budgets that we spent to become great in the world. there's no reason i can see why we should not redress that grievance, although obviously it's an uphill battle. >> no, i don't -- >> why not go for the big money? >> well, we're going for the biggest money we think we can logically go for right now. but i just think it's unrealistic to assume that this congress and any future congress is going to jump to 4% of gdp. i just don't think -- >> 1%. >> we may get to 1%. now 1% is -- 1% would be like a gold mine. >> indeed. >> and i'm not saying -- i'm just -- i said a modest increase, but we have to be able to demonstrate that we can do what we said we can do. commercial cargo was a first step. people said it couldn't be done, we have done that. we have got to get a commercial crew and we have got to demonstrate that can do it consistently. step by step, otherwise people are just not going to support us. >> thank you all very much. i really appreciate it. thank you. more now from the mars exploration summit with sr. officials talking about nasa's budget challenges. the discussions moderated by science reporter miles o'brien, it's 50 minutes. all right, thank you very much, michael. so, gentlemen, let's get this straight. because what michael lays out there is a lot of technological challenges that requires about six to eight eureka moments that if you're keeping score. can we go to mars today in a perfect world if we had a blank check, could we go today? or is it impossible right now? >> i don't think it's impossible, but we clearly need to work on things we have talked about. it's not just going to mars, but actually landing on the surface. i thi . >> one look at it, with apollo 13, with the event that it had. we had to keep the crew alive for 84 hours. so we had life support systems, if you're going to go to mars that have to work for months, possibly over a year, depending on how long it takes you to get there and how long you stay. it's going to take some time to get a reliable system in place. we can land a metric ton on the surface of mars, that's all we know how to do. that's about the size of a mini cooper car. if we're going to explore mars, it needs to be something bigger than that. there are challenges that we have, we know what the challenges are, but it will take some time to get those technologies ready. >> do you have a sense of how many breakthroughs you meneed t get there? >> we ought to talk about it a little bit. i'm not sure they're breakthroughs in a sense. if we can build on what we know now today, and just expangd it. for example life support, we have life support on the station, it works pretty well, it's 85% closed loop. but we need to push it to where it's more reliable, doesn't require more maintenance, we need to look at the ability to print parts. i don't consider those necessarily big breakthroughs, but we have got to get comfortable that this technology is at the maturity level where you're going to use it for this mission where it absolutely, positively has to work. that's where i see the challenges. >> and i think the states are going to allow us to do that, the proving ground that charlie and bill had mentioned, that's the key, we have to take systems from days or months or weeks and turn it into longer durations and we need the time and capability to do that a. >> is there something you want to add there? >> i think we have to make sure that every piece of technology we work on that it's extensable to mars, does it really extend to mars and can we use nit that vision? i don't want to do the demonstrations just for demonstrations takes, i want to be putting systems together that we can actually use for mars. in the robotic spacecraft, i have given that to the team for the design condition, that is the basically architecture that you will use to transport cargo to the visibility of mars. so now we're looking at missions built on using that as a key piece. so orion and sls, we know what capabilities they have -- so we're doing the next life support system for the station, it will be the life support system that we plan to put -- it's not a demonstration, let's test this see how it works, nope, we're actually going to take those systems to space and see how they work. >> what do you think about after you work on problems, it can change of course. but right now what's the hardest problem, is it radiation exposure or something snels. >> i think radiation exposure needs some understanding. there's not much we can do unless we fut some kind of magnet it shielding in there. we went to the institute of med sing, we asked them to take a look at our current standards for radiation limits on astronauts, we said could we potentially push those limits a little bit. is it ethically acceptable to change those limits that we use for mortality could we change those and alter those and they gave us some considerations to talk got that, so we're pushing not only the technology that help protect the human, but also looking at the requirements we have and are they realistic requirements or is today's medical environment allowed us to do things differently? >> the restrictions themselves, they might be good restrictive, and astronauts might accept that risk? >> yes, and we have got now basic guidelines from the institute of medicine of what considerations go into that discussion. >> that solves a lot of problems if you chain the runge the rule that. >> we're not totally changing the rules, but we have got the frame work, the point ask we're not looking