NASA Can't Afford to Get Us to Mars

The United States' National Research Council (NRC) has concluded that NASA will not be able to reach its goal of landing on Mars in the foreseeable future if the space agency and lawmakers cannot agree on a concrete and fiscally realistic plan.

An NRC report - the culmination of an 18-month investigation of NASA projects mandated by Congress in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act - doesn't recommend any specific plan, but does outline three paths the agency should take if it wishes to even have a small chance of landing a man on Mars.

To do otherwise, the report warns, "is to invite failure, disillusionment, and the loss of the longstanding international perception that human spaceflight is something the United States does best."

Surprisingly, NASA responded rather positively to this review.

"NASA welcomes the release of this report," said NASA spokespersons David Weakver and Grey Hautaluoma, expressing the agency's pleasure that "there is a consensus that our horizon goal should be a human mission to Mars and the stepping stone and pathways thrust of the NRC report complements NASA's ongoing approach."

In other words, the NRC report could have gone a lot worse.

According to the Washington Post, the NASA projects investigation conducted by the NRC - which cost $3.2 million of NASA's own funds - looked at the United States' human spaceflight program in an extremely critical light, questioning the overall worth of sending human's into space, and if the United States could afford to continue to care so much about it.

Predictably, the committee concluded that the purely practical and immediate economic benefits of human spaceflight do not justify its exorbitant costs. However, the grand human achievement and potential long term benefits to be obtained from such projects do indeed make it worth the effort.

Still, the review reports that current funding to relevant NASA programs is not enough.

"Pronouncements by multiple presidents of bold new ventures by Americans to the Moon, to Mars, and to an asteroid in its native orbit, have not been matched by the same commitment that accompanied President Kennedy's now fabled 1961 speech - namely, the substantial increase in NASA funding needed to make it happen," the report proclaims.

Additionally, it will not be "possible to meet the goal of human spaceflight to Mars without a sustained commitment to funding at a higher level than the space program is currently receiving."

NASA already looks to receive a raise in budget, as the country desperately tries to find a way to get astronauts to the International Space Station without having to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets.