercial cargo, where they pick two providers, and they compete them, and they both actually do end up flying. And that way, you know, it's the more the merrier at that point, especially when you look at the way that costs work out for commercial cargo, you kind of apply that to commercial communications infrastructure, you could get two things there on a timeline that NASA would not be able to, on a budget that NASA would not be able to. And that just contributes to those future Mars ambitions of NASA themselves, but also

the whole international community that's looking towards Mars. Yeah. And yeah, you laid it out perfectly. And there's so many benefits to that. I mean, freeing up NASA's budget to focus on the actual exploration and the science versus, you know, just the operations is is critical. I mean, NASA's budget is precious. It's hard to get dollars for it and we want to spend it the best we can. And then there's also the benefit of just if you establish these, you know, these these negotiations, these contracts with these companies, let's say we get to there and they say, listen, we're going to pay this much for bandwidth. It's a fixed price. Now that's a known cost. That's one less variable when you're trying to budget NASA. Right. I mean, just to say, OK, well, we're not going to have this margin of

error in terms of, well, we send a communications order. It might cost this much. It might cost this much. We don't know where we're going to have hiccups with that. They'll just say, well, if we send a communications orbiter, it might cost this much, it might cost this much. We don't know where we're going to have hiccups with that. They'll just say, listen, we know how much it costs for bandwidth. So that's known. And you can reduce the risk of cost overrun, which is always a great thing for NASA, right? And then who knows what else this could

spawn, right? There's a lot of unknowns. I mean, think about if there's a commercial company with a satellite infrastructure at Mars, and then a university wants to put something at Mars on the surface in orbit, and now they don't have to worry about putting some big bulky Earth-bound antenna on it. They can just say, oh, yeah, there's a phone company at Mars. We just hook in there, and then it's all set.

So now you're reducing the cost of other missions to Mars just by having to deleverage that hardware. That's that's critical. I mean, we're seeing a lot of lunar development now from from small private groups. Right. So Google Lunar XPRIZE, that's a big thing that they can't do at Mars today because it's so far away. This could enable stuff like that.

So it's just it in terms of, you know, what NASA could do in as far as like investing in the future of planetary exploration. This is a very, very big step, I think. And I think that would do more for the future, like you're saying, than considering anything on their own. You know, they've done that for so long that they kind of need to shake it up to get anything else happening. that for so long that they kind of need to shake it up to get anything else happening.

You mentioned wanting to spend NASA money wisely, which makes all of us think about SLS, which makes me think about the Deep Space Gateway, which is totally tied into all the sample return plan. So in the flowchart you were describing at the beginning, the part that shoots the sample back to Earth or rockets it back to Earth, as you say, the two targets that they had picked out were direct to Earth entry or sending it back to hypothetical deep space gateway that doesn't have any budget yet, but everyone keeps talking about as a near certainty. So what the hell is going on with that? Well, I think it's I mean, a cynical me says it's just a, it's a politics move. I mean, if, if NASA is looking at the budget of Mars sample return, Mars 2020 is already to some two point change bill that billion, uh, uh, Mars ascent vehicle is probably going to be pretty similar. to be pretty similar it's going to have the same you know curiosity sky crane landing system and then you got the whole uh technology development to get that back to space the whole thing that

we've never done before that whole yeah so huge margin of error like we talked about right so unknown cost but maybe that's another two and a half billion and then you've got a third mission which is an orbiter which is a little more known so the cost of that one will probably come down a little bit but i mean nasa could spend five six seven billion on this which is a orbiter, which is a little more known. So the cost of that one will probably come down a little bit. But I mean, NASA could spend five, six, seven billion on this, which is a lot of money. I mean, you look at the trouble that that they've gone through to try and keep the James Webb Space Telescope alive, which has got some pretty serious cost overruns and is climbing up there. They've been through the ringer on convincing people to continue to pay for that.

So if I'm, you know, if I'm NASA and I'm saying, OK, well, how am I going to get the political buy-in for this expensive mission? That could be a carrot they throw out, right? Because there's a lot of congressmen and congresswomen who are invested in SLS and senators, too. I mean, that's why they call they call it the Senate launch system. Right. So but basically all of Congress, whether it's the House or the Senate, are very they're very attached to this rocket system.

And if we tie those together, maybe they're not just thinking we have a better chance of getting it funded. Now, as for whether it's a good idea or not, that's a whole other ballgame. I mean, if you're looking at objectively, I don't know why we would want to send it to this lunar laboratory with limited resources when you could just, you know, change your delta V of 0.5 meters per second from Mars in one direction to the other, and then you get it right back to Earth. I don't understand why we'd want to do that.

Someone can try and convince me, but at this point, I don't get it. I feel like a lot of people would be convinced by like the planetary protection uh argument that we would want to send it to a lab that isn't at earth uh i was expecting to see that argument made in terms of why to why to use the deep space gateway um you could go the zubrin route of trying to give Deep Space Gateway something to do in the same way that Asteroid Redirect slash Grab a Boulder mission was trying to give EM-2 or 3 something to do. I just, I feel like, you know, at a certain point, let's make this thing as simple as possible because tying it to a mission that does not yet have any real funding, that is subject to political wins that the Mars exploration program is not.

You know, the human exploration program in the last 10 or 20 years has been steady yet erratic. Like, it's kind of had the similar plan for the last, you know, since 2000s. But it seems to change all the time, and it seems pretty unpredictable. So trying to tie something, like you were saying, that is such a long timescale, you know, not getting back into the late 20s to another thing that may or may not exist in any way. to return to Earth, and if it goes somewhere else, great, or do you go all in on returning at Deep Space Gateway, and it doesn't have a heat shield? It doesn't have, you know, all the things it would need for atmospheric entry and recovery and all of that. Like, how do you manage that? Are you going to end up sending a heat shield and a parachute pack to the

Deep Space Gateway? Or are you going to end up, you know, needing to send up another orbiter to Earth orbit to get the thing to bring it back. It's just, I don't know. That makes me super nervous to think about. Yeah, I mean, the technology part of it, we've done the Earth return with Stardust and then OSIRIS-REx will be kind of going at that time. We've got Hayabusa who's done it. So there's a little bit of a track record

in terms of how do we get samples back. I don't think we'd have to send a heat shield even to deep space gateway i mean the the mars sample return canister could easily fit in a cargo return or even a crew return if if you wanted to stick it inside of a you know whatever is going to go to gateway dragon or starliner or whatever so i i think you're okay there it's just yeah the eventually you're gonna want to send it to earth like even if you have the planetary protection argument which says you know i don't want to contaminate these mars samples but they're going to get contaminated on the deep space gateway too those things are just you know containers full of bacteria as well and people are gross it's just the way it is right so unless you want to ditch the humans after they've done their research like the humans are

coming back i don't know so something's gonna come back yeah and if you're trying to do that then then just leave them at mars we'll just work on them there i it's like eventually you want to get them to earth so you're gonna have to build the infrastructure at earth you know there's actually a lot of the the recommendations in the decad really outline like, hey, the mission doesn't stop when it gets to Earth. There needs to be a whole processing pipeline, just like they did for lunar samples. Right. So you've got the Lunar Institute basically had to do that where they had, you know, this whole system where people could get access to the samples and safe storage and all that kind of stuff. You're going to need to build all that one way or another. So let's cut the middleman.

If you ask me, let's cut the middleman. We don't need to send a deep space gateway just to, you know, give it something to do. Then another thing I'm interested in, in the sample return vehicle, we had the asteroid redirect mission come and go. And that was sort of a vehicle that was going to prove out solar electric propulsion for use on future human missions. When ARM got killed, that sort of shifted to the Deep Space Gateway in that the propulsion bus for the Gateway is going to use solar electric propulsion. the sample return or maybe even the commercial orbiters that we're talking about could be something that takes over those roles where, you know, maybe we'll prove out some solar electric propulsion out at Mars on the communications infrastructure.