at a single solution or a single break through, we're looking at a solution to a problem that gets us to where we want to go. >> lths talk about iss for a minute. iss is a proving ground. a lot of people would say militarily, iss as a drain on the budget is a problem. does iss give you more than it takes? >> i believe it does. . it forces you to make decisions right up front. if we make that exploration life support system. i have got a test that i could never test. we could test on the ground and what we learned on the space station, we thought we had the greatest carbon dioxide system in the world. what we found out when we get it into space, -- the tigon tubing is permeable to carbon dioxide, it goes into the water system and creates a knew tree yenlt rich atmosphere for bacteria. and we tested extensively under ground and we saw none of those problems. going to the microgram environment of the space, that tease itted out and pushed those problems, so i think station can give you that chance to really dry unand test that equipment in orbit. but you don't use station as and an ancillary or piece, you pick pieces that are absolutely necessary and you use the unique advantage of the station to do that and some things are better tested on the ground. so you make a smart decision of what yaw want to do, the most cost efficient way to keep moving towards mars. >> if you didn't the station up there, would you be looking for some capability or something like that. >> you would be using considerable resources to get to the station. don't forget the transportation angle as well. we have the means to get to space to demonstrate capabilities. we have a research platform that already has propulsion. what we found in some of our space tech glen stragss is to focus on the technology and try to leverage what else is out there. we're focusing time and time again for the same kind of basic needs. >> i think another piece on station the one year implementation we're going to do with our crew on 2016. we're very experienced looking out to six months, we don't see anything problematic out beyond six months, even though it still is one data point, it's one data point. we have looked at it before, the russians have flown several year-long missions. but i think it's time we now look at it with the tools we have got today to see if there's anything 23489 human testimony that changes over that skix-month period, if there's something that's continuing to degrade. >> so how important is it to simulate a mars mission in lower earth orbit that way and how close do you have to make it to a real mars mission to be of value? do you build a communication delay, do you block the windows so they don't have to look at earth? >> we have talked about that, we do some things now, we're doing a lot of procedures now on board station that are autonomous, where the crews actually do the experiment without any ground involvement in it. the time delay doesn't allow the ground team to interact with the cry. so we're doing those. we have talked about takes away the windows and taking away communication time. >> i bet the astronauts love that. >> they don't like that. >> so what's interesting, they say to go to mars, they're willing to put up with all these stressors in they have life, right, but just to go it for fun, as a test mission, they're not so keen about that. so that's an interesting human dynamic already. it's almost, with the marathon yesterday, how many marathons do you have to run before you're really ready too go the a marathon, or are you good enough to run 10 mile ors 18 miles and then you're ready to go do ask marathon. so i think the trick with mars is to not do so much. we will not reduce all the risk to zero, but to reduce the risk to a low enough level that we're ready to give this a shot, but it will not be risk free on that first mission. >> among your challenges, i can see the psychological issues as one of the issues. i mean, the mars 500 experience and what they have done, they have tried to delve into this. but there's some big challenges there. >> i think that we have got some good studies, again on the behavioral aspect. the dimension is really different. if you look at our crews on station, they spend a lot of time looking at the home planet and taking pictures. from's a real tie between the human and where you are. but then when that plaechbt, we have got pictures of the rover taking picture of the earth, and the earth is one star among many. that's a different psychological push. but i think that's important too in the way we talk about this, we talk about moving humans into deep space. i'm trying to change the discussion a little bit. we talk about it as exploration, when i think about exploration, i think about going, investigating and then coming back, i think we need to talk abouting in terms of maybe pioneering, where we're actually going to potentially stay. and that really starts to changing the dine familiaricses, so the investment in mars is so much, we don't want to do this as a one-time mission, we actually want to have the infrasfrur there and think about this as moving human presence off of the earth and moving into the solar system. >> i think building the capabilities that are extensable as which go to mars. >> i always think about history, being a history major, and you think about the voyages of magellan or captain took, frankly somebody going to mars is going to have more contact with earth or the home port if you will, so use the analogy thash some