A stepping stone to Mars

Pence also said the Moon will serve as a stepping stone to Mars, as was the case during the Constellation program. But how, and on what timeline?

The argument that the Moon is a direct stepping stone for Mars is complicated. There are major differences in entry, descent and landing technologies. The Moon's relative closeness keeps astronauts in near real-time contact with ground controllers, whereas a trip to Mars will entail up to 45-minute delays for a single question-and-answer session. The surface environments are different, changing the design on everything from rovers to spacesuits to dust filters. There are also the issues related to long-duration spaceflight—psychological health, prolonged weightlessness, automation—that a lunar base will not provide ready solutions to. Operational costs are another matter. NASA spends on the order of $3 billion per year to operate, crew, and resupply the space station. How much will it cost to maintain a presence on the Moon? For how long? How much money will be left over to then go to Mars?

There may, however, be broader U.S. interests in play. Pence and other national security-minded congressional representatives and military officers see the Moon as a strategic high ground, especially in regards to China. Space council executive secretary Scott Pace has previously said the Moon provides a way for America to strengthen international partnerships, which bolster the country's larger foreign policy interests. As we've noted before, one way to build consensus for a successful civil space program is tying it to larger national objectives.

But will NASA funding match these objectives? This has been a problem in the past, and the answer will be found in the agency's upcoming budget release next February. Earlier this year, the Trump Administration proposed a $561 million cut for NASA in fiscal year 2018. Will this new goal of reaching the Moon drive an increase to NASA's budget? Or will it redistribute existing funding to lunar projects as it did during Constellation? If so, from where will this funding be taken?

Presumably, the administration and National Space Council will consider the return on investment for different lunar surface stop-off scenarios, with different levels of involvement by NASA's international and commercial partners. Through its Humans Orbiting Mars workshop and report, The Planetary Society found great value in sending humans to Mars in terms of scientific return, searching for life, and challenging our technological capabilities. How these objectives will fit into a revamped human exploration program for either the Moon or Mars is still unclear.

Science

NASA's Science Mission Directorate also demonstrates peerless capability in the exploration and discovery of our cosmos, solar system, and planet. The Hubble Space Telescope may be the most successful science mission in human history, unlocking many secrets of the cosmos while wowing the public with beautiful images of the universe. No other space agency has sent probes to every single planet in the solar system, successfully landed vehicles on Mars, or sent probes beyond the heliopause.

But today's meeting was very focused on human spaceflight and military space activities. Pence did not mention NASA science, though some panel members did.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Science at NASA is a program with clear goals and a clear pathway, and it generally functions well. It's possible that the National Space Council may not spend a lot of time talking about NASA science because there isn't much to talk about. As interesting as it would be to see an extended discussion highlighting science successes and potential paths forward, we shouldn't read too much into the omission at this point.

Pence also said NASA would re-focus on human exploration. This could be a veiled reference to how NASA's Earth Science Division has grown over the past eight years to be the best-funded science division, and reflects a frequent Republican critique that NASA's portfolio has grown too broad and focuses too many resources on Earth observation. It could also be a broader statement critiquing the previous administration's shifting goals, which first proposed sending humans to an asteroid, then to an asteroid around the Moon, and then settling on Mars without orchestrating a commensurate programmatic or budgetary shift.

The Trump administration's first budget request proposed to spend $8.6 billion of NASA's $19.1 billion total budget on human spaceflight programs: primarily the ISS, commercial crew, SLS, and Orion. Billions of additional dollars relate to indirect human spaceflight costs, such as facility construction, civil servant salaries, related technology development, and more. It's fair to say that at least 50 percent of NASA's budget is already focused on human spaceflight activities. The remaining budget is divided between science (30 percent), aeronautics (3 percent), and space technology (3 percent), with the rest going to related overhead, salaries, and maintenance.

You could also parse this a different way, and emphasize the exploration part of Pence's statement. Perhaps the vice president was addressing the lack of exploratory human spaceflight. The ISS, in low-Earth orbit, does not explore new space. But the ISS has a NASA commitment through 2024—through the end of a potential second Trump term—and there are no discussions to prematurely terminate its operations.

It could also be merely a statement of how the new administration intends to speak about NASA. Both the president and vice president have met with astronauts, spoken with them on the ISS, and visited or mentioned NASA's prime human spaceflight centers around the south. If nothing else, their personal interest is with the astronauts and human side of spaceflight, and the romance of humans exploring deep space is a powerful story.