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34 sharing with us, that there was an intent interest on travel to Mars, that they did not consider the technological problems to be terribly formidable-they did tell us what they did think were major problems with it-and I saw no indication-other members may have-that they considered a base on the Moon in any way a part of their thinking of an interim step. Dr. RIDE. Uh-huh, and that's consistent with what we've seen of their program. If you think about it from their perspective right now, rushing to-Well, I go back again to what Mr. Perkins mentioned earlier and what I think is a very important feature of their space program. They move very slowly; they build their capabilities very slowly, very gradually, very evolutionary program. They get very comfortable with whatever they're doing, and then they build on that to do something else. Right now they have built a very comfortable capability in low Earth orbit. They're starting to build comfort in having astronauts up for many, many months at a time. They're still quite a ways from having astronauts, or cosmonauts in their case, up for as long as it would take to get to and from Mars. I think the assessment that it doesn't take much advance technology to get to Mars just probably ought to be looked at again. Mr. TORRICELLI. What they're sharing with us is the technological difficulty they found was the keeping of cosmonauts in space for that period of time, sustaining life, not the technology of having the probe arrive or land or return, so I'm not sure that's terribly different than what you're saying. If this country--let's say a President, in 1988, who has the vision to set some goals and learns not only to make good speeches about space but also fund them, challenge us, and provide a little leadership, and what I would term the lost years of Ronald Reagan end--which is how I would characterize his leadership in the space program--and a goal is set to place an American on Mars at the turn of the century, with a real commitment of national resources, is that technologically feasible? Dr. RIDE. I don't think we can do it by the turn of the century. Mr. TORRICELLI. Even with sufficient resources and presidential leadership, you don't think the technology could be found? Dr. RIDE. I think that the problem is life sciences and our understanding of life sciences-well, actually there are more problems that [than] to do it by the year 2000. I give you just an example of what we--the scenario that we looked at, which attempted to minimize both the round-trip time and the amount of mass that you had to get to low Earth orbit to the space station. It's a little bit of a trade-off because in minimizing the time you increase the mass that you have to take to low Earth orbit. So what we tried to do was a trade off. What we found for this scenario was that, assuming technological breakthroughs in aerobraking and cryogenic propellant storage, assuming those-double the numbers if you don't give me aerobraking-it takes 14 to 15 launches of a 200,000 pound heavy lift launch vehicle just tog get the propellant and the crew-not the crew- the propellant and the vehicles up into low Earth orbit at the space station where you then assemble them. You know, we don't have that heavy lift launch vehicle now. I mean, it doesn't