of those slow it yajers. do you use those historical parallels as you inform your decisions about how to handle this? >> i think, again, historically what we ought to discuss a little bit, the difference is when you do terrestrial big voyages, you still have oxygen to breathe, you still have water to drink, you could bring some food, when you got to where you were going, you could actually grow plants. when we start becoming, in the chart i say mars ready for earth independent. when we start breaking that tie back to the planet, that's a different dimension, you have to carry with you or you have to have enough assurance that you can use the carbon dioxide vooirmtd -- i you're going have to prove that some of those things are there. terrestrial exploration was a little different because it wasn't quite the level of what we're doing here, where we're essentially putting the human in an swrooirmt where it cannot live on its own and we have toer carry with it enough to keep the human alive and functioning. >> questions, feel free to come to the microphone so we'll include your questions in this conversation. how much of the ability to live off the martian land do we have to prove before we put people on the surface? >> there's been a number of studies that show if you can do institute resource utilization, that is get your water, if you can get oxygen, you can get water, you can get fuel, you can get air to breathe, that show the amount of mass, it really becomes a mass problem, how much do you have to take with you, and how much can you rely on when you get there. i think one could argue, if you're going to rereely on a system, you would want it to be there ahead of time. you would want to be able to store the oxygen so you know it's there. that would be the most prunlt step to go do. we are taking the firls step here in 2020. >> that would be multiple landings, where these autonomous vehicles would at least prove it, if not create a store. >> one advantage we have to compare to historically, we can send scouts out ahead of time that the early explorers didn't have that capability. but as bill points out, the environment is so harsh and so extreme. >> when you put those scout vehicles there, they ought to be generating resources that you can use when the crew mission follows. in this constrained environment, we have got to make sure that everything we do is extensable to the next step, let's not just do a demonstration of a little bit of oxygen right out of the martian atmosphere, if i want to build o si general, i want to -- >> as you paint that picture, and i think aye have done a nice job kind of pulling together a lot of these december par rat elements in a way that proo vids a cohesive narrative and i hope that plays well on capitol hill as you try to sell this program. and what's interesting about it, it's kind of like, we all think of success in space as apollo, there was a deadline, a commitment, there was a cold war, all these things lined up. and we perceived that as the way to go to space. if you don't set a date and go and be there by then, that's a failure. this is a little bit more like, it seems to me, building the interstate system. there's a sense of let's build some infrastructure out there and it doesn't have the same headline capability if you will that the space race had. but what it offers is sustainability. and i guess, it's a long way of me saying this is a nuance story, but how can we convey that story to people who are less dialed into what nasa is doing right now. or is that my job. >> that's your job. >> okay. >> but i would say, i tell you, isles all of our job. we need to look at what we're doing today and then describe it in a way that really makes sense. we just flew up on space x, we flew up vegetation, which is going to grow some plants in space, we brought a bunch of plants before. this is the first time we are actually agreeing plants for the crew to eat. this is not for a science experience, to see how a plant l grow in microgravity, this is actually food for the crew to augment their dpit. so this is the beginning of starting to push us off of the earth into space to go do things. it's a small thing, but we all the to be talking about it. >> isles a big thing, if you can 3-d print a pizza, they'll be really happy. >> we're working on it. >> but 3-d pizzas are tough to chew. >> i think you really did hit the nail on the head in terms of -- i mean, i get the excitement too, i want to get one mission, create a mission patch, but i don't know if we have the luxury of doing that rights now with budgets and forecast and where we are. but we still can get there and we got to take the successes and the steps along the way, whether it's growing plants, solar propulsion, whether eva suits, better landing systems, we're going to be moving the needle forward and we're going to have to paint it in the right context, with as few power points as we k. >> you did have one try, but one of those tries was like five in one. you know, you get the sense that if you talk about it long enough, maybe it could become a reality. but we do have the fundamental issue of dollars and cents here, so if you take that vision, that narrative, and you jive it with what the money is right now, what -- when do we get to mars? you know, as somebody said last night, you know, it will be 20 to 30 years, but we have been saying that for 20 to to years, so if you do the math on that, i don't think we'll ever get there. how do you reconcile that vision with what