This site may earn chapter commissions from the links on this page. Terms of employ.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress and told them to elevator their optics to the moon, because nosotros were going to put men there within the decade. Kennedy's words galvanized the nation and dropped a money bomb on NASA, which realized his vision in 1969. But with all the hardware nosotros've got on other planets, the moon is starting to seem like it's been done. According to President Obama in his new op-ed for CNN, the next frontier is Mars, and we should make a concerted national effort to put men on Mars "by the 2030s."

The President himself intends to stay firmly planted on Earth, though. "Someday, I promise to hoist my ain grandchildren onto my shoulders. We'll still look to the stars in wonder, equally humans have since the beginning of time," Obama wrote. "But instead of eagerly awaiting the return of our intrepid explorers, we'll know that because of the choices nosotros make now, they've gone to infinite not just to visit, but to stay — and in doing and then, to make our lives ameliorate here on Globe."

It'south a timely message; Obama will host the White Business firm Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh this Thursday, October thirteen. Its explicit purpose is to "dream upward means to build on our progress and discover the next frontiers."

The thing about finding and settling the frontier is that this item one takes infrastructure and education. Dreams are swell and all, simply dealing with hab modules and particle physics and electrical engineering requires some training — these aren't the kind of things we can do relying on thought experiments or napkin math. We demand facilities and materials, and workers who understand what they're building. To stand up on the shoulders of giants, ane ordinarily needs a bit of a boost starting time. Today, that ultimately ways coin.

Funding is an issue that volition have to be addressed in the planning documents for this directive, in much less paw-waving terms. Rockets don't just grow on copse. NASA currently accounts for less than a penny out of each aggregate federal dollar spent: less than 1 percent of the national budget. Say what yous volition about how NASA uses the money they're allotted; at four-6% of the national upkeep, which is what they had during the heyday of the space race, they established a space program that led the globe. Maybe money tin can't buy happiness, but information technology sure does purchase oestrus shields.

Mars

But where is this Mars money going to come from, even if we practise manage to become legislators to give NASA a little more scratch? It'south possible that nosotros can wait to projects similar the buggy, expensive F-35; reallocating some funding between agencies need not compromise our aerospace superiority. At that place'south also the fledgling cooperation betwixt the authorities (via NASA) and commercial infinite ops like SpaceX. President Obama remarks, "Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between regime and private innovators." While that does offload some of the financial outlay from public to private sector, we tin't necessarily rely on commercial space ventures to choice up the federal slack without a reason to do so. A cash infusion via commercial involvement with NASA would spur innovation, enquiry, and development of the tech nosotros'll need to get to Mars.

Part of our national success in space — a big part — is that when we started out in the space race, we had laid out clear objectives, the funding plan to go with them, and a time stamp on the whole affair. JFK put his lunar ambitions to the nation as an intellectual argument, framed to capture what he saw every bit the all-time of America and elevate it to a crusade. And he gave us homework. "By the end of this decade," Kennedy said. None of this mealy-mouthed "2030s," punting the project into someone else's presidential backyard. Which end of the 2030s is this supposed to happen in? How are we meant to avoid the endless pushing-back of deadlines? Anyone who'south always procrastinated can surely identify with the reasons a concrete deadline is of import. A range of acceptable deadlines becomes one deadline: the latest one.

Whatever Obama ends up doing with his declaration and conference, information technology won't get off the basis if the adjacent sitting president doesn't also sign on to the initiative. Obama but has a few months left in office. No thing who wins the ballot in Nov, either that person will support a Mars 2030 initiative with money or they won't. But if they don't, information technology's likely that "by the 2030s" will be dead in the water past the end of next January.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and practise the other things, non because they are easy, only because they are difficult, because that goal volition serve to organize and measure the all-time of our energies and skills, considering that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and i which we intend to win, and the others, too.

— President John F. Kennedy, Rice University speech, 12 September 1962