You know, there's a lot of research going into those kind of future propulsion needs. Maybe then we have a follow on mission for the sample return vehicle to do it. And then at that point, is the Deep Space Gateway kind of, you know, is it is it needed? Because there's some people that have the theory that the Deep Space Gateway propulsion bus is being worked on so much now, because we have this technology development that we need to find a spot for. And we have these two needs that seem like really good fits for solar electric propulsion. So I'm wondering if that is a potential opportunity there. Yeah. And it looks like from the nominal plan for the third mission, the return orbiter, it looks like it's going to be solar electric. It's got some pretty big solar

panels. Otherwise, I don't know what else you would use those for. So I think NASA is probably going to want to go at SEP a lot of different directions. It's not like it's brand new technology. It's on a ton of communications satellite for station keeping. Dawn has done interplanetary work with it. So there's already a precedent for these things. It's all about scaling them at this point, right? So, I mean, Dawn was a small spacecraft and this communications orbiter will probably be, it's not going to be giant.

It's going to be, you know, a reasonable size. So if you're saying Deep Space Gateway is, you know, its only purpose is to develop these scale technologies, maybe. I think that there's probably a lot of room for just kind of building these engines in arrays and then not scaling them i mean if one of them works great then just put 10 of them on there and then we've got 10 times the thrust like there's not you know we don't need to go too crazy in there um so i don't see the mars sample term being tied too closely with that it does kind of have a little bit of a arm rising from the ashes because you've got this orbiter that's solar electric powered going back to lunar orbit and for some reason, you know.

Yeah, it's a little weird. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I read too much into that, but. Well, we'll see. A lot of ways to go on that. Anything else that you were picking up out of the National Academy stuff before we move on to the future things? The only other thing I saw was the words China. Yeah, and that's the international portion of it, right? So we talked a lot about commercial,

but the other way that Thomas Zurbuchen outlined a way to keep costs down was to partner in international. And I think this is, well, I mean, it's diplomatic. It's smart, too, right? I mean, everybody seems to be going to Mars, like you said. So it's not just NASA and ESA anymore. JAXA's got an orbiter planned. The United Arab Emirates has an orbiter planned. China's got all kinds of amazing ambitions. The most Rube Goldberg thing, which is like, let's send all of them at one time. Yeah. Orbiter, lander, rover thing. It's like, all right. I don't know how they're gonna do all of

that for the first time successfully on one launch it's gonna be interesting to to orbit land and rove but um you know it's the the benefit of the the five-year plan i guess is you can you can put that stuff on paper but nonetheless you've got a lot of international partners who are interested in mars and if they're all going there, why shouldn't they work together? I mean, that's sort of the big benefit. They stuck China on a slide. Currently, NASA is not allowed to work with China. That's a legislative thing.

That might just be another kind of soft message to say, hey, this is a dumb, you know, this hurts science. I know there's geopolitical reasons we do it, but it hurts science and exploration. And we'll we'll see if it goes anywhere. I don't think it will. You know, all the politicians that wrote up the China rules were texting about it on their iPhones that were all assembled there. And it's it's a little backwards, I think, in my in my view is that, you know, I get the you know, the whole military side of things. But I you see ESA getting a lot closer to them

their astronauts are training together russia's getting closer to them there were some rumored russia china five-year agreement thing so everyone's getting closer to china finally kind of letting them in the club uh so much so that isa was training to put astronauts on their future space station uh and notably isa has not yet been as committed to the future of the ISS as NASA has. They're always a little hesitant. They've committed to 2024, but I haven't heard too much on the 2028 year yet in that regard. So there are some interesting geopolitical things in that way. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it really comes down to what your international relations strategy is, which I don't think either you or I are really qualified to talk about.