congress and what the american people have put on the table for nasa? >> you know, i think again the way i kind of lay it out, we can not do it at the same budget level we are at today. this is just not going to work. and the current budget has a 1% increase, we're going to need more than that a i thits it's a moderate increase, but we need to show congress, if we get this funding, here's the -- this piece actually fits into the mars capability puz lt this way and if we make that, maybe we can continue to break that paradime and get some additional funding to put forward. we also need to look very hard at what we can do internationally. our international partners are very interested in doing this activity, can we leverage off of their work and also the private sector, there's a lot there with cargo and crew going to station, but can we extend that into the exploration domain and kind of extend that into the industry. >> one thing that bill had in hiss charts, one thing that is a little bit different than perhaps in the past yorks u ski the mission director, the core of working together. we have work that's going to mars on a size mission director, that feeding forward into what we're going to do for explore ration. the work we're doing for the big elson kur hers, working together feed sbogs those -- on our side, this is kind of the down and dirty of it, we're trying to work with other partners, other government agencies on the technology that will feed into it. it's going to be a story to tell, but we can work on the technology pieces and leverage other investments. that's the key. >> it's going to be hard, and at first charge, it all looks good when we're all working together. but to do that, you're giving up control. i'm going to be doing more than a science director would like to do on mars. i would like to take a larger vehicle to mars, i would like to probably video more capability than a science mission needs. but if we do two separate missions, the cost of that is some larger number, but if we can integrate those two together and i don't get the perfect human mission, and the science director doesn't getsystem, tha how we win. so, we've got to figure out a way we don't look at it from each one of our little stove pipes but we look at a way hoe listically we can work together to go do is this. thechallenge is big enough. it's got to be the hole of the agency pulling together and really whole of the international community pulling together as well. >> i would think getting to mars would be easier than getting the nasa-aa's to work together? >> i don't know about that. >> you're not going to go there? >> i'm not going there. >> we'll get a question in here. say who you are, please. >> yes. thanks. steve brody from isu, international space university. you know, throughout my time at nasa and i'm sure yours as well, there's occasional wild cards that help you along and sometimes present additional challenges. one thing i'm thinking about is the infusion and/or offer of significant private resources from some individuals of very deep pockets. we've had now the very real win/win with the commercial cargo and hopefully that will continue with the commercial crew, but how do you see -- do you see any other either through conversations you've already had or sense what's out there any major contributory contributions from either individuals, companies or whatever that will really, you know, get that synergistic principle and give you more than what you got now for the program ahead? >> mike, do you have anything? i would say again just think -- we need to definitely look at this. we see a lot of folks working on engine technology, which is interesting to me. there's some folks, space just signed a space act agreement to look at locksmith engine work down an stenis. jeff has been looking at some engine work. where as typically that's been the domain of the government to work on some of these new engine capabilities, some of that is -- we need to watch for those pieces and move forward. we did some interesting things on space station, that's the system that takes carbon die ox side that comes off of the electrolysis of water to make oxygen. it creates methane as a waste gas. we didn't pay for any of the development, we agreed to pay for the water that was generated by the device. we went to industry and said, hey, we're going to pay you $10,000 roughly per pound for water generated on station, if you generate any water, you don't get any pay. if you generate water, you'll get paid at this amount for this period of time. they were able to do all the development up front for that system and it's been working all well on board station. are there other models where we can leverage off of the private sector and find things that they want that actually benefit us? we've got to continue to look at that and just don't assume that it has to be always the government doing these activities. >> the other thing i would add from a technology standpoint a similar story. wen we see interest in high power propulsion not only for a cargo tug, bewe see it interest in the commercial spacecraft industry. interest is good, can we leverage that interest? we think we can. that has incredible benefits not only for the next generation but also for other government agencies that we won't speak about here but also has interest in the cable operators and cable satellites. we think we can leverage that. >> what's the right mix? can we get to mars leveraging private industry ingenuity? to