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CHARTING A COURSE: 

EXPERT PERSPECTIVES ON NASA’S 

HUMAN EXPLORATION PROPOSALS 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND 

TECHNOLOGY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

February 3, 2016 

Serial No. 114–58 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

RANDY K. WEBER, Texas 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

JOHN R. MOOLENAAR, Michigan 

STEPHEN KNIGHT, California 

BRIAN BABIN, Texas 

BRUCE WESTERMAN, Arkansas 

BARBARA COMSTOCK, Virginia 

GARY PALMER, Alabama 

BARRY LOUDERMILK, Georgia 

RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana 

DRAIN LAHOOD, Illinois 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon 

ERIC SWALWELL, California 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ELIZABETH H. ESTY, Connecticut 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

KATHERINE M. CLARK, Massachusetts 

DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

MARK TAKANO, California 

BILL FOSTER, Illinois 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

HON. BRIAN BABIN, Texas, Chair 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

BILL POSEY, Florida 

JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

STEVE KNIGHT, California 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland 

AMI BERA, California 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

DONALD S. BEYER, JR., Virginia 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

February 3, 2016 

Page 

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2 

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3 

Opening Statements 

Statement by Representative Brian Babin, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Space, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ........................................................................................................... 10 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 12 

Statement by Representative Donna F. Edwards, Ranking Minority Member, 

Subcommittee on Space, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, 

U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................................ 14 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 16 

Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee on 

Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ..................... 18 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 20 

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives .... 22 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 24 

Witnesses: 

Mr. Tom Young, Former Director, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA; 

Former President and Chief Operating Officer, Martin Marietta Corporation 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 25 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 29 

Dr. John C. Sommerer, Chair, Technical Panel, Pathways to Exploration 

Report, National Academy of Sciences 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 38 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 41 

Dr. Paul Spudis, Senior Scientist, Lunar and Planetary Institute 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 46 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 49 

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 55 

Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions 

Mr. Tom Young, Former Director, Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA; 

Former President and Chief Operating Officer, Martin Marietta Corporation ........................................................................................................................ 72

Dr. John C. Sommerer, Chair, Technical Panel, Pathways to Exploration 

Report, National Academy of Sciences ............................................................... 76 

Dr. Paul Spudis, Senior Scientist, Lunar and Planetary Institute ..................... 89 

(1) 

CHARTING A COURSE: 

EXPERT PERSPECTIVES ON 

NASA’S HUMAN EXPLORATION PROPOSALS 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2016 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY, Washington, D.C. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in Room 

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brian Babin 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 
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Chairman BABIN. Okay. The Subcommittee on Space will come to 

order. 

Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recesses of 

the Subcommittee at any time. 

Welcome to today’s hearing titled ‘‘Charting a Course: Expert 

Perspectives on NASA’s Human Exploration Proposals,’’ and I 

would like to recognize myself for five minutes for an opening 

statement. 

Placing a man on the Moon and returning him safely is widely 

considered one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It cemented 

America’s leadership on the world stage and demonstrated our 

technological superiority during the Cold War. Since then, NASA 

has made steady progress towards learning to live and work in 

space with the space shuttle and space station. 

Today we find ourselves at an intersection. Do we, as a nation, 

retreat from the cosmos, or do we take that next first step into the 

unknown? There appears to be a consensus that the horizon goal 

of America’s human exploration program is to land on the surface 

of Mars. But how will we get there? What are the intermediate 

stepping stones on that pathway to Mars? How do we avoid costly 

and avoidable detours? How do we ensure a sustainable program 

rather than a one-off stunt? And how do we ensure the next Administration does not wipe the slate clean, erasing all the hard 

work of the last five years? These are all questions that we must 

address in this and future hearings. 

The SLS and Orion systems are critical to the success of our deep 

space human exploration program. Their development and testing 

is of the utmost importance to the Committee, to Congress, and to 

the nation. We have come too far now to see a costly and destructive cancellation. However, the use of these assets and the missions 

and mission sets on the journey to Mars need to be better defined. 

As the NASA Advisory Council recently stated in a recommendation to the Administrator, the absence of a more fully developed 

plan would impair the ability of the next Administration to propose 

a budget that adequately supports NASA’s human exploration program. 

And while the administration has not provided many details on 

the plan for the journey to Mars, it has proposed possible mission 

options. For example, the Administration has proposed an asteroid 

mission as the next step for human exploration. This has been 

caveated and altered multiple times, but generally speaking, the 

Administration believes human astronauts should interact with an 

asteroid in cislunar space sometime in the next decade as a next 

step on its journey to Mars. 

Despite opposition from space policy experts, scientists, and engineers, the Administration as recently as last week announced early 

design work for the asteroid mission’s spacecraft bus. With only 

nine meaningful months remaining in this Administration, it is 

puzzling that they continue to press ahead with the mission despite 

widespread criticism and doubt over its efficacy. 

The National Academy of Sciences released a study on human 

exploration called the ‘‘Pathways to Exploration.’’ In this report the 

Committee on Human Spaceflight determined that the ARM mission largely contributed to dead-end technologies that could not 
11 

reasonably feed forward into a human mission to Mars. Last year, 

the NASA Advisory Committee suggested to the Administration 

that a more valuable use of NASA’s time and money would be a 

solar electric propulsion demonstration mission to Mars and back 

as opposed to the asteroid mission. 

Alternatives to the asteroid mission proposed by the President 

have become ubiquitous in the policy discussions. For example, Jan 

Woerner, the European Space Agency Director General, has spent 

the last year advocating for an international lunar base. The recent 

Humans Orbiting Mars workshop presented a compelling, realistic, 

and affordable path to Mars. Also, several members of this Committee have suggestions and legislation as well to that effect. As 

the Administration ignores these proposals despite a groundswell 

of support from scientists and engineers, we must look beyond 

what is politically expedient today and get ready for the next few 

decades in spaceflight. 

As we prepare for the next Presidents’ Administration, we must 

ensure that the plan in place for human exploration is based on 

sound engineering, planning, design, and management principles. 

We have asked our witnesses today to give us their expert opinions in the way forward. This hearing is an opportunity to build 

consensus on the way forward for human spaceflight. Human exploration has a long and storied history of being nonpartisan. It is 

not a Republican, it is not Democrat; it is an American issue. We 

need to get the politics out of these important programs for our nation’s sake. 

There are thousands of men and women in this country whose 

days are impacted by the decisions that we make in this very building. It is easy for people confined to the beltway bubble to forget 

that our pride as Americans comes from the hard work and determination to make this world better. The men and women at NASA 

working on our human exploration program are not pawns to be 

moved around a chess board in the latest game of chicken that the 

Administration chooses to play with Congress. We must ensure 

NASA’s work focuses on the will of the people, not the political 

whims of whatever President is in office at that particular time. 

NASA’s human exploration program has been through a tumultuous seven years, and with a new President to be chosen by the 

end of this year, we must ensure that there is a constancy of purpose in our planning and a surefooted roadmap in place for the future. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Babin follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. I now recognize the Ranking Member, the gentlewoman from Maryland, for an opening statement. 

Ms. EDWARDS. Good morning, and thank you very much, Mr. 

Chairman. I want to welcome our distinguished panel this morning. 

This truly is my passion. I want to thank Chairman Babin for 

calling the hearing. I think it’s really important, and when I look 

at the young people out here, not only is it my passion but it really 

is your future, and so I think the work that we have to do today 

is incredibly important. 

Each time we hold hearings on sending humans to Mars, my colleagues and I don’t just leave the room, although today I will have 

to leave a little bit early. We don’t leave the subject behind, and 

I think that that is meaningful for the American people. Instead, 

we leave with increased determination to help find a way to get 

there as soon and as safely as possible. I want the American people 

to share the collective excitement in this room and to embrace the 

desire to send human explorers farther into space than ever before. 

This Committee’s inquiries during recent hearings have focused 

on the need for a clearly articulated plan and next steps, such as 

the Human Exploration Roadmap that the bipartisan, overwhelmingly bipartisan House-passed NASA Authorization Act of 2015 directs NASA to develop. It took a lot of work for all of us to come 

together as Republicans and Democrats to embrace that roadmap. 

I recognize that it’s not an easy task given previous flat funding 

levels, uncertainty over future budgets, and the need to allow flexibility in planning a multi-decadal endeavor. 

I also acknowledge that NASA has established a strategy for 

achieving the goal and an evolvable Mars Campaign that will allow 

for flexibility in its decisions and that can take advantage of new 

knowledge and advances in technology. But facets of that strategy, 

quite frankly, are not detailed enough to inform mission planning 

and sequencing. That strategy cannot answer questions about 

whether going to the lunar surface or an asteroid is needed to reduce risk before sending humans to Mars, nor does it allow us to 

assess whether NASA’s approach achieves the right balance of 

flexibility and definition. 

The Congressionally mandated National Academies report, Pathways to Exploration, recommends that NASA follow a pathway, a 

specific sequence of intermediate accomplishments and destinations 

that advance the technologies needed to reach the horizon goal, 

which they conclude is Mars. 

The NASA Advisory Council in its December 3rd, 2015, recommendations to the Administrator said that they were pleased 

that NASA was providing new information about its human exploration architecture. However, they also recommended that ‘‘In 

preparation for the 2017 transition of Administrations NASA further develop their plan for future Human Exploration.’’ Well, this 

is because of the importance of defining a baseline architecture and 

plan that encompasses the entire human exploration program. 

Mr. Chairman, I’m confident that a plan of sufficient detail can 

come to fruition, but we don’t have time to spare if we’re to sustain 

a challenging endeavor across the upcoming Presidential transition. Now it’s the time for us to get rid of the politics and actually 
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match our goals with a plan, and without agreement on the substance of a plan, the path forward is less clear and the sustainability of progress toward the Mars goal is left vulnerable to rehashing of interim destinations or even redirection. We’ve seen that 

happen in the past. This last decade, despite the concerns articulated by the Chairman, this last decade has been fraught with confusion, both from the Congress, Republicans and Democrats, and 

Republican and Democratic Presidents, and it’s time to put that 

aside so that we can advance the science that’s necessary. 

