Here's a summary of the semi-famous "90 Day Study" that followed in the wake of then President Bush's (the first) speech on the steps of the Smithsonian, on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, of what became known as the "Space Exploration Initiative" (SEI), a bold call to action to return humans to exploring the "Moon, Mars, and Beyond" in the coming decades.

It's a pretty interesting study in itself, and I tried to include in the summary some of the plans that just keep coming up, in various iterations, but all variations on a common theme, and all laying out similar requirements to actually accomplish the mission. It just goes to show that the answers were known 25 years ago at a minimum... and basically this study is just reflecting the same thing that was being said with regards to accomplishing a Mars mission even before the first lunar landing was made, 45 years ago now... What's needed isn't more study, but MORE ACTION...

Anyway, there's some interesting proposals for the required HLV rocket... shuttle derived ala "Shuttle C" and Advanced Launch System (ALS, which was a proposed heavy lift rocket family being advocated for development at the time). The shuttle derived super-heavy with four SRB's would have been a non-starter-- might look good on paper, but ENTIRELY too heavy for the SLC-39 KSC infrastructure... the all-liquid ALS was feasible though, and it's a shame it was never developed.

So, here for your enjoyment on the 45 anniversary of the successful culmination of man's achievements in space, is a report from 25 years ago outlining the study that came out of the Space Exploration Initiative, which turned out to be recorded by historians not as the "beginning point" of man's second great age of space exploration and the beginning of humanity's move out into the solar system" but as a "false start", a program without the political willpower to achieve, the willingness to sacrifice to create, sustain, or support, and victim of the partisan politics and institutional infighting that has plagued NASA since the end of the Moon Race, and continues to do so 45 years hence. It is an outline of a program that continued to grow exponentially in cost and complexity even as Bush 1 desperately requested his handpicked NASA Administrator, former shuttle astronaut Richard "Dick" Truly, veteran of the first shuttle flight, to "scale the proposal back" to gain Congressional approval, instead it grew as various interests within NASA added their "piece of the pie" until the entire proposal grew into a $450 BILLION dollar debacle that was ultimately laughed out of the halls of Congress and became derisively known as "Battlestar Galactica", and ultimately died an ignominious death via defunding.

It is a story that would be repeated almost verbatim 15 years later, with the second President Bush's announcement, in the wake of the Columbia disaster, of his retread (almost verbatim retread at that) of his father's 1989 proposal, for a "Moon, Mars, and Beyond" plan called "The Vision for Space Exploration" (VSE). The only difference was, with the loss of a SECOND shuttle and the realization that the shuttle was an aging, technologically brittle, costly, and extremely limited system that would ultimately have to be replaced anyway, the VSE DID find support and was embraced by the Congress. But, following in the same tragic footsteps as the original SEI from Bush 1, Bush 2's VSE slid into the same old NASA pattern of becoming an overly complex, breathtakingly expensive undertaking with no chance of being funded at a level sufficient for the task at hand, as NASA planned how to do it, at any rate. The plan was also hampered (and still is) by the desire to keep the worst and most expensive parts of the shuttle infrastructure (the SRB's and SSME's) as the basis of the new system, for purely political reasons. Ultimately the pet projects (like Ares I) turned out to be too expensive, limited, and difficult to accomplish for the stated purpose and ended up years behind schedule and billions overbudget, and the whole plan found to be unworkable from a funding standpoint, and was canceled in 2010 after six years of work and over $9 billion dollars in expenditure, with only the test flight of one old shuttle SRB topped with a "tuna can" upper stage and battleship capsule/tower simulator to show for the effort, and a stripped version of Orion in the works, years behind schedule and overbudget itself, victim of redesign and stripping capabilities (and weight) in attempting to make the problem-plagued Ares I capable of orbiting it...

When SEI died in the early 90's, shuttle was still operating and with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, NASA was retasked into converting its troubled and super-expensive and years late development of the "Space Station Freedom" (which plays heavily in the SEI proposal) into the "International Space Station" with the addition of the Russians as partners. Shuttle operations were to continue and construct the station, conducting "science missions" until the station construction began in 1998. SEI became a footnote in NASA's history as shuttle operations continued pretty much as they had since the beginning of the shuttle operations in 1981, and planning after SEI's demise stretched to ISS assembly and operations and basically extended shuttle into perpetuity, with talk of operating the shuttle system until 2025, even 2030, and possibly beyond.

All that changed in 2003 in the wake of the breakup of Columbia over Texas during its final return to Earth. It set the stage for Bush 2's "VSE", basically an almost exact replay of his father's 1989 SEI proposal, that tragically NASA fumbled just as badly under Bush 2's handpicked NASA Administrator, Mike Griffin, as under Dick Truly in the early 90's. Unlike the quiet passing of SEI, the death of the VSE left the US directionless in space-- the shuttle canceled and resting in pieces in museums, with NASA developing a huge expensive mega-booster with no missions funded and only vague proposals for its use, but serving the political ends of NASA's masters in Congress.

How the story ends remains to be seen.

Now, enjoy this historical tidbit from 1989, the "90 Day Study" on the exploration of the Moon, Mars, and Beyond, and reflect on what could have been (and on what has been proposed over and over again, and continues to be to this day).

Enjoy! OL JR

Attached Files

90 Day SEI Study.txt (56.3 KB, 7 views)

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

First, a general overview graphic of the SEI (still called the "human exploration initiative" at this early date).

Next, a notional Mars Sample Return mission craft (incidentally, a mission NASA doesn't have the money to fund and hasn't done in the ensuing 25 years since this was proposed, and still doesn't have on the books to accomplish)

Third, profile of lunar missions, using a reusable Lunar Transfer Vehicle (LTV) (reusable up to five times) and a reusable or expendable (depending on manned or cargo missions) Lunar Excursion Vehicle (LEV) to land on the Moon...

Heavy Lift Vehicle (HLV) launch vehicle options...

The Lunar Transportation System...

More to come...
OL JR

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Lunar Reference Engine...

Mars mission profile...

Mars Heavy Lift vehicle options...

Mars transportation system vehicle stack proposal... (MTV)

Mars Excursion Vehicle (MEV)

More to come! OL JR

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

Expendable US launch vehicles in 1989...

Shuttle derived heavy lift vehicle options...

Advanced Launch System HLV options...

Space Station Freedom (SSF) options for human exploration...

Telecommunication relay system required for human exploration...

More to come! OL JR

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!

SSF modifications for lunar program testing...

SSF modifications for lunar operations...

Reusable lunar vehicle modifications to SSF...

Lunar and Mars operations configuration...

Space Station Freedom reference version...

Later! OL JR

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The X-87B Cruise Basselope-- THE Ultimate Weapon in the arsenal of Homeland Security and only $52 million per round!