what extent do you have to go to business and say, hey, we have a need and to what extent are they come to you? >> the answer is yes. optical com. so lar edge propulsion, yes, there are some comalty. other areas, not. >> hard to sell that to an auto maker, right? >> i would say in lower earth orb it, i don't envision another space station. i see the private sector picking up the next generation of space station in lower earth orbit. they will do that generate commercial products that they learned. i see our space station today as a chance for them to experiment with what might be helpful in the pharmaceutical world and the drug world in the biological world and materials world that they can see, hey, there's something here that the micro gravity environment gives me a different insight. i would like have a research facility in space to do that. we've enabled transportation through cargo and crew. they can work with companies that are talking about building some laboratories in space and maybe a single purpose laboratory now as a research environment. that's creating essentially now a private sector infrastructure we can use and we don't have to replicate any of that in any of your future plans. i'm hoping that we use station to be that next piece in this extension of station after 2024 gives us a fighting chance to expose a broader community beyond ÷dq@aerospace. >> having another ten years of station, that was a significant -- >> it was huge. >> thing. it was a huge thing, i think. and is it enough time for you? i mean, you're talking a pretty long time frame for what you want to accomplish here. ten years from now, you don't have a station, would you be wishing you had it there? do you use what you can? >> i'll use what i can. i think the big thing is it really changed the environment for the commercial sector. when we say the station was going to end in 2020 i couldn't get any commercial company to think of space. the focus was too short. the stability wasn't there. but just that change of four more years from 2020 to 2024 has really changed the commercial sector's perception of what space is and how they can use space and the fact that we're doing the cargo, flights we are. they can take cargo up. we will eventually have crew. they are saying, this isn't such a foreign environment to us. we're willing to go invest. i think when that -- going back to the question was asked here, when that tipping point kind of changes, where now private sector doesn't see this as something that's so risky that only government kgs do, they see a way of turning profit or using lower earth orbit in space. then you see a much broader space to build the things we need to go forward. >> it was hard to gain the confidence of the academic world after all that happened in the end of the science space programs that were cut dramatically. >> they're skeptical and we're slowly getting it back. it's the stability thing. talked about before being sustainable anl building plans and processes that can take the storms that come when we have a sequester that comes and whole program doesn't fall apart and don't get a revector to start all over again, if we have a plan of making measured, sustainable progress, i think that's how we ultimately get to mars. >> we have a question over here. >> thank you. i'm chris from george washington university. my question has to do with the slide that's been shown twice now regarding the proven ground missions and those are beyond low earth orbit. it said 1 to 12 months. i'm interesting primarily from the buy medical challenges side of things. is there currently a plan in place for a proven ground mission in six to 12 months and if so, what does that plan entail? >> we're thinking about again the space in the vicinity around the moon, we're looking at potentially a crew-tended capability there happenation module. i don't see that as a moon habitation module, per se that the crew-tended but that would be the one we potentially use on a mars/class mission. we take this life support system that we worked on the space station and put it into a crew it have tended space station and stick it around the moon that enables a lot of lunar activity and lot of interest in the international community about doing lunar activities. you can get nice view times of the south pole and north pole of the moon. do a lot of telerobotic things. you can do that from this crew-tended facility in deep space. the other thing that if you think about it is we talked about maybe prepositioning hardware around mars. so you'll launch a component with a life-support system. spends a year journey to get out there, now it's into martian environment and doesn't get activated for another year. sometimes our systems are not so good it issing around. this proving ground lets us put a laboratory around the moon and revisit it every couple months, actually looks how we shut that system down and reactivate it. it is actually again being judged by how it helps us get ready for mars. >> if you had your druthers, again, in a perfect world with unlimited money, would it help you to land on the moon? or would it be a detour that just would kind of suck resources, time, whatever? >> well, the challenge there of course it doesn't have much of an atmosphere, that entry decent landing piece doesn't play out the lunar landing would be chemical, so i'm not sure -- >> from that aspect any way -- >> as the president said, been there, done that? is that the way you look at it? >> i would say not quite so much