And, make no mistake, we have to do our jobs here in Congress 

and we have to be of a mind in providing NASA with the necessary 

resources and budgetary stability to carry out such a plan. The 

Congress’s recent increase in appropriations for fiscal year 2016 for 

NASA’s exploration systems is a good start, but they need to be 

sustained and built upon if we’re to reach that goal. 

So Mr. Chairman, we have a lot to discuss this morning, and I 

look forward to our witnesses’ testimony, and what I would urge 

us to do is, again, let’s just put the politics aside. I agree with the 

Chairman that going to space is not about Republicans and Democrats, and when I look at these young people out here and I see 

your future and I see the challenge that you’re going to take on, 

you don’t care whether it’s a D or an R. We care that we advance 

the science to get us to our goal, and I look forward to doing that. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Edwards follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. I appreciate those 

words. And I also would like to welcome all you young folks out 

there as well as you not-so-young folks. Are you all from Florida? 

Yes. Thank you for being here this morning. Louisiana? Okay. 

Well, that’s good. Almost to Texas. 

And speaking of Texas, I now recognize the Chairman of the full 

Committee from the great State of Texas, Chairman Lamar Smith. 

Chairman SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Americans are fascinated by space exploration. It fuels our desire 

to push the boundaries of what is possible and to reach beyond our 

own pale blue dot. 

In the last few years, the flagship deep space exploration programs at NASA, both robotic and human, have been under attack 

by the Obama Administration. This Administration cancelled the 

robotic ExoMars mission and the Constellation program, and it 

continues to propose drastic cuts to the Space Launch System and 

Orion programs. These programs were all developed to support 

deep space exploration to destinations like the Moon and Mars. The 

Obama Administration cannot claim that it prioritizes Mars exploration if it refuses to prioritize and support the programs that will 

get us there, and the budget instability created by the Administration makes it hard for NASA to plan and execute critical programs. 

For example, NASA recently announced that the first crewed mission for SLS and Orion was delayed by two years because the Administration would not allow NASA to budget for the programs. 

While the Administration regularly cuts SLS and Orion budget 

requests, Congress continues to restore those cuts in a bipartisan 

fashion, and there is bipartisan support within Congress for SLS 

and the Orion crew vehicle. This Committee has restored proposed 

cuts year after year in our authorization bills, and the House and 

the Senate Appropriations Committees restored funding for the 

SLS and Orion at the levels necessary to keep their development 

on track. 

The SLS and Orion programs represent what is most impressive 

about the American spirit: the desire to explore. The technologies 

that are developed for these programs exemplify our greatest 

breakthroughs and demonstrate American ingenuity. This Committee will not permit this Administration to threaten the succession of these programs. Any efforts to cancel these programs will 

be met with stiff opposition. 

The Administration should develop solid plans for future exploration missions that foster support from the science and engineering communities. However, the Administration continues to push 

plans for an uninspiring and unjustified Asteroid Retrieval Mission. Just last week, NASA announced its strategy to develop the 

spacecraft bus that will be used for the robotic elements of that 

mission. The Administration continues to force this mission on 

NASA without any connection to a larger exploration roadmap and 

absent support from the scientific community or NASA’s own advisory committees. This is a misguided mission without a budget, 

without a launch date, and without ties to exploration goals. It is 

a mission without the support necessary to make it a reality in the 

nine months remaining in the Obama Administration. It is just a 
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time-wasting distraction but maybe that is what the Administration really wants. 

Instead, the Administration should follow the advice of the NASA 

Advisory Council and more fully develop its human exploration 

plans, including a human flyby mission to orbit Mars. There are 

many options, but without a roadmap to guide the agency, NASA 

will continue to be subject to indirection and proposed budget cuts 

by the White House. For its part, Congress will continue to ensure 

that space exploration will receive the funding needed to stay on 

schedule and on budget. 

Great nations do great things. Fortune favors the bold. These 

next few years are critical. A trip to Mars can turn science fiction 

into science fact before our eyes and within our lifetime. The first 

flag to fly on the surface of Mars should be ours. I hope the Administration will join Congress in pursuing that goal. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Smith follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate those 

wise words. 

Now I recognize the Ranking Member of the full Committee, another person from Texas, Ms. Johnson. 

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good 

morning to all, and let me welcome our distinguished panel, and 

welcome our young people. 

I have made it well known that I consider NASA to be a critical 

national asset. NASA is a source of technological and scientific innovation, an inspiration to generations of young people, and a catalyst for economic growth. It is also a positive symbol of American 

preeminence worldwide and a demonstration of our commitment to 

international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. 

Human exploration is a highly visible facet of NASA’s multi-mission portfolio. It is thus appropriate to continue to examine the nation’s human exploration strategy. 

At a June 2014 Committee hearing, we heard from the co-chairs 

of the National Academies’ review of the future of human exploration in the United States. That comprehensive review was conducted at Congress’s direction. As I said at that time of the hearing, the Academies report did not mince words. It provided us with 

an important wake-up call. The report’s conclusions were clear. We 

are not going to have a human space exploration program worthy 

of this great nation if we continue down the current path of failing 

to provide the resources needed to make real progress and failing 

to embrace clear—a clear goal and a pathway to achieving that 

goal. It rests with this Committee and Congress, not the White 

House, on what is authorized and what is appropriated in this Congress. 

What we need now is a clearly articulated plan on how we will 

get to Mars and what we called a roadmap in the House-passed 

2015 NASA Reauthorization Act and what the Academies called a 

pathway in their report. 

In just about one year, the nation will transition to a new Presidential Administration. Such transitions have, in the past, led to 

significant redirections in NASA’s human exploration programs. 

Mr. Chairman, if that were to happen again, that would be a tragedy, and a wasteful one at that. It is Congress’s responsibility to 

listen to the reports and make recommendations and authorizations accordingly. 

NASA has made significant progress since 2010 NASA reauthorization—Authorization Act was enacted. Fabrication of the Space 

Launch System is underway, flight testing of the Orion vehicle is 

confirming design objectives, ground systems are being modernized, 

and ways of mitigating the effects of long-term space travel are the 

subject of intense research on the International Space Station. In 

that regard, Mr. Chairman, I hope we can have an opportunity to 

hear from NASA, in the not-too-distant future, on the progress of 

its journey to Mars strategy and how investments in SLS, Orion, 

and ISS fit into that strategy. 

In conclusion, last week we honored the crews of Apollo-1, STS– 

51L, and STS–107. These brave men and women paid the ultimate 

price while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery. We 

as a nation owe it to them to continue this grand journey of explo-
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ration of the Universe. Future generations of Americans depend on 

us. We cannot blame anybody else but us. We must not let the nation down. We must not let our young people down. 

I thank you, and yield back. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Ranking Member Johnson. 

Now let me introduce our worthy and expert witnesses at this 

time. Mr. Tom Young, former Director of NASA’s Goddard Space 

Flight Center, former President and Chief Operating Officer of 

Martin Marietta Corporation, and former Chairman of SAIC. Mr. 

Young joined NASA in 1961 as a member of the Lunar Orbiter 

Project Team and was Mission Director for the program Viking. 

Prior to being named Director of Goddard Space Flight Center, Mr. 

Young was Director of the Planetary Program at NASA headquarters and Deputy Director of the Ames Research Center. Mr. 

Young earned a bachelor of aeronautical engineering degree and a 

bachelor of mechanical engineering degree in 1961 from the University of Virginia. In 1972, he received a master’s of management 

degree from MIT. 

Dr. John Sommerer is our second witness. Dr. Sommerer is a 

Technologist with over 35 years of professional experience and over 

20 years of executive experience. He chaired the Technical Panel 

of the Pathways to Exploration report at the National Academy of 

Sciences. Dr. Sommerer received his B.S. and M.D. degrees in system science and mathematics from Washington University in St. 

Louis, an M.D. in applied physics from Johns Hopkins University, 

and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland. 

Dr. Spudis is our final witness today. Dr. Paul Spudis is a Senior 

Staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, 

Texas. At LPI, Dr. Spudis’s research focuses on the geological processes of the terrestrial planets and the study of the requirements 

for sustainable human presence on the Moon. He is the recipient 

of numerous awards and has authored or co-authored over 100 scientific papers and seven books. Dr. Spudis received his B.S. and his 

Ph.D. from Arizona State University and his master of science from 

Brown University. 

I want to tell you how appreciative we are that you three illustrious gentlemen have come to speak with us today. 

I would now like to recognize Mr. Young for five minutes to 

present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. TOM YOUNG, 

FORMER DIRECTOR, 

GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER, NASA; 

FORMER PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, 

MARTIN MARIETTA CORPORATION 

Mr. YOUNG. Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Edwards, and 

Committee members, I’m pleased to have the opportunity to 

present my views on the United States’ human spaceflight program. While I’m a member of the NASA Advisory Council, my participation in the hearing today is as an individual representing only 

myself. 

The United States human spaceflight program from Alan Shepherd’s initial suborbital flight and John Glenn’s orbital flight to today’s International Space Station has been rich in exploration excitement, scientific return and technological accomplishments. 

The success of the human spaceflight program for over five decades can be traced to many factors. Clearly the integration of the 
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extraordinary NASA capabilities with the exceptional implementation capabilities of industry has been a major factor. NASA alone 

or industry alone could not have been successful. This is an important lesson as we plan for the future. 

Today the future of the human spaceflight program is far from 

clear. We know some critical parts of the puzzle, including the ISS, 

Commercial Cargo, Commercial Crew, SLS and Orion. There are 

many pieces that are yet to be defined and funded. These include 

a habitat module, landing systems, a solar electric propulsion tug, 

and a launch system for return from the surface of the Moon or 

Mars. We have continual debate as to whether our goal should be 

the Moon, Mars or both. 