But, you know, we'll do our best, I guess. But I'm of the opinion you do more work with people than things open up. And that's sort of what you want with China. So who knows? Maybe something could come out of it. And I would love to see a NASA, you know, China mission. But I'm not going to hold my breath. I'm picturing an Apollo-Soyuz callback with Orion and, you know, a future next generation

Chinese ship would be fitting. Shenzhou-Orion with a silly adapter in the middle of it. Yeah, totally. Because they've probably got some sort of atmospheric, you know, differences just like the other one. Yeah, that would be interesting to see for sure. All right. So what else is on your radar in the future? We've got IAC coming up in a couple of weeks here. No Mars news about that, right? No, nothing important. Just just an update on interplanetary transport system. Right.

I'm I'm excited for this one. And for a different reason than I was before, I think, you know, last year, it was basically all fanboy. I just wanted to see a new idea for Mars. And, you know, I got what I paid for on that. I was pretty stoked about it. But, you know, looking back a year, it's totally a fantastic, like a fantastical notion or business plan, right? So what I'm looking for now is to say how how is spacex going to bring this this kooky sci-fi futuristic concept down to earth or lack of a better pun but back to earth so that you know it can be it can be realized in a in a realistic fashion i think that's really exciting to me because i me because I don't like to spend a lot of time

in the what-ifs and the futures. And I know that bugs people that look to this podcast for Mars colonization plans. But I like to know what we're doing today and what's really happening. And that's what really excites me about this. We're going to see maybe some actual business applications. Like how are they going to bridge today

to a future where they're able to send Mars missions commercially somehow? And that's kind of everyone's big question. So yeah, I'm super excited for it. I would not be surprised to hear some of this communication orbiter kind of stuff because I would not be surprised to hear them bring up the satellite internet constellation in terms of how do we pay for it? You know, they're another year down the line.

There's been all sorts of paperwork filed for that. Seems like they're getting close to some demo satellites. I would not be surprised to see hardware, maybe some photos of the hardware for that. And which point, you know, if there is this NASA conversation going on, I think Elon Musk does like to jump on the thing that we're all talking about and talk about how SpaceX could help out. He dropped the moon bases thing into a talk, which he's never brought up before, only until NASA started talking about moon bases.

So I would be hopeful to hear something about that in that regard, in addition to some more sensibly sized rockets for the current world. Yeah. And, you know, there's like's like a new precedent now of of commercial companies presenting ideas to NASA. So if you look at Lockheed's, you know, Mars base camp, NASA didn't ask for that. They said, hey, by the way, if ever you were thinking you wanted to put a space station in Mars orbit, we've got a blueprint for you. Like so maybe that's the kind of thing where SpaceX comes out and says, hey, by the way, like if you wanted to send an orbiter, here's our idea. Here's how much it would cost.

Give us a call. Right. So it's it's that that kind of reverse sales pitch now, which is interesting. So, yeah, we'll see how that works out for him. Tell us what you've been working on lately over at the Wee Martians Kingdom. Wee Martians, it's it's a it's an off year for Mars missions. Right. So we're in between

launch windows so a lot of uh science a lot of engineering just trying to catch up on some of the the topics that i haven't had a chance to get to before so i'm i'm excited that i was able to put out sort of a feature on every generation of rover so i was able to look at pathfinder and then look at opportunity and look at curiosity as sort of the three you know levels of a rover so we've been able to do some pretty in-depth features on that which is very exciting uh looking ahead we've got exomars which is very close to kind of finishing its very long and arduous aerobraking uh session uh that should be done sometime by the end of the year. And then the actual science mission would begin in April,

which is very exciting because I can't wait to see all these stereo images that come back from this really cool orbiter. And then next year, I'm already starting to think about coverage for InSight. So it's the next mission that's launching. It's going to be May 2018, launching from California. And it's a lander, uh 2018 launching from california and it's a it's a lander which is really exciting right so we'll see that lift off and uh you know should get there by the end of next year which will be uh very very exciting yeah polar interplanetary launch is