but in charlie's talk, somebody asked him about partial gravity and that's the advantage you get of the moon. by being on the surface of the moon, you get to the see human body on a partial gravity environment. >> can you interpolate to mars? >> we cancelled the large center future space station. we can look at things kind of cellular level, the small plant level. that will give us some indication of is there a problem in this intermediate gravity level. i don't think it's worth the expense right now going to the moon to get that partial gravity condition. i believe we can get that with station unless this research on station points to us saying some huge problem where partial gravity is a consideration that we would have to deal with. >> the other thing i would offer, you can imagine capabilities and learning to live on the surface and tell robotic. there's private partnerships and private organizations that are interested in the moon. there are ways we can partner and very smart way to go do that. >> another piece is being in this proven-ground region, our international partners really want to go to the surface of the moon, great. let them go do that or commercial industry sees the advantage of using lunar materials for certain activities, that's fine. we'll go support that. then our focus is going beyond. again, we don't have to do anything for everythings but we should be aware of the environment we're in and then leverage off of the other activities that are being done that help us get the goal of where we're heading towards mars. >> should we figure out a way to partner with the chinese? >> i think the chinese will be a key player somewhere in this situation, so i can't manage at some point we don't work with the chinese. >> should we partner with the chinese? >> i can't answer that. >> how about you? >> still continue to sit on this stage. i'll be teleported to mars if i offer any real questions. >> my name is greg cecil and i'm a former space shuttle worker and now a middle school science teacher down in florida. my question is that con stalation was set up by the bush administration to take us to the moon and mars and beyond. unfortunately when the new administration came in that was cancelled. my greatest fear is that now that you have an idea of what you want to do and you have a road map set up with sls, if we have a new administration come in to power in 2016/2017, will we have everything scratched again and starting from base zero? has nasa considered that and worried about that? >> i would say, yes. we're really working as fast as we can on both o ryan and sls. you'll get to see an o ryan test that's specially 80% of the software will fly on class missions around the moon. that's a big plus. the actual first dome for the expiration mission one in 2017 is manufactured down in new orleans. we're putting in a large machine that will start building the tanks down there. we're working on the expiration upper stage for mars class missions. so i think by the time we get into 2016 i'm going to have significant hardware, in fact, they do today that you can go out and touch and see. it's not mission destination specific. what we're doing by going to lunar space, somebody decides we want to revehicler and do some lunar activities we can do that. but it's also focussed towards mars. we're trying to stay kind of destination independent but more capability driven and try to make that point to the next group that comes in with an idea, okay, we understand what you would like go to, how you put your fingerprint on this vision, we create enough flexibility in the vision that we can change the vision a little bit but we don't lose the ultimate goal of where we're going. the sustainability is absolutely critical. >> how much metal do you have to bend, how much congressionally linked jobs do you have to have before you you have enough inertia for a program that it sustains itself? what does it take? >> if i could answer that, i would have a ph.d.. >> there's your thesis right there. >> there's my thesis. >> i have one. i can't answer that either. >> why can't we do space. >> we also do ourselves a big disservice, right? because we kind of argue with ourselves about the perfect plan. right? at some point that's not helping us. >> the enemy of the good. >> the problem is that the outside world sees these supposed smart people all arguing so there must be something that isn't right and then they go, well, we don't want to go do that. we have to make sure we don't get so caught up in trying to find the absolute perfect plan that meets everything that is -- that doesn't sustain itself. so can we all as a community get together and recognize that, hey, sustainability is important. >> right. question over here. >> hi. harry finger, going back to the origin of nasa and its predecessor, in fact, and also as head of the joint office of nasa and the atomic energy commission where we develop the nuclear thermal rocket propulsion and in 1970 we were ready to really move forward talking about human mars missions. i heard no word of the thermal propulsion at all here and i haven't heard of it in anything. we really had it. president nixon killed that program and several ores in the space program. we were really ready to move forward with a mars mission at that time. we're talking now over 40 years later. what consideration has been given to nuclear thermal rocket propulsion that we already had developed then and could move on at high thrust. you mentioned nuclear electric but