We have a 2016 budget that allocates approximately $9 billion 

for human spaceflight. The budget is divided roughly equal between LEO and exploration. What we do not have is a plan, strategy, or architecture with sufficient detail that takes us from today 

to humans on the surface of Mars or the Moon with a long-term 

goal of extended presence. 

I would like to offer my views on the existing and missing pieces 

of the puzzle, starting with the budget. If the 2016 amount of $9 

billion remains constant with the addition of inflation for the next 

two decades, there will be approximately $180 billion with today’s 

buying power available. With that level of funding, significant 

progress can be made on a human exploration program. 

A study to define minimal architecture for human journeys to 

Mars initiated by Scott Hubbard and conducted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides a credible argument that a Mars mission 

is feasible at these funding levels. I personally believe increases in 

the budget will be necessary to support a comprehensive program 

that includes appropriate precursor activities and missions to realize a responsible funding level for exploration. It’s necessary also 

to make decisions between low-Earth orbit and activities in lowEarth orbit and to have a well-defined, highly focused plan that includes only those activities necessary for the success of the endeavor. 

Currently the human spaceflight budget supports both a LEO 

program consisting of ISS, Commercial Cargo and Commercial 

Crew and an exploration program consisting of SLS, Orion, and 

other exploration activities. Future budgets will be required to support the additional required pieces of the puzzle that I discussed 

earlier. The combination of the current LEO program and the desired exploration program are not affordable at current budget levels. A choice is required between the two programs. 

A sustainable exploration program requires that the necessary 

knowledge from ISS be obtained expeditiously followed by diverting 

current ISS funds to exploration. An alternative is to continue 

funding the LEO program and forego a credible Moon or Mars exploration program that results in humans on the surface within a 

reasonable schedule and budget. We cannot do both without a 

major augmentation of the budget. 

NASA has done an excellent job of maintaining a conservative 

cargo transportation capability. This conservative approach allows 

a mission failure or multiple failures to occur without catastrophic 
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consequences. It also allows a management approach that relies 

heavily on the commercial partner with modest NASA involvement. 

Commercial Crew is much more challenging. A Commercial Crew 

failure that involves loss of the crew will be a catastrophe. This 

recognition requires Commercial Crew to be managed significantly 

differently than Cargo. Commercial Crew requires the full application of the NASA human spaceflight expertise in combination with 

the extraordinary implementation capability of industry to assure 

an acceptable probability of success. The concept often stated to let 

the commercial world be responsible for LEO activities with NASA 

responsible for exploration is not valid for Commercial Crew. 

The next topic I would like to address is the Moon-Mars debate. 

Each option has merit. While a human to the Moon program is 

highly challenging, a human to Mars program is much more difficult, challenging and costly. This latter factor must be taken into 

consideration in the debate. My opinion is that Mars is a much 

more compelling option. I believe NASA, the current Administration and the House in the NASA Authorization Act of 2014 and 

2015 have settled upon the human to Mars option. It is clear again 

that we cannot do both and there is a need to focus all attention, 

capabilities and resources upon one option. 

For the remainder of my comments, I assume the humans to the 

surface of Mars option to be the choice. In my view, a plan is required for the following reasons. One: A plan is required for the implementation team to have a common focus. A plan is necessary to 

obtain program support. Without a plan, constituents cannot make 

an evaluation and know if they are supportive. A new Administration will be in place in about a year. Without a plan it will be difficult to obtain support and avoid another redo of the content and 

focus of the United States human spaceflight program. A plan is 

necessary to effectively define required technologies, including the 

level and schedule. A plan is necessary to effectively define supporting information needed from ISS and the NASA science program. A plan is necessary to identify the approximate level of required resources. A plan is necessary to assure resources are applied in the most effective manner. A plan is necessary to define 

precursor missions that should be planned and implemented. A 

plan is necessary to define the cislunar space/proving ground activity that is currently evolving. It is important to do what is required 

for a successful exploration program and not what is possible. A 

plan is necessary to effectively assess risk and develop mitigation 

plans. 

An argument against a plan at the current time is that we are 

not ready to finalize the necessary elements of the plan. I believe 

a strength of NASA program management is to establish a plan 

relatively early with the recognition that as new information becomes available, the plan can be changed. I believe we have the opportunity to set a direction for the United States human exploration program that is exciting, realistic, inspiring, and sustainable. I believe the most compelling case is for the humans to the 

surface of Mars option. 

Decisions are required relative to LEO if a vigorous exploration 

program is to be pursued. This includes the future of ISS and Commercial Crew. Preparation is required for the transition to the new 
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Administration. A plan in sufficient detail to maximize the probability of support and sustainability is required. Above all else, a 

plan with significant detail that takes us from today to humans on 

the surface of Mars is required. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Young follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Young. 

I now recognize Dr. Sommerer for five minutes to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. JOHN C. SOMMERER, 

CHAIR, TECHNICAL PANEL, 

PATHWAYS TO EXPLORATION REPORT, 

NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 

Dr. SOMMERER. Chairman Babin, Ranking Member Edwards, 

and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the 

opportunity to discuss the options for architectures and intermediate steps to develop the capability to send humans to Mars 

while maintaining constancy of purpose through the next and necessarily many subsequent Administrations. 

I had the privilege of chairing the Technical Panel of the congressionally mandated National Research Council Committee on 

Human Spaceflight, and I’m here to represent some 1 of the salient 

features of the salient features of that panel’s conclusions about 

possible pathways to Mars, as well as some of my own views. 

The first, and by far most significant conclusion is that while 

sending humans to Mars, and returning them safely to Earth, may 

be technically feasible, it is an extraordinarily challenging goal 

from physiological, technical, and programmatic standpoints, and 

because of this extreme difficulty, it is only with unprecedented cumulative investment, and, frankly, unprecedented discipline in development, testing, execution, and leadership, that this enterprise 

is likely to be successful. 

To be explicit and to set the scale of the problem, the Technical 

Panel, aided by independent cost estimation contractors, and using 

a process that respected the importance of development risks based 

on technical challenges, capability gaps, regulatory challenges, and 

programmatic factors, as well as the need to maintain a reasonable 

operational tempo, concluded that the first crewed Mars landing 

might be possible 20 to 40 years from now, after a cumulative expenditure of on the order of half a trillion dollars. The actual time 

frame and cost will depend greatly on the pathway chosen to 

achieve the goal, and candidly, the fastest and least expensive 

pathway that we examined comes with enormous risks to both the 

success of the missions and the lives of the astronauts conducting 

them. 

Let me briefly and very superficially review the most significant 

risks of attempting to send humans exploring in deep space. We 

know that prolonged exposure of astronauts to the space environment has the potential to harm them. Astronauts on long missions 

such as we’re conducting now on ISS and have been conducted by 

the Soviets in the past with Mir have experienced potentially debilitating effects caused by the microgravity environment. Musculoskeletal deterioration has been best studied, and while exercise has 

the potential to mitigate its impact, the regimen needed over the 

long duration of a human mission to Mars may not be realistic. 

The radiation environment in space, especially deep space beyond the protection of the Earth’s magnetic field, has been quantified largely in terms of increased cancer risk due to galactic cosmos rays, against which shielding is ineffective without prohibitive 
39 

mass penalties. However, the non-carcinogenic risks due to radiation such as cumulative neural degeneration are much less well 

understood and may well prove to be more limiting. It appears that 

with existing architectures for Mars missions, which include greater-than-1-year stays on the Martian surface, which brings with it 

its own risks, physiological limits may not be prohibitive, although 

risks to the astronauts would be very high. Long-duration orbital 

missions at Mars, or on Mars’ moons, may not be feasible at all, 

because of radiation. 

Few of the technological challenges of a crewed Mars mission are 

insurmountable, but cumulatively, they represent a huge gap relative to our current capabilities and our currently available resources. The Committee’s final report includes a list of 15 high-priority technical capabilities, and most of the intersections of those 

capabilities against the various forms of challenge are red in risk 

assessment, things such as, there’s no technical solution known. 

There’s no such system that’s ever been developed at the necessary 

scale. Current regulations impose significant challenges and will be 

difficult to change, and development to operational capability is on 

the order of previous large, national programs. In short, there is an 

awful lot of technical work to do. 

Having spent my life as a technologist, I can say that a large job 

list isn’t altogether a bad thing but it does require a great deal of 

discipline, and a certain ruthlessness in pruning efforts that are 

not making needed progress or that don’t accumulate to the intended goal. I applaud the fact that, with this Committee’s and the 

Administration—appropriators’ help, NASA finally has a Space 

Technology Mission Directorate, which has recently made some significant contributions to the capabilities that my panel identified as 

highest priority. However, in other areas that the panel identified 

as highest priority such as in-space power and propulsion, NASA 

appears to be maintaining the entire trade space of possible propulsion challenges. SLS and Orion aren’t the only things we’ll need to 

get to Mars. 

I also wish to note that one of the foundational conclusions of the 

technical panel is there’s a very limited set of places for humans 

in the solar system for the foreseeable future given what we know 

about technology and physiology. We’ve been to the Moon so we 

know that’s possible. We probably can go to some near-Earth asteroids, and as we’ve discussed already today, maybe we can get to 

Mars. Given the relative simplicity of the field of regard, there are 

tremendous technical and programmatic advantages to deciding, 

once and for all, where we’re going, and in what order. Each of 

these possible destinations has proponents to be what’s next, but 

given the size of the job jar, it’s not helpful to keep changing our 

minds. 

The NRC Committee advocated that a defined pathway, with 

missions to the different possible destinations in sequence has 

some highly desirable properties such as that the sequence of missions and destinations permits stakeholders to see progress, that 

the pathway has a logical feed forward of technical capabilities, 

that the pathway minimizes the use of dead-end systems and 

equipment, that the pathway is affordable without incurring unac-
40 

ceptable development risk, and the pathway supports, in the context of the available budget, a reasonable operational tempo. 