pretty cool yeah you know i think it's there i think it's i i'm trying to remember it's the first time we've launched planetary from californ So it'll be the first polar planetary launch. And I guess you've got a big Atlas rocket, Atlas strong, and a tiny little lander. This is a very small mass-wise in terms of a mission. So they just stick it in a polar trajectory and say, well, you know what? The margin of error is not that big when you think about Earth-Mars. So we can pull it off with that mighty Centaur engine right that's pretty good i'm excited to see that happen it's it's just a cool you know it's a cool mission in general and uh i don't know it's it

feels like it's been a while since we got the cheer mars landing so i'm excited to uh experience that once more in this era yeah yeah it should be. I mean, the last one was a bit of a disappointment, right? So it'll be nice to see, yeah, because NASA's got a good track record. So I'm hoping the technology pulls through and we get, Insight's really cool because we're going to see some more like global scale science come out of it.

I mean, Curiosity is amazing, but it's very localized. It's kind of the mission about Gale Crater. But Insight is going to be able to measure all these different, you know, seismic activities across the whole planet. They're going to be doing these heat probes and all these kind of things. We're going to see some really cool, you know, planetary scale Mars science out of it, which is exciting. Yeah. All right. Well, maybe we'll have you back to discuss that when it gets around to it. I don't know. We'll see if you make the cut next time. Well, hopefully I make it down for the launch,

so maybe I'll even have some... It'll be my... Well, yeah, could be my first launch. We'll see. I don't know. If I make it to Falcon Heavy, that'd be great, but... Or if Falcon Heavy makes it to you at that point. I'm not sure.

Yeah. We'll see who wins in the race to launch first right yeah i do i'll i'll plug the crap out of your uh rover mission or your rover episodes the last couple of uh weeks or months it's been uh i've really enjoyed those because you know we always see the science going on uh but i i really enjoyed hearing the engineering side of all of those rovers um you're one you just released this week on Opportunity. There were some things in there that I had never heard before. Just, you know, operationally, how do they still run that thing?

How are they still running that thing? It's been forever. It's really cool to see one of those missions still plugging away. I know, you know, Mike was talking about there's people that were in middle school when that landed. And I was like, yeah, that was me. My like seventh grade science class or whatever, talking about there's people that were in middle school when that landed and i was like yeah that was me my like seventh grade science class or whatever talking about these things um so it's it's wild to see that they're still doing so much with that rover you know through all odds driving backwards with only a couple wheels steering and just the creativity of figuring out how to you know we were hearing about how they're running computers to

manage the thermals and instead of the survival heaters and so many cool little tidbits in that episode alone that I would recommend going to check out all of those episodes. I'll put some links in the show notes to those. Yeah, and thank you. I mean, I've had some,

I've been lucky to have some pretty amazing people come on the show and tell the story. Opportunity is a remarkable, remarkable mission and that it's longevity. It's just off the charts, like just the ability to just crawl across that harsh, harsh surface for so long. It's just I still can't believe that it's that it's real. So, yeah, I'm very, very happy to have been able to talk to those people. So go check it out. We Martians dot com or all in all your pod catchers as well, wherever you're listening to this, just go find we Martians if you have not already.

Thank you very much, Jake, for coming on. I hope to talk to you soon. Anytime. That's it for us today. Thank you so much, Jake, for coming on the show. And thank you so much to the supporters of Main Engine Cutoff over on Patreon. This episode was produced by 18 executive producers, Chris, Mike, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Guinevere, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, and four anonymous executive producers. That list is getting longer every single show, it seems like. And I'm so thankful for their support, making the show possible every single week. If you want to help support the show, head over to patreon.com slash Miko and do it there. As always, there are show notes over at managingcutoff.com. Find a link to some of the stuff that we're talking about on the show here.

And as always, follow on Twitter at WeHaveMiko for everything that's going on throughout the week. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.