it's a low-thrust system that takes longer for mission. >> yeah. well, i think we're still living on the shoulders of giants and you're one of those giants because many of the technologies and capabilities we have were either proven out including some of the work -- every time we come up with a new system entry/set landing, i ask, it was done in the '60s. yeah, here is the test data in the '60s. it's all been done. it's all been done. so nuclear thermal i agree with, it was really push forward in a significant way in the '70s. i think all -- most of the trade studies that we see to go to mars, including the ones that we have in space tech say that nuclear thermal is probably the best means we have to get there as quick as we can. and as quick as we can, you know, helps with the crew, helps with radiation. so it is a question of investment, priority and when do you invest and how much do you invest and when do you do it? we have modest investments right now in nuclear thermal. they're in bill's -- we kind of tried to make sure we're not overlapping, right? there's modest investments there to keep the system alive and when we can get the right budget and the right time, many would argue that's the way to go. >> i think it was unfortunate calling it a puck she ma engine, though, wasn't that a bad idea? >> frankly, i just don't more in i would appreciate it. go ahead, sir. >> you are coming a long way and some of the answers i've seen with bill and you i've been very good they're music to my ears as far as working with the private sector, but there's still this learning that needs to occur, maybe even not so much at nasa but over on the hill and the staffers and the people there as to the fact that the private sector not just commercial but the private sector is going to be maybe starting slow but they'll be going faster and faster and faster. there will be times where you get ahead of you. you can see some of these billionaires pool together and do a mars mission, it might go faster. wouldn't it be a good idea to have sort of an annual at least reswru in nasa and the leaders in the private sectors sit down and talk about and maybe coordinate these things because it's going to happen. it's going to get faster and faster and faster. you might land there second. >> i mean, that sounds like a reasonable thing we should think about -- >> hard to think of something wrong with that. >> again, back to the other discussions, we've got to make sure we're not just talking to ourselves all the time, right? to your point, we need to go look and maybe we need to talk about these things to a broader community, expose them to what we can do and also have them tell us what they can do. private sector can clearly take more risk. they have significant investment funds. where would they like to go, what are they interested in? it might be nice to expand that human to mars workshop to include a broader community. >> if you get there second, you still need to make it look like a victory. right? >> all right. do this quickly. quick question, please. >> yes. excellent point from the gentlemen who brought up the alternative of nuclear thermal propulsion. i have a related question. why is there so much of a focus on solar electric propulsion? >> the focus on solar electric couple fold, right? one, the retrieval mission, the next mission to the proving ground where we can go operate in deep space, it has the capability and most efficient form of transportation out there in space. we think about transportation on earth, we have tugs, we have barges, we have fast vehicles and slow. sep is extremely efficient. we think it's ready for the next step. we can leverage the interest in industry. it's good for multiple purposes. it's the next one we can push over the needle. it's not only us. look at the national research council, high priority go to high power sep. look at most of the trade studies, it enables exploration. >> a big piece is what mike was pulling on it. it has more applications to just to nasa and our mission. to get high power solar rays is important to the satellite industry. they would very much like to have those. they will be pushing this technology so it's us and them pushing. it's not just nasa pushing this for our own needs. the higher powered thrusters to replace motors on communication satellites, commercial industry is interested in that piece. this is a way we can leverage off of what commercial is already doing and moving forward and then nuclear thermal propulsion area it's pretty much us along pushing. there isn't quite yet another private sector for that class of rocket. we need to keep investing in the technology and take the work that was done back in the '60s and take it to that next step. we know a lot more about control systems. computers are much more sophisticated. we can take some of that and move it forward at the right pace and then expose that. but i think our focus really is on along the lines of sustainability. this is something that isn't uniquely needed for us. it can be shared with a broader group. >> that's the key aspect of where we are today. this is again not trying to do it all ourselves and trying to be smart about it. and, you know, one of the challenges for nuclear thermal is the ability to store liquid hydro general. that's one of the k keys to it. we're working that now. we're trying to take the common pieces and threads and do it today. >> i have several questions but we have a break coming up and people can be thinking about them. in