The NRC did not recommend any particular pathway, but did assess three notional pathways against these attributes. The committee noted that the notional pathway that is closest to NASA’s 

current plans has serious deficiencies with regard to the significance of the intermediate destinations, logical feed forward, the 

number of dead-end systems, and exceedingly high development 

risk. The committee also noted the two alternative pathways that 

did not have these efficiencies failed against the affordability and 

operational tempo attributes at current expenditure levels. To 

quote the Technical Panel’s final briefing to the entire NRC Committee in 2013: ‘‘In the current fiscal environment, there are no 

good pathways to Mars.’’ 

So I’d like to conclude briefly with some of my own views. I understand that there is bipartisan support for a ‘‘go as we pay’’ approach to human spaceflight. But just as it is not feasible to take 

a cross-country trip on a child’s allowance, because of threshold 

costs, we may well never be able to get to Mars at current expenditure levels. It might be better to stop talking about Mars if there 

is no appetite in Congress and the Administration for higher 

human spaceflight budgets and no willingness to cut programs that 

do not contribute to progress. At a minimum, we should agree on 

a pathway that is satisfying to the public, even if it does not lead 

to Mars in the foreseeable future. A pathway that includes the surface of the Moon is one obvious possibility. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Sommerer follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you, Dr. Sommerer. Those are 

interesting words. 

I now recognize Dr. Spudis for five minutes to present his testimony. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. PAUL SPUDIS, 

SENIOR SCIENTIST, 

LUNAR AND PLANETARY INSTITUTE 

Dr. SPUDIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the Committee 

for this opportunity to give you my thoughts on our nation’s program for human exploration of space. This testimony is my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of my 

employer, the University Space Research Association. 

America’s space program is in disarray. We pretend that we are 

on a journey to Mars but in fact possess neither the technology nor 

the economic resources necessary to undertake a human Mars mission now or within the foreseeable future. What we need is a logically arranged set of short-term, realizable space goal that are not 

only interesting in and of themselves, but whose attainment will 

build capability in the long term. Whatever goals are selected, significant milestones can be reached on a regular and recurring 

basis. Only in such a program can progress be mapped and resources allocated accordingly. Thus, any program to extend human 

reach beyond low-Earth orbit must be incremental, so that each 

step is small and affordable, yet cumulative, so that the smaller 

steps integrate into a larger coherent program. 

In 2010, the United States abandoned the goal of lunar return 

set by Vision for Space Exploration. Congress directed the agency 

to continue building the Orion spacecraft and to develop a new 

heavy lift launch vehicle, the Space Launch System. As derivatives 

of the canceled project Constellation, the new systems are optimized for missions to cislunar space, the zone space between lowEarth orbit and the lunar surface. To replace the Moon as a destination, several near-Earth asteroids were examined, which for 

various reason all were found to be unobtainable. Instead, NASA 

embraced the idea of bringing a small asteroid back to cislunar 

space where the Orion spacecraft visited, the so-called Asteroid Retrieval Mission. This idea was neither fully developed conceptually 

nor vetted through the scientific and engineering advisory structures that we maintain to review and judge mission concept proposals. 

As study of the asteroid retrieval concept has proceeded, the 

planned size of return object has continually decreased. Initially it 

was planned to return an asteroid about seven meters across. It is 

currently planned only to return a small one- to two-meter boulder. 

More than 85 percent of all near-Earth asteroids are ordinary 

chondrites, a rock type so renowned for its uniformity that it is 

used as a compositional standard in cosmic chemical studies, and 

we also possess tons of this material as ordinary chondrites continually fall onto the Earth’s surface every day. As a result of limited 

power and minimal loiter time, the Orion spacecraft does not possess the capabilities necessary to experiment with extracting useful 

resources from the asteroid. So the Asteroid Retrieval Mission does 
47 

not contribute to our learning how to process and use the material 

resources of space. 

The microgravity of the ARM will not prepare us for human operations on the surface of Mars, which has approximately 1/3 the 

gravity of the Earth. The ARM offers no unique benefits beyond 

providing a place for Orion to visit. In terms of scientific and operational importance, it is barren of real accomplishment and irrelevant to future deep space human missions. 

As for learning how to use space resources, it can only perform 

rudimentary reconnaissance of the type already accomplished or 

planned by a variety of robotic missions. Although it is claimed 

that the ARM develops technology needed for future Mars missions, specifically the High Power Solar Electric Propulsion Unit, 

missions to cislunar space can develop many of these technologies 

just as well and at the same time emplace space-based infrastructure for future use. 

Cislunar space, the space between Earth and Moon, is home to 

95 percent of our scientific, economic and national security assets, 

satellites upon which we are critically dependent. We can reach 

these orbital levels with unmanned systems. When a satellite becomes obsolete or stops functioning, the only solution is replacement. If we could move people and machines throughout the various locales of cislunar space, we would be able to emplace, construct, and upgrade and maintain these satellites. 

To create this routine access to cislunar space, we should develop 

a permanent space-faring infrastructure including transport vehicles, staging nodes, deep space habitats, power stations, and fuel 

depots. In terms of the energy expended, all destinations in 

cislunar are essentially equal. If we can go to and from the Moon, 

we can go to and from all of the other localities in cislunar space. 

Such a system creates not only routine access to the Moon but to 

all of cislunar space, and it enables human missions to the planets 

beyond. 

To develop the system, it is vital that we learn how to harvest 

the material and energy resources of space. Such technology allows 

us to launch only the most technically advanced and critical equipment from the Earth while large-mass, low-information materials 

such as propellant and life-support consumables can be obtained 

from local sources. Thanks to a variety of robotic missions over the 

last decade, we now know that the Moon possesses these resources 

in abundance. The poles of the Moon contain billions of tons of 

water. In its liquid form, this can support human life, and when 

broken into its component hydrogen and oxygen, it is the most powerful chemical rocket propellant known. 

The United States thinks of itself as a world leader in space but 

our current lack of focus and strategic confusion undermine that 

claim. There is interest from Europe, India, Russia and China in 

lunar missions. These efforts are not undertaken merely to plant 

flags on another world but to reap the benefits offered by the exploration and utilization of the Moon. As the world beats a path to the 

Moon, we stand aside. How can we claim technological and scientific leadership in space when we shy from participation and 

seek no ownership in this arena of cislunar space? 
48 

But there is another dimension to our abdication of leadership. 

China is rapidly developing the capability to travel throughout, loiter within, and intercept any target in cislunar space. They have 

also demonstrated advanced anti-satellite warfare capability most 

notoriously with their interception and destruction of a target satellite in low-Earth orbit in 2007. Future Chinese anti-satellites loitering at an L-point in cislunar space could fly from the vicinity of 

the Moon down to lower orbits and approach direction that’s not 

normally monitored and disable the satellites of other nations. In 

such a scenario, we would be left with a decided disadvantage as 

a result of our lack of commitment to the establishment of a strong 

national presence in cislunar space. 

America is at a critical juncture in the history of its space program. Congressional leadership is needed to set us on the correct 

strategic path. The development of the Moon and cislunar space 

answers important national needs. It is an incremental, affordable 

and useful direction, a sustainable path that creates new capabilities in space faring. A return to the lunar surface allows us to use 

the enabling asset of the Moon to journey to and explore the planets beyond. 

I thank the Committee for its attention, and I welcome your comments and thoughts, and I’m happy to answer any questions you 

might have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Spudis follows:] 
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Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Dr. Spudis, for those wise words. 

The Chair now recognizes himself for five minutes for questioning. 

The first one I’d like to direct to Dr. Spudis. Your testimony 

highlights the need for a sustainable program rather than one-off 

stunts, something that you have long espoused. In reference to 

ARM, A–R–M, your testimony also states that in terms of scientific 

and operational importance, it is barren of real accomplishment 

and irrelevant to future human deep space missions. Does ARM fit 

into the stunt category or is it in the sustainable category? 

Dr. SPUDIS. Well, put that way, I believe it falls into the stunt 

category. I don’t think that it necessarily leads on to any permanent creation of capability, and that’s what’s needed. We need to 

approach the development of cislunar in a strategic manner so you 

have small pieces that build upon themselves to a larger whole 

purpose, and performing the ARM doesn’t really gain you anything. 

It demonstrates that you can do it and that’s about it. 

Chairman BABIN. And Mr. Young, you testified that a new Administration will be in place in about a year, and that without a 

plan, it will be very difficult to obtain support and avoid another 

redo of the context and focus of our U.S. human spaceflight program. Will you please address the challenge of maintaining continuity for NASA’s human exploration program, particularly during 

Administration changes, and what recommendations do you have 

to address this issue? 

Mr. YOUNG. That’s quite a good question. My first comment is, 

it’s hard to sell a plan until you have a plan, so that’s kind of step 

one in the process, in my view. My other comment is, it’s not just 

any plan, you know, it’s a plan that people both pro and con can 

recognize it as credible, and I think the ingredients of the plan 

really exist. One is, as I stated, I think there’s a reasonable probability over the next two decades we’ll spend $180 billion on human 

exploration. That’s not a bad down payment, and so in my view, 

you know, that needs to be a critical part of the plan. I do think 

that’ll have to be augmented. 

The second thing that I think is really important is to recognize 

that there is an interest horizon. There’s a limit to how long you 

can hold out the ultimate goal and expect people to be excited 

about it. I think we could all debate what that is but I’m going to 

throw out something like going to Mars is two decades. I personally 

think if it’s much beyond two decades, sustainability is pretty difficult. Somebody may say no, it’s a decade and a half, but I will 

throw out two decades. So I think the plan has to recognize that 

within like a two-decade time period, accomplishments at Mars, if 

that’s our goal, really need to be happening. 

