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NASA: Planetary Exploration, Or Better Coffee
6EQUJ5 writes: "I sighed bitterly when I read the headline at MSNBC_SpaceNews_Front: "NASA voices 2020 vision for Mars" (OK, let's hope I live that long!) Bitterness gave way to sheer comedy when I read the next headline: NASA craft to watch coffee crop. Dan Goldin has the worst sense of priorities if he thinks 20 years is an acceptable time frame for a manned (and/or womanned) Mars mission -- in the meantime NASA picks up odd jobs like watching coffee grow." While these stories make a funny contrast, a) I'm sure there's a lot to learn (and plan) before sending a mission to Mars and b) if NASA's going to test cool new tech, like that solar wing, perhaps giving it a practical earthside purpose is a good idea.
In light of this, I can understand the careful planning. But I'm not sure that sending people to Mars is at all a good solution - it is expensive, dangerous (both in the human life and the PR senses) and takes more time.
Developing and sending better remote-controlled and semiautomated equipment would be a better investment, since a) it's cheaper and b) developments in robotics and AI will have added positive side-effects.
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Hans Petter
Agent Smith apparently never downloaded the Nature Channel. The only thing keeping animals from growing out of control and eating everything in sight is that they just aren't all that good at hunting/reproducing/staying alive, at least as compared to humans. Check out what happens in an area when a local wolf mauls some baby. The wolves are "relocated" elsewhere and the deer population starts exploding until they literally eat everything in sight.
I can guarentee that if some big preadator (like Lions or something) suddenly discovered an easy and effective way to hunt, their population would explode until the prey supply was exausted, then they would starve to death if they don't move on to another area. Humans are the only animals on the planet that actually make a concious effort to not eradicate certain speices some of the time, even when its in our power.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
So this mean's that NASA's now doing Java?
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Mir. If the Russians can manage to keep people alive for months at a time with their inadequate budgets, why can't a Mars ship? I don't doubt there are considerable problems, but I can't see that the life-support issues are the intractable ones.
Assembling things in orbit is an extremely slow and expensive proposition. It's much easier to screw bits together on Earth, where you can just get a technician to hit things with a hammer if they won't fit together :)
Seriously, having to design things to screw together in orbit adds significantly to the cost and complexity - though I suppose that the US, Europe and Russia are spending $60 billion or so to make their mistakes with the ISS.
As soon as the crew launches, you have a single point of failure - what if the shuttle/launch vehicle blows up? Seriously though, it might be a good idea to do that. Why not put the Earth Return Vehicles a couple of hundred kilometres apart, and equip the lander with a couple of cars with enough range to travel to either one? That way, you get the redundancy, and an extra bonus of another base you can use for exploration purposes.
As I understand it, the way the orbital mechanics work out, you can't do much better than a 180-day trip, regardless of the power source, until you can get something that can maintain a continuous acceleration for the whole trip (which would require fusion power or something similarly exotic). Of course, if you can do that, the whole gravity question becomes irrelevant :)
Finally, food? Are you serious? Ever heard of that remarkably complex technology known as "the freezer"? Ever seen the freeze-dried food bushwalkers eat (devised during the Apollo program, if I recall correctly)? Sure, they'll take along a few seeds to see whether the can make them grow in the Mars "soil", but they'll definitely be bringing their food with them using a combination of 19th-century and 1960's technology.
Compared with the difficulty of 100% reliably intercepting ICBM's with another missile, Mars is easy. The greatest problem, in my view, is one you *haven't* touched on, the risk of a solar storm.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'm not a huge Goldin fan, but you can't blame him for talking about Mars while stuck monitoring coffee. Those priorities are set by Congress, and Congress is very suspicious of any program NASA funds that even slightly resembles preparation for Mars exploration by humans. For one thing, back under Bush, when Dan Quayle headed the Space Council, they delivered an Apollo-style to-Mars-in-20-years program that would have cost half a trillion dollars. Bush had called for the Mars plan, but when he saw the pricetag he didn't know anybody that had their names on it. Congress saw the pricetag and ever since they have believed that NASA is secretly lusting after a twenty-year pork barrel, and they'll try to get it by stealth if Congress doesn't watch carefully.
Meanwhile NASA operational costs are eaten up by a ridiculously expensive launch vehicle and a circular-reasoning space station that, while it has its benefits, doesn't really deliver for the dollar. Science and exploration suffer. NASA is frustrated, but Congress's point of view is that back in 1970 they promised a shuttle that would do A through Z for a dollar, and NASA delivered a shuttle that does A through maybe G for ten dollars.
Short answer: Congress does not trust NASA with money.
The $4B accounting overages in the station program this year are just one more example.
Again, I'm not a Goldin fan, but he does show creativity, as when he persuaded the Italians to maybe come on board the station program as full partners, not just as part of the ESA, by building the US a habitat module, maybe even the CRV. We'll see how that works in terms of actual funding.