relation to doing things in the past and then kind of putting them on the shelf, it reminds me of the hl-20. it was part of a program and it was put on the shelf and jim benson bought it and now mark is doing it again. i'm just wondering if inflatables is a trans-hab is a program. now it's back in another program developed by las vegas bigelow. just several days ago, we had a giant thinker leave us, john hubolt and he was a great role model for me and i hope that some of the thoughts that i come up with can in some way mimic what he's been able to do. at the moon, we had a free return trajectory and we modified that once the sps was working we were always in a relatively close lunar earth orbit. and apollo 13 indicated that we could probably come back. i don't believe we have that capability in the trans-mars injection with a fly-by free return that is an acceptable solution nor do we have a rescue ability. why don't we do like many other industries do instead of one, big large thing that could fail, why don't we have two small things like fighter airplanes they fly in formation, if one can't do the job, the other one can. sure you could do them but leave staging orbit five mile formation difference or ten mile and now -- wait a minute. don't be so stupid, why don't you put them together in the staging orbit and have them fly out, now you can jetson the one that fails and continue to do the job if you have two crew modules. on the subject of crew modules, can o' ryan aerobreak into mars' orbit. does it have the capability of doing that? when i look at what i need at mars, i need landers and landers are capable of aerobraking and transporting people from one position to another to bringing back people. i don't know who is here from lockheed, but i have to ask the question, why do we need o' ryan in mars' orbit? i really don't believe that that's the case. i may have had another question. well, i guess we did have the idea of wanting to have a launch vehicle and then a larger habitat. once we have the larger habitat, we can put the people in the launch vehicle, why can't we put them into the large vehicle in a landing vehicle just as well as an o'ryan? let me leave it at that. >> i suppose yes or no is not an option. >> first of all, on expandable, we'll look at that on space station with beam in 2015. we'll go look at expandable technology to see what advantages that gives to us. so we'll get a chance to see its reported to have better thermal conditions. also the larger volume allows you to put water in for shielding for radiation which would be a good thing. we'll get some real world experience with expandables on board station. so buzz's point, we're looking at we call it now evolvable and a modular architecture for mars. so it's along the lines of what buzz is talking about, maybe multiple habitation modules we may preposition the habitation module around mars someplace ahead of time than we do the rendezvous with that module and that's your return vehicle. you may preposition your return vehicle at mars and then come back. so instead of looking at a single mission, we're looking at we call it evolvable where it can -- we build positions, we position pieces up front and call it modular. we're starting to look at those things. can we take advantage of these natural satellites around mars and use those as in the mars architecture and use a piece of those for what we're trying to go do? we're looking a lot at high lipt kal earthorbbit. we're starting to take a different approach towards mars than we did before. our classic missions were more apollo style in a way. we launched everything in a campaign within a year and sent the spacecraft that you saw in the view graphs towards mars. i think we're going to do that maybe over a period of time over a period of years and build more of an evolvable piece. so we need all of us to start thinking maybe in a different way. so it's not a single mission but it really is this pioneering aspect or how do we move human presence in. once that mental change starts making and you're looking at it for the long term then you invest in some things that might take actually longer to go do but they may be more sustainable. we're looking at many of these things that buzz talked about. >> last word, mike? >> i think well said. if you look at we're getting to mars, we'll get there in a sustainable, affordable way and we know the technology is important and that's why we have the investments we have under way and again you'll see us continue to make those investments over these next 18 months in a number of key areas. >> gentlemen, thank you very much. great talk. enjoyed speaking with you. thanks for your attention. we'll have more from that summit in just a few moments. first, some live coverage to tell you about on the c-span networks. at 8:25 a.m. eastern, jeffrey zients will talk about the economy and jobs. that's live on cspan 2. here on c-span3, we have a day-long conference with the discussion on underrepresentation of hispanics in media, government and other sectors. that's live at 8:45 a.m. eastern. later in the day, house judiciary committee chair robert goodlatte will talk about presidential powers. that's live at 5:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. our campaign 2014 debate coverage continues. texas governor's debate between wendy davis and greg abbott. wednesday night at 8:00 p.m. on c-span, live coverage of the minnesota governor's debate between

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