I think the other thing that needs to be recognized is, a plan encompasses leadership, and leadership is about making choices, and 

I think we have to make choices between LEO and the exploration 

program. I think we have to make choices between the Moon and 

Mars, you know, as the objectives. So my argument is that if a 

credible plan can be put together that has a reasonable time frame 

that makes incredibly efficient use of expected resources, if it’s 

done in a manner that makes hard choices, then I think you have 

the groundwork or the basic input in order to be able to argue with 
56 

the next Administration as to why this should be the sustained activity that should be the focus of the United States human spaced 

program. The corollary is, without it, I don’t think you have a 

chance. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Young. 

For my final question directed to Dr. Spudis, your testimony 

mentioned that Europe, India, Russia and China have all planned 

missions to the surface of the Moon in recent years. You also state 

that as the world beats a path to the Moon, we stand aside. How 

can we claim leadership in a technological and scientific movement 

in which we have no participation and seek no ownership? 

In 2010, President Obama attempted to cancel deep space exploration and a return to the Moon by flippantly stating ‘‘We’ve been 

there before.’’ Thankfully, Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy did 

not take the same tack and wash their hands of space exploration 

after we successfully placed a satellite in space, a human in space, 

a human in orbit, and a human on the Moon surface. Congress 

rightfully rebuked President Obama’s attempt to cancel deep space 

exploration with the passage of the NASA Authorization Act of 

2010, and as we transition to a new Administration, what recommendations do you have for maintaining our leadership in 

space? 

Dr. SPUDIS. Well, I believe that it was a mistake to remove the 

Moon from the critical path because the Moon basically offers us 

the opportunity to create capability, and in fact, that’s why it was 

part of the Vision for Space Exploration to begin with. The Moon 

is reachable, it’s close, it’s interesting and it’s useful. It’s close 

enough so that you can send a vehicle to the Moon any time. It’s 

scientifically interesting in that you can address a lot of problems 

of wide discipline through lunar science studies and scientific studies to undertake near the Moon. But most importantly, and in fact, 

this I think is the critical thing to realize about the Moon, is that 

it is an enabling asset. It’s useful. And we’ve since found in a variety of robotic missions that there is enormous quantities of water 

in the form of ice at the poles of the Moon. Water’s the most useful 

substance you can have in space. It supports human life. It can be 

used as rocket propellant. It can be used as radiation shielding. It 

can be used as a medium for energy storage. So it’s an extremely 

useful substance to have, and it’s very heavy, and to launch it out 

of the Earth’s gravity well, which is the deepest gravity well in the 

inner solar system, basically requires a lot of power, and that’s why 

we need heavy-lift vehicles. By going to the Moon and developing 

those resources, you can actually create those capabilities by using 

the local materials that you find there. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Dr. Spudis. I appreciate that. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Perlmutter. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and panel, thank you 

all for being here. 

So we had a bunch of students. Do we have any students left in 

the audience? Are you guys students? Where do you go to school? 

And what year are you? And how old are you? Okay. So you’re 24. 

Twenty-four plus 17, you’d be 41 when this is when we should get 

to Mars, and we had testimony, Dr. Sommerer, I think in December, maybe it was in November, from another panel that said that 
57 

from an engineering and an astronomy standpoint, that the star— 

the planets line up in 2033 to make it feasible for us to land astronauts on the Moon, and so—pardon me—on Mars. And so we put 

this bumper sticker together that says 2033, and on the bottom ‘‘we 

can do this.’’ And I know, speaking as one but having listened to 

other members of this Committee that Mars is this aspirational 

challenge that, you know, sparked something in us, and Mr. Young, 

you’re right. If it’s, you know, two centuries from now, we’re all 

long gone, but this young woman, she could be an astronaut and 

set foot on Mars at that time. 

So here are my questions, and I don’t think, Dr. Spudis, your testimony is contrary to getting us to Mars. It could be that the way 

you put the building blocks together, Moon is a key piece of this, 

and there is no question that it’s going to take extreme commitment and extreme understanding to be able to do this well. Our job 

up here—and this is a quote that we got—I got from astronaut 

Terry Virts: ‘‘Getting to Mars is not a question of rocket science but 

political science.’’ 

So Dr. Sommerer, I’m going to start with you. You said that in 

your research in the panel’s investigation that this was 20 to 40 

years, and at least a half a trillion dollars. How did you come to 

that? 

Dr. SOMMERER. First of all, I don’t want to get into specious precision about half a trillion. It’s on the order of half a trillion. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Fine. 

Dr. SOMMERER. Maybe we’d get by with $180 billion. I don’t 

think so. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. But it’s a lot. 

Dr. SOMMERER. Yeah, it’s a lot of money, and the reason is—by 

the way, the planets line up every two years basically for Mars, you 

know, 2033 is a nice round number to have in mind but, you know, 

it could be two years after that, it could be ten years after that. 

There’s a lot of stuff you need to get people to Mars and bring them 

back. We need to have a long-term way of keeping them healthy 

on the way there. They need to spend time on the surface in a potentially hazardous chemical environment. We need to be able to 

launch them. We need to have prepositioned things that will keep 

them alive and make it possible to launch them. These are very 

complicated systems. We can learn a lot in cislunar space. We 

could have people 3 days away so that if something went wrong 

with their long-term life support system, we’d have a chance at getting them back, as indeed we did with Apollo 13. But if they’re 

halfway to Mars and something goes wrong because we don’t have 

the experience or we tried to do it a little too fast or a little too 

cheap, those people are gone. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. But if you had—— 

Dr. SOMMERER. So let me—— 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. If we somehow, Democrats, Republicans, Congress and the Administrations—and I figure there’re going to be at 

least five Presidential elections between now and 2033—and I’m 

happy to give you one of these bumper stickers—and there are 

going to be 10 Congressional elections between now and then, but 

if we somehow all came together, said okay, we’re going to put a 

percent of the entire federal budget towards getting us to Mars and 
58 

that gets you $200, $300 billion over the course of the next 17 

years, can we do this? 

Dr. SOMMERER. Yes, but it takes, as Mr. Young has already said, 

a plan, what we’re going to do, what we’re not going to do, do the 

things that are necessary in a logical feed-forward way from the 

standpoint of technology, don’t do everything because—— 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. I’m just a lawyer, all right? I’m just a lawyer, 

and my senior partner had this little thing he put on our desks: 

‘‘Begin. The rest is easy,’’ and then in parentheses, ‘‘maybe.’’ Okay? 

If we were to give you a date that had some legitimate basis in 

science, 2033, because the planets line up right, can the scientists 

and the engineers and the technologists build us a program that 

gets us there by 2033? 

Dr. SOMMERER. If you give them a date and the money and help 

with the discipline, the answer is yes. If any of those three things 

is missing, the answer is almost certainly no. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Thank you. I yield back to the Chair. 

Chairman BABIN. I’d like to now recognize the gentleman from 

Oklahoma, Mr. Lucas. 

Mr. LUCAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and our friends on the 

panel, I think we probably have a number of versions of the same 

question here, and all of you have been before panels before. You 

understand that’s the nature of the body, but as we try to address 

the issues. 

I turn first, Mr. Young, to you. In just two years, the United 

States will have the ability to return to the Moon with the Space 

Launch System and Orion for the first time in 40 years, and for 

the first time ever go deeper into space, providing a historic opportunity for American leadership and exploration. Recently, of course, 

the NASA Director/Administrator has stated that NASA would be 

doomed if the next President changes course and deviates from the 

developments of the Space Launch System and Orion, and if you 

could one more time to reinforce the point, discuss with us the 

risks there are in walking away from the investments made in 

these programs over the last decade. 

Mr. YOUNG. First, and I think it’s your point, there are no goals 

that involve human exploration that are significant that are not 

going to bridge Administrations today, so that’s a fact that we’re 

going to have to deal with. And so with a little bit repeating myself 

but it says that the current Administration needs to approach very 

seriously the transition to the next Administration in getting forward the rationale as to why sustaining the endeavor across the 

Administration is an important thing to do. As you’re saying what 

are the downsides if you don’t do that, I talked about this $180 billion, and I don’t mean to treat that frivolously at all and I also 

don’t mean to say that’s everything that’s needed, but it’s reasonably logical that the activity will be sustained over the next couple 

of decades at that level. It would be such a shame if what we did 

was just waste that money and not have a sustainable program 

really. We have a graveyard today that’s fairly extensive that has 

headstones of human spaceflight programs that consumed a lot of 

resources and ended up with no basic product, and I don’t think we 

need any more headstones in that cemetery. What we really need 

is monuments to accomplishments. 
59 

Mr. LUCAS. Well put, Mr. Young. 

One more question. Part of your testimony indicated that the recent Human Orbiting Mars Workshop organized by the Planetary 

Society, the Space Policy Institute and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory provides a credible argument that a Mars mission is feasible 

at constant funding levels. Is there any reason that NASA could 

not use that as a baseline to plan against? Just expand a little 

more, sir. 

Mr. YOUNG. Yeah. I was not a part of that activity, by the way. 

I’m familiar with it, and I think that what that what they focused 

on was a minimum mission. They were just trying to find a minimum credible mission. But I think the real contribution of that endeavor was, they got on the table, on the agenda a plan that most 

people think have some credibility relative to it to begin the process. Now, the pathway activity that the Congress initiated and was 

done by the National Academy did a similar thing. As it turns out, 

the budgeting—I don’t know if budgeting’s the right way to say it. 

The cost estimating activity that was done for this minimal mission 

we referred to was done by the same people with the same process 

as was done for the pathway activity. So my belief is, there’re two 

options that have a lot of bases behind them. Probably neither one 

are the option that the country will converge upon but we should 

put those on the table, and we really should charge the leadership 

of this country to say look, you know, if we’re really serious about 

humans to Mars, we’ve got to have a plan, and you know, and here 

are a couple of versions that says it’s not impossible to have a plan. 

It’s not impossible to have a good plan but what we’ve got to do 

is to converge on a plan that those who are charged with executing 

the plan really have, you know, have their own analysis involved 

in and their own recognition of the importance of a plan. 