For those who aren't aware, there's a nifty Mars explroation proposal called Mars Direct, which would cost a fraction of the NASA proposal -- perhaps $20 to 40 billion. NASA modified it into a $50-100 billion proposal dubbed Mars Semi-Direct. In any case, Congress still thinks a lower figure is a lowball figure and the taxpayer will get screwed in the end.
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lake effect weblog
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Think there's anything in the world without risk?
Here are some excerpts from A Scientist's Notebook: Risk and Realities by Gregory Benford, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sep 2000, Vol. 99 Issue 3, p112, 12p., retrieved from EBSCOhost via my public library's website. (Much as I'd like to, I can't paste the whole thing without stepping far outside the limits of Fair Use, so to obtain it with all context intact, go to your local library or equivalent website.)
. .Risk is always present. We can confine it to within acceptible levels and move forward, or we can try to make everything completely "safe" and stay frozen right where we are--because no matter what, someone is going to object to any attempt to introduce bold new techniques or technologies (ion or nuclear propulsion, anyone?) as too unsafe to try out, even under carefully restricted study and implementation. We can't just stagnate, or we'll never get humanity off this rock and safely ensconced on other planets before someone finally goes nuts and pushes The Button.
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Because the Moon has very little life support infrastructure available. Mars has plenty. It's relatively easy to crack and compress the atmosphere into a human-breathable one, and water's not terribly hard to come by. You can even manufacture rocket fuel for your return trip using very simple chemistry.
Supporting life on the moon is a pain in the ass. No air, no water, nothing interesting to anybody except geologists, whereas Mars has an excellent chance of supporting life, both human and indigenous varieties. It's not substantially more expensive to establish a base on Mars than on the Moon, but the return is far greater.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I also find 6EQUJ5's whining about the 20-year plan to be misleading. Again quoting Goldin:In other words, if we put the same kind of effort and sacrifice into this that we did with the Apollo program, we'll be there in 10 years. Otherwise, 20 years. That's comparable to the timeline for the Apollo program, and it seems reasonable to me.
I wonder what the first human on Mars will say, and whether it will be as memorable as Neil Armstrong's famous words...
We rushed to the Moon for political purposes, and all we have to show for it now is some grainy footage and a bunch of lucite encased rocks.
Our trips to Mars should serve as the beginning to the eventual human expansion into space, and not some cheap theatrical stunt. They should be accomplished in a considered and sustainable manner.
All us dot-bombers know what happens when you throw together a grand plan in too little time. Think IBM, not eLaundryBasket.com.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
I wonder what the first human on Mars will say, and whether it will be as memorable as Neil Armstrong's famous words...
"FFP!!!!"
(As in, First Footprint!!!)
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Most certainly do we have people like that. And lots more than in the late '60s, early '70s. The problem is that nowadays there are far more places such brilliant people want to work, and that are willing to pay such people lots of money. The problem certainly isn't the number of knowledgable people - the problem is hiring enough critical mass of brilliant people.
As for the referred to article, the existance of a black cow doesn't decrease the number of blue parrots. I've little knowledge about the stock market, French literature and Hindi gods. But that doesn't prove anything about the quality of stock traders, French literature buffs or Hindi priests. Nor does it say anything about my qualities; at best it says something about my interests.
-- Abigail
If we do go we will need:
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some form of artificial gravity. I don't see the big deal here - just spin the damn space craft. I've heard some comments that there are problems controling two body systems in a stable way, but there must be some way around it (rigidity, three-body systems, active feedback...?). All this endless talk about overcoming weightlessness (sp?) is stupid when such an obvious solution is at hand.
- Lots of redundency. We can't, for example rely on having a single ship (fueled by one of these proposed fuel `factories') at the other end ready to come back. It is too large a single point of failure. We'll need to send at least two of everything and three of some things.
- Size. The space craft will need to be large enough that the crew don't go mad and actually are comfortable. No spacecraft to date has been comfortable. NASA's approach seems to be: design something just big enough that the crew don't rip each others bodies apart inside a month and call it a success. It all seems motivated by wanting to fit the whole craft on a single, Saturn 5 style, launcher. Why? Surely a ship can be assembled in earth orbit.
- Cost. Its going to be expensive. It'll cost at least $150 bn and probably more like $1 trillion. All this stuff about Mars on a shoe string is balls. It might be possible, but it won't be safe and nothing good would come of it. The crew would be miserable and in constant danger. Mars rather than a tax cut anyone?
- Propulsion. It'll need to be done as quickly as possible, which means propulsion. This in turn means Nuclear (either directly or more likely powering a plasma drive or something). Nuclear means hard time winning over the public (even though it is so obviously the only choice and I am not generally a supporter of nuclear fission)
None of this is in place. No propulsion system, no power systems, no space suits, no large ships (could we just fit out the ISS and actually make it useful?), no reliable food source (what if crops fail?) and heres the crux of it: NO MONEY. It will happen when there is cheaper access to low earth orbit and all these technologies are more mature. Perhaps I'm too young to remember Apollo, but that was a series of (remarkably lucky and I mean no disrespect to the people who worked on