Michael Huang discussesways around Congress' proposed ban on NASA work on manned Mars exploration, but misses one glaringly obvious loophole.

The House of Representatives version of HR 3093, the bill that determines NASA’s funding for 2008, effectively bans the study of an entire planet:

Provided, That none of the funds under this heading shall be used for any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars.

The House committee report mentions the proposed prohibition:

Finally, bill language is included prohibiting funding of any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars.

...But the exclusive nature of the law allows a human mission to Mars to take place, if the mission also does something else. If the hardware used to explore Mars was also used to explore the Moon, then that’s acceptable. Most importantly, if the mission to Mars included both humans and robots, then that could also go ahead. A humans-and-robots mission would not violate the law because it is not exclusively human. So the law intended to enforce an anti-human, robot-only space policy may end up enforcing a both-humans-and-robots policy, which is what NASA and space enthusiasts have wanted all along.

Whoever is crafting the Congressional language is falling into the same trap that many if not most people do when discussing space and NASA's role in it: the idea that space is for "exploration" and nothing more. And they compound this error with the use of "exclusively"...apparently intended to avoid curtailment of robotic exploration, the language in fact only limits activities on or related to Mars whose sole function is human exploration. Call me optimistic, but it would seem this proposal would not in fact curtail human activity on Mars -- it would instead force it to be something more than exploration.

Such as, maybe, settlement.

I don't know how he missed that one, since it's much more obvious to me than using humanoid robots as manned exploration proxies, or performing manned exploration of Phobos and Deimos. It wouldn't have to be a big settlement effort, just enough to provide a fig leaf for whatever exploration the agency wanted to do.

Of course, I can't imagine NASA ever getting behind it. Sure, they'd get to send humans to Mars, but at least some of them would be going as settlers instead of Right Stuff™ astronauts. Plus, NASA is unlikely to fight to exploit that loophole if (as it sometimes seems) they aren't really interested in sending people to Mars in the first place.

I'm not really sure that it matters much. We're not planning to return to the Moon until 2018-2020, and by then Barney Frank and many of the others who are pushing this proposal will no longer be in Congress. Plus, the Constellation program is unlikely to do any serious work on Mars missions until after Orion is flying and Ares V and LSAM are in the pipeline. Either way, there is probably fifteen years in which to overturn the prohibition, if it gets passed, and ample opportunity for events (such as a Chinese push to the Moon or other "market challenge") to overtake its reason for being.

Posted by T.L. James on December 5, 2007 08:21 PM | TrackBack