Mr. LUCAS. Thank you, Mr. Young, and Mr. Chairman, I yield 

back the balance of my time. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

Mr. Perlmutter, you had actually asked a question of one of my 

interns back there. That’s Alexandra Abney. She’s a Texas Aggie, 

and we’re very happy to have her working in our office. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Maybe she sets foot on Mars. 

Chairman BABIN. She might do that. I’m not sure you and I will 

be around, though. 

Mr. PERLMUTTER. Yeah, so carry it on. 

Chairman BABIN. Right. Okay. Thank you. 

I’d now like to call on the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Veasey. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I wanted 

to ask the panelists about partnerships and where would international and commercial partnership for human exploration in 

Mars make the most sense? 

Dr. SOMMERER. So Mr. Young has already talked to the very effective partnership that NASA has had with industry and achieving our exploration goals to date and that needs to continue. You 

can’t turn it over to industry. You can’t just have it done by NASA 

in-house centers, I think. 

International partnership, the Technical Panel which I led was 

very explicit that that could be a good thing from the standpoint 

of sustaining commitment. It’s credited as one of the things that 
60 

sustained ISS through some particularly dark times. But what it 

probably doesn’t do is save a lot of money. Something like 15 percent of the cost of ISS was borne by our international partners and 

the rest was paid for by U.S. tax dollars. You would have to have 

unprecedented levels of international contribution financially to 

substantially lower the burden on U.S. funding to go anywhere significant, but doing it collectively as a human species as opposed to 

a set of countries makes a great deal of sense scientifically from the 

standpoint of soft geopolitics, if you will, and other reasons. 

So commercial space entities will always be a part of the NASA 

program. I think that’s necessary. But turning it over to them I 

don’t think makes a lot of sense. 

Mr. VEASEY. Are there international partners that we have already identified or that NASA has already identified that we’ve already begun to have very strong talks with to sort of start laying 

the foundation for future travel to Mars? 

Dr. SOMMERER. I’m not in the Administration so I don’t know, 

okay. I am a member of an international academy of astronautics. 

There’s robust discussion amongst technologists and scientists in 

that group and in its various conferences, but you know, in terms 

of actual partners, I presume that we think that the ISS coalition 

will continue in some form with exploration. Europe has already 

expressed an interest in a lunar base. There are other significant 

players out there and some emerging players, and, you know, that’s 

above my pay grade to say whether we should be involved with 

China or Russia. 

Mr. VEASEY. Yes, sir? 

Dr. SPUDIS. I’d like to point out that in fact there’s already international participation in the Orion SLS system because the Europeans are building service module for Orion, and Orion cannot do 

anything unless it has a service module. One of the things that 

could’ve been looked at that wasn’t in 2010 when the Moon—return 

to the Moon was dropped was getting an international partner to 

help us build the Altair. The argument of the Augustine Committee 

was that we couldn’t afford to build both the Orion and the 

Altair—the Altair is the lunar lander part of the Constellation system—at the same time but it was not explored to look at the possibility of having an international participation in the building of the 

lander. So in actual fact, if Orion and SLS is the future of human 

spaceflight, we already have international participation. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it. I yield 

back my time. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you. 

Chairman BABIN. Let’s see. I’d now like to recognize the gentleman from Alabama, Mr. Brooks. 

Mr. BROOKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the economic news for America that’s come out recently, particularly with respect to our deficit 

and debt, but it’s taken a decided turn for the worse. The firstquarter numbers reflect that our revenues went up four percent 

but our spending went up seven percent according to the Congressional Budget Office, relying on Treasury Department numbers. 

Our first-quarter deficit was $36 billion worse in this fiscal year 
61 

compared to the previous fiscal year. If that were extrapolated out, 

that would mean that our deficit has gone up $144 billion worse 

this year than the previous fiscal year although the CBO projects 

that it will probably be more likely in the $130 something billion 

range worse. The CBO is also projecting that our total amount of 

debt is now going to blow though the $30 trillion mark within a 

decade, and the real question is whether America is going to be 

able to survive that, whether we will go through a debilitating insolvency and bankruptcy. 

So with that as a little bit of an economic background as to our 

country’s finances, my question to you is, how do we avoid a repeat 

of the Constellation program’s demise in 2010 at the hands of the 

Obama Administration, and a corollary to that is, what lessons did 

we learn and how can we apply what we learn to the Space Launch 

System and the Orion programs? The floor is yours. 

Mr. YOUNG. I’ll take a crack. The budget numbers that you 

talked about or the economic numbers are sobering, so I don’t want 

to, you know, dismiss them at all. If I would look at myself personally, I would call myself a fiscal conservative so I worry about those 

kinds of numbers. 

I equally worry about what great nations do, and I think great 

nations do great things, and so I think that relative to the country 

as a whole, as we go through challenging economic times or challenge of whatever times there may be, I think that we are fortunate that we live in a country that has the ability to also do great 

things while we’re meeting these challenges. So I put myself in 

that category of advocating working today’s problem and planning 

for great things for the future. 

Relative again, and looking a little bit redundant, nothing troubles me more than to spend a reasonable amount of money to come 

back to maybe my crazy analogy here for another tombstone, and 

that’s why I am personally am passionate about humans to Mars 

but I’m equally passionate about a good, disciplined plan that is 

not frivolous, and one of my colleagues commented, a plan that 

does what is required but also does not do what is not required, 

or maybe another way to say it, doesn’t do just do what is possible. 

So a disciplined, structured plan that accomplishes what I’m calling what a great nation does a great thing is important. It may be 

naive but it’s my belief that such a plan, well-constructed in a bipartisan, I guess, kind of an effort, I think that kind of a plan 

should be stable across Administrations, and if we as a country 

can’t do things like that across Administrations, you know, when 

they’re well thought out and well done, then shame on us. I’m an 

optimist—— 

Mr. BROOKS. Mr. Young, let me please interrupt. We’re running 

short of time. So any of the other two gentlemen would also like 

to respond, please feel free to do so. 

Dr. SOMMERER. Well, I’d like to reiterate Mr. Young’s point, that 

probably we’re going to spend $180 billion on human spaceflight in 

the country over the coming horizons unless that just stops altogether. Let’s spend the money as wisely as we can. 

You could make an argument, and some do, and I have from time 

to time, that maybe we shouldn’t have human spaceflight, that we 

ought to rely entirely on robotic probes, which are much more cost- 
62 

effective for the scientific knowledge that’s adduced. That’s a choice 

that in really grim financial straits the country might be forced to 

make. But it doesn’t seem to be something that people want to 

stand up and proudly say let’s end the human space endeavor and 

rely on only robots, although the robot stuff is pretty cool, Mars, 

Pluto, et cetera. 

Dr. SPUDIS. I’ll make this very brief, but we’re compelled to be 

present in space for a variety of reasons. Modern civilization critically depends on the assets in cislunar space, so what I’ve tried to 

envision is a way to make the human program relevant to those 

critical needs, and what I’ve identified is the fact that if you go to 

the Moon and develop its resources to create a permanent transportation system that can access not only low-Earth orbit but all the 

points in between Earth and Moon, you’ve actually created a system that can not only maintain those critical space assets that we 

use every day but also inherently gives you the ability to go to the 

planets when you have that. 

So I am cognizant of the fact that we’re in serious fiscal trouble. 

We’ve been in serious fiscal trouble for my entire adult life. But 

we’ve continued to spend money on space. We just haven’t spent in 

a focused manner with a clear strategic direction, and I think 

that’s what’s needed. 

Mr. BROOKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the witnesses. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Brooks. 

Mr. Posey is not here so we will go to the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Bridenstine. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I’d like to, number one, thank you, Dr. Spudis, for your testimony. You mentioned three things I’d like to hit on. Number one, 

you talked about three specific missions: cislunar habitats, resource 

extraction from celestial bodies, and rendezvous, and proximity operations as it relates to doing servicing of satellites, and you were 

specifically talking about the human components of each of those, 

and I would like to bring up an issue that I think is important that 

we need to be talking about here on this Committee, and that is 

this, that there are commercial entities rising private capital right 

now that are capable of doing these missions, willing to do these 

missions, and these private companies. The risk is no longer raising capital, the risk is no longer even technological, although there 

is some risk there. Their major risk, from what I hear as a member 

of this Committee, this Subcommittee, the major risk is regulatory. 

They need certainty. They need to know that when they develop 

these technologies there’s not going to be a government entity out 

there that says no, you can’t launch, or no, you can’t do that mission. And these are the challenges that we, I think, need to be addressing and looking at. 

When you think about remote sensing, NOAA has the authority 

to license, you know, remote sensing satellites. When you think 

about communications, the FCC has the ability to license communication satellites. But those three missions that you specifically 

mentioned, these are non-traditional kind of missions that we 

haven’t been doing commercially yet, and yet right now we’re raising capital—I say ‘‘we’’—private companies are raising capital to do 

these missions, and we need some kind of regulatory assurance 
63 

that when they are ready, that there is nobody that’s going to put 

the halt on their efforts. So thank you for bringing up those, and 

of course, I think your vision for cislunar space is critically important. 

I know a number of other people have touched on this but I want 

to be really clear, and I know, Mr. Young, you’re not here representing the NASA Advisory Council. I know you’re a member of 

it but you’re here, you know, operating independently. But the 

NASA Advisory Committee warned that NASA runs the risk of 

squandering precious national resources if they move forward with 

the Asteroid Redirect Mission. Later, the NASA Advisory Council 

unanimously adopted a finding that it thinks NASA should change 

the Asteroid Redirect Mission into a mission that would go all the 

way to Mars and thus be more closely aligned with the goal of 

sending humans there. 

Mr. Young, two years ago you went as far as to say that the 

ARM proposal ‘‘dumbed down NASA.’’ 

Mr. Spudis, your testimony states that ‘‘ARM offers few scientific 

and scant operational benefits’’ and that ‘‘in terms of scientific and 

operational importance, it is barren of real accomplishments and irrelevant to the future human deep space missions.’’ 

Dr. Sommerer, your testimony highlights that the NRC panel 

that you participated in found that NASA’s current plans which include ARM have ‘‘serious deficiencies with regard to the significance of intermediate destinations, logical feed forward, dead-end 

systems and exceedingly high development risk.’’ 

That is not good testimony regarding the Asteroid Redirect Mission from any one of you. My question is really simple. Why, if 

there’s this much consensus, why is the Administration still trying 

to force this mission on NASA, the scientific community and the 

American public? And I’d like you guys to speculate on that if you 

would. I have 1 minute left, and I’ll just leave it to each of you. 

I’ll start with you, Mr. Young, or you guys can decide. 

Dr. SOMMERER. Fairly early in President Obama’s Administration, he said we’re not going to the Moon, we’re going to an asteroid 

because we’ve been to the Moon. We did not actually have the capability to go to the asteroid for the foreseeable future for reasons 

that we’ve discussed. I think it is likely that that’s an embarrassing position to be in, although I don’t know what it’s like to be 

President, and there were some people who came up with an idea 

that sort of got astronauts into the business of playing patty-cake 

with something that came from an asteroid, at least, and that 

seemed very attractive. But I agree with all of the statements that 

I think it’s a mission which has no real purpose, especially in the 

context of deep space exploration. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. Mr. Young, did you want to add to that? 

Mr. YOUNG. No, I think I basically agree with the comment. I 

don’t really know the answer to your question obviously. The reason for my comments and the other comments is that again I feel 

so strongly that we need to be doing those things that are critical 

to a successful human to Mars program and the mission, the Asteroid Retrieval Mission, is far below threshold as to a mission that 

contributes to that endeavor, in my view, and again to come back 

to relevant to that, one of the things that’s argued is, well, out of 
64 

that mission we got some technology and the technology is on the 

solar electric propulsion tug, and I think that’s true, and the SES 

technology is needed, so do the technology. Don’t encumber it with 

all of the other activities that’s there, and I think that’s why the 

NAC said look, a terrific thing would be taking SES flight to Mars, 

bringing it back and demonstrate the technology in a manner that 

it’ll ultimately use relative to Mars. 

Mr. BRIDENSTINE. And I’m out of time. Mr. Chairman, in closing 

I would just like to say that going back to my original statement, 

as these private companies are raising capital and they’re retiring 

technological risk and they’re ready to launch, we need to make 

sure this Committee is 100 percent committed to enabling and allowing them to do what they’re supposed to be doing, which is advancing the human condition with commercial and private-sector 

capabilities. 

So thank you so much. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Bridenstine. 

Mr. Posey, the gentleman from Florida, is back in here and so 

I’d call on him for a line of questioning. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Spudis, in your testimony you stated that the United States 

abandoned the strategic goals for space set by Vision for Space Exploration in 2010 and eliminated the objective of a lunar return. 

The elimination of lunar return has left a vacuum in the National 

Space Exploration Policy that has yet to be filled. Should the 

United States return to the Moon in cislunar space and, if so, how 

does that fit, in your opinion, within a longer-term human exploration strategy? 

Dr. SPUDIS. Well, yes, sir, I do believe that, that the Moon played 

a critical role in the original Vision for Space Exploration in that 

it was a key enabler. It both enabled you to create the technology 

you needed to go deeper into space beyond low-Earth orbit and it 

also offered the ability to create all new capabilities such as the 

provision of consumables and propellant from lunar materials. So 

for this reason, I’ve advocated lunar return for a long time. The 

more we learn about it, the more promising it appears as a target, 

and you have to be able to build a system in an incremental manner using small steps so that you don’t necessarily have a big 

wedge of money that you need to get started but at the same time 

you create long-term capability. 

So in my opinion, focusing on the development of cislunar space 

and specifically development of the resources of the Moon actually 

can create new capabilities that we currently don’t have, and that 

includes the capability to go to the planets. 

Mr. POSEY. Virtually—and I may have forgotten who did it but 

every witness we’ve ever had come before this Committee has said 

we need to have a lunar basis as part of the steppingstone. The 

only one we haven’t got that from is NASA. 

Dr. Spudis and Dr. Sommerer, can you discuss what are the most 

important elements of the planned cislunar habitat that feed into 

the longer-term plan for the journey to Mars? What key technology 

development and scientific research can be done that will feed the 

forward to a human mission to the Martian system? 
65 

Dr. SOMMERER. One of the salient features of a mission to the 

Martian system is how long it takes, given our current propulsion 

capability and those we foresee could take years, at least a year. 

We’ve learned a great deal about environmental control and life 

support systems as part of the ISS. However, and I have this on 

authority from the engineers who are responsible for that, it’s kind 

of a kluge. There’s a lot of things that have been put together over 

time. They aren’t totally compatible. You would, I would think, if 

you’re an astronaut on your way to Mars, want to believe that that 

environmental control and life support system was going to be very 

reliable, not require constant maintenance, and was going to get 

you there safely. That’s one of the things that you could do in 

cislunar space. You could develop that capability in cislunar space 

where you’re only three days away from help if something does go 

wrong. That would be a very, very important contributor to Mars. 

The other thing that you can’t do on the ISS is deal with galactic 

cosmos rays because it’s such low altitude and deep in the Earth’s 

magnetic field. We need to have a lot more experience with what 

radiation does to people on long-duration missions. That’s something also that can happen in cislunar space where people are pretty close to help if things are going badly. Those are two things that 

I think are absolutely critical. 

Mr. POSEY. Yeah, I’m a son of Apollo when they did all that without computers. They did it with slide rules. You know, as President 

Kennedy said, great nations do things because they’re difficult, because they’re hard, actually, he said, not because they’re easy, and 

certainly this falls in that ballpark. 

Dr. Spudis, it’s my understanding that commercial lunar mission 

backed by private-sector investors could be launched to the Moon 

as early as next year. As an advocate of lunar resource development, do you see value in commercial robotic missions and do you 

think NASA could benefit from including payloads on those missions? 

Dr. SPUDIS. Yes, I do, and I should preface this by saying I’m involved in one of those commercial companies. I advise Moon Express Incorporated on possible payloads. But in actual fact, there’s 

a lot that you could accomplish with small robotic missions to help 

prepare the way for both human return and the development of 

lunar resources. For example, if you were able to fly a set of instruments that could measure surface hydrogen on a small lander and 

land it near the lunar poles, that is a key critical piece of strategic 

information that we don’t have. It would also allow us to calibrate 

the remote sensing data that we have. I think it would be a very 

good investment of NASA funds to help provide instruments like 

that to any of these commercial missions for the simple reason that 

it’s a cheap and inexpensive way to get very valuable long-term 

strategic information. 

Mr. POSEY. Okay. And for you and Mr. Young, as seen with the 

successes of Commercial Cargo program and the progress being 

made with the Commercial Crew program, can you discuss in more 

detail how NASA can leverage public-private partnerships as 

human exploration program extends beyond the low-Earth orbit? 

Mr. YOUNG. That’s a broad question. As I said earlier, industry 

is a critical component of the exploration program in partnership 
66 

with NASA. The commercial activity—I’m going to use Commercial 

Cargo as an example—in that particular circumstance, NASA or 

the country has turned a lot of the responsibility over to the commercial supplier, and I think in that instance, it was a good thing 

to do, and it was a good decision. 

I think we’ve got to be careful when we talk about exploration 

as to how we use the term ‘‘commercial,’’ and what I really mean 

by that is, I think it’s going to take the best of NASA, the government and industry to do a human to Mars mission, and we should 

not do commercial experiments as a part of that endeavor. So I 

don’t know whether I’ve specifically answered your question or not 

but I think there’s a spectrum where the real term commercial 

makes an awful lot of sense and there are other activities where 

the nation has to provide the leadership form government with industry being an implementing partner to make things happen, so 

that’s what I was trying to say. 

If I could—I know I’m cheating, but if I could make one comment 

on cislunar space that you talked about. I think there are and I 

agree with the Kennedy statement, which I think was good, but I 

think there are things that can and should be done in cislunar 

space that are necessary in order to have a human to surface of 

Mars mission with an acceptable probability of success. However, 

my caution would be, we don’t need another space station in 

cislunar space that is basically going to be carrying on an R&D 

program there, and I think that was your implication also. So I 

think that again the plan we keep talking about will allow us to 

make the judgment as to in cislunar space, what is required, and 

we need to separate that from what we can do there because what 

we can do is probably—not necessarily what needs to be done. I 

think cislunar space needs to be planned very well or it itself can 

become an enormous user of this resource that we’re talking about. 

Mr. POSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Great line of questioning there. 

Now I’d like to recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. 

Rohrabacher. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and 

thank you for holding this hearing. I’d like to identify myself with 

the comments of Congressmen Brooks and Bridenstine earlier. 

They made some very good points, and I’d like to also identify with 

our witness, Mr. Spudis. Is that how you pronounce it? Okay, Mr. 

Spudis, who is admonishing us to do things incrementally because 

it’s affordable and getting something accomplished as compared to 

laying down a 20-year program of gigantic spending that will suck 

the money away from all the other projects that—NASA comes to 

mind in the next 20 years. In the next 20 years, I’m sure we will 

have lots of great ideas that may be more important than spending 

money on getting a man to Mars and planting a flag and coming 

back. In fact, if the Mars mission is to be successful, it appears to 

me that we need,if we were to say our goal is to have an American 

on Mars, we need to ask for volunteers and say you’re not coming 

back, that’s the only way that would be affordable, and that’s just 

a thought. 

In terms of the greatness challenge, I agree with you. America 

needs to do great things, and we are doing great things, but inspire 
67 

young people—we now have reusable rocket system being developed, and that came from the private sector, and we have, you 

know, Virgin Galactic about ready to make suborbital space a 

major part of Americans and western civilization because it’s going 

to spread us all over the world in a matter of minutes. These are 

great things that these young people are going to be able to participate in that didn’t exist before. Blue Horizon, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, they’re doing great and historic things. 

Let me just note that if we do decide, and it looks like go to 

Mars, I’ve heard this for 20 years, it looks like that’s what people 

are forcing into this mode of spending. Ten years down the road, 

ten years down the road, if we have committed ourselves to so 

many billion dollars every year that we’re spending and we end up 

spending $20 billion, $30 billion down the road and let’s say at that 

point a meteorite, instead of skimming Russia like it did in 2013, 

a meteorite would hit a city and kill hundreds of thousands of people, can I tell you what that would do the priority of space spending for this body? They would cut everything off because then the 

public would demand that we were spending our money on global 

defense rather than on planting the flag on Mars, and all of that 

money that we’d spent then would’ve been wasted. What I just described is not a scenario that will never happen. It may never happen but it could well happen. There’s nobody in this room who believes that might not happen in the next 20 years. 

So let’s make sure that we do things incrementally so when we 

are spending at least if we do have to change spending priorities 

in the future, all of that money won’t be wasted, won’t be right 

down the toilet. We can’t afford to do that. As Mr. Brooks pointed 

out, we can’t afford to waste billions of dollars. We just can’t afford 

that. It will bring us down as a country rather than uplift our 

country, which is what the space program is supposed to do. 

So I would suggest that maybe we need to calibrate our plans. 

We have global defense, which I just mentioned, is really an important thing. Clearing space debris—pretty soon we’re not going to be 

able to use space unless we actually initiate a program that’s going 

to clear the space debris that will—again, when we’re talking about 

our young people, our young people, they’re used to now living in 

a world where we have GPS and we have telephones and we have 

all sorts of utilizations of space, and unless we start clearing that 

debris, there’s going to be no more ideas about utilizing space because there won’t be any space up there to do this. It’ll be filled 

with debris. 

So we have these challenges, and I would just hope that as we’re 

discussing manned missions to Mars, that we keep in mind that if 

we end up defunding all these other programs, it’ll bring us down. 

It’ll bring the American space program down. 

So with that said, let me ask about the Moon. I guess I’m already 

over. I’m sorry. By the way, Mr. Chairman, I was the Chairman 

here of this Subcommittee years ago, and frankly, we had to force 

NASA to go around the Moon by the poles in order to find out if 

there was going to be water or not. We had to basically force NASA 

to do that. They did not want to change the pattern of just going 

around parallel. 
68 

Give us—and you already mentioned this in passing. Give us an 

example—again, if we have water on the Moon and we’ve expanded—now we know there’s considerable water, that will permit 

manned presence on the Moon and will then also permit us to further manned use of space beyond the Moon. Is that correct? 

Dr. SPUDIS. Yes, sir. Effectively, the Moon has two resources to 

offer at the poles. One is the water, which is in the form of deposits 

of ice that have been stable for billions of years, and apparently it’s 

present in massive quantities. If the estimates from our remote 

sensing are correct, there are at least hundreds of millions of tons. 

I personally think there are over billions of tons. 

The second thing you have that’s critical are zones on the Moon 

near the poles which are in near permanent sunlight, which allows 

you to essential stay on a sustainable basis on the Moon. Now, 

water is useful both for sustaining human life—you can drink it, 

you can use it for sanitation, you can protect yourself from radiation—but more importantly, it’s the most powerful chemical rocket propellant we know of. If you split water into its component 

atoms and then freeze that into a liquid, you’ve got liquid oxygen 

and liquid hydrogen, which is basically what the space shuttle 

main engine uses. There’s enough ice at the poles of the Moon to 

launch the equivalent of a space shuttle every day for over 2,000 

years. So that’s a lot of water. You’re not going to run out of it 

soon. And if you’re able to access it and process it and store it and 

send it into space, you’ve actually created a fueling depot that will 

allow you to go Mars on a sustainable basis. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. What would it cost—now, we’re talking 

about—we just mentioned the costs of going to Mars. What’s the 

cost of what you’re talking about? 

Dr. SPUDIS. It depends on how you approach it, and a lot of people have published ideas on this. I have published a paper on it. 

There was another paper this past summer. But I certainly think 

it’s less than $100 billion. The key is to use robotic assets to get 

started, and then use people as they become necessary. So you can 

do this on the Moon. You can’t do it on asteroids and you can’t do 

it on Mars because the Moon is close. So you’re able to remotely 

control robots via teleoperation from the Earth, and you can’t do 

that on the more distant targets. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, I just note, Mr. Chairman, when I talk 

about the potential of our space commercial sector and space refueling is also something they could do more not from Mars, and 

again, a private company might want to put up a space refueling 

station, and that would enable us perhaps to bring down the cost 

for space exploration and also for Moon missions. 

And one last thought, and that is, I really think Elon Musk is 

going to be on Mars before NASA gets there, and it’s just a 

thought. Thank you. 

Chairman BABIN. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. 

I’d like to recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Knight. 

Mr. KNIGHT. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

You know, there’s been a good discussion here today. I think that 

a lot of this does revolve around money. I think much of it revolves 

around technology. I think that Mr. Perlmutter might want to 

change that bumper sticker, and just the first number. You don’t 
69 

have to change the second number but the first number in the 

years there. It’s not going to be 2033. We are a ways away from 

going to Mars and getting back. We can go to Mars but getting 

back is going to be a problem. 

I think that one of the discussions about Apollo 13, when you’re 

100,000 miles away, it’s a lot different than when you’re 25 million 

miles away. There is no help at 25 million miles. So that is a distinct problem that Americans probably will not take for their astronauts to be in that kind of peril anytime soon. 

The second thing is money. If we’re going to spend $12 billion on 

this over the next 15 years or 17 years to get us there, that will 

be an issue. Right now, NASA only spends about three percent of 

their budget on aeronautics, and I have complained about that and 

I’ll complain about that as long as I’m in Congress. I think that 

that is criminal that we spend three percent of our budget on aeronautics when a lot of the products that comes out of NASA is for 

us right here, either in general aviation or in commercial aviation, 

and we still only spend 3 percent. 

We have been working on scramjet technology for 50 years. We 

are still working on that. We are still a ways away from that, and 

I think that that technology is part of a big problem. 

But I have a question, and that is on the lines of the experiments 

we’ve done in the Space Station, and one of the experiments that’s 

happening right now with a twin on the ground and a twin at the 

Space Station for a year. Do any of you believe that at this point 

we can say that safely a man can travel or a woman can travel to 

Mars and be returned to Mars in maybe a two-and-a-half-year mission, and with what we know today, do you believe that that is doable, feasible? Not doable, but yes, we will get something back, that 

that person will come back. 

Dr. SOMMERER. I think it poses a significant risk based on what 

we know. NASA actually has a pretty good human research program but given the resources that they’re dealing with, there are 

significant uncertainties about what the microgravity and the radiation impact to say nothing of the chemical hazards that Mars 

might do to the health of astronauts. 

Mr. KNIGHT. My second question, I think you hit on it earlier, 

is the propulsion. Our propulsion hasn’t changed in many, many 

years from basically the beginning of rockets. It’s going to take us 

about a year to get to Mars today. Do you see over the next 15 or 

20 years some sort of propulsion system that is going to speed that 

up dramatically so that we can get to Mars in maybe a less than 

six-month period? 

Dr. SOMMERER. Certainly, I don’t see it happening if we don’t 

work on it. 

Mr. KNIGHT. And I would make that statement to everything. If 

we spend the money and we work on it, I believe that the American ingenuity can do this. I believe that we can do this in that 

time period. I don’t think that there is a push to do it, and I don’t 

think there’s a push to do it consistently. And Mr. Rohrabacher 

talked about an awful lot of programs that—and Mr. Young talked 

about the headstones in the cemetery. I believe that, but I also believe that you get things from that. 
70 

There was a program in the late 1950s and early 1960s called 

the X–20 Dinosaur. I think that that was the first space shuttle 

that we would have ever built and it would have been very successful. We abandoned that program for lack of a mission and for funding, and we wanted to send a man to the Moon. 

I think that we learned an awful lot from the X–20 Dinosaur, 

and I think if Jeff Greeson was here today, he would say we 

learned an awful lot because he’s building something that is very 

similar to the X–20 Dinosaur. 

So just because a program was canceled or just because a program never left the launching pad doesn’t mean we didn’t learn 

something from it, doesn’t mean that that money might not have 

been well spent. But I will agree with Mr. Rohrabacher. If we don’t 

use the program and we spend hundreds of billions or tens of billions, the taxpayers do feel at a loss. 

So I think that NASA can do anything that they put their mind 

to and anything that we can fund. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Chairman BABIN. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Knight. 

I think this has been an excellent exchange of ideas from you expert witnesses. We really appreciate this, and—because there’s a 

great deal of question marks out there about what we’re going to 

do and the missions we’re going to have, and the old saying, do we 

have guns or butter or guns and butter, and obviously today all 

three of you, if I’m reading you right, say it’s got to be either guns 

or butter in this situation about whether we go to Mars or back to 

the Moon. And we have our work cut out for us. 

And I agree that whatever NASA puts their mind to, we can do, but we do have the parameters of an almost $20 trillion national 

debt that we have at this point in time, but I think with what we 

gain from our space program, it is in great—as you said a while 

ago, Mr. Young, great nations do great things, so I think we have 

our marching orders. We just have to get organized on this. 

So I just want to say thank you to all three of you, and thank 

you to the audience out there, and thank you for this line of questioning. And so I adjourn the hearing. 

[Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 
(71) 

Appendix I 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS
72 

ANSWERS TO POST-HEARING QUESTIONS

Responses by Mr. Tom Young 
73 
74 
75 
76 

Responses by Dr. John C. Sommerer 
77 
78 
79 
80 
81 
82 
83 
84 
85 
86 
87 
88 
89 

Responses by Dr. Paul Spudis, 
90 
91 
92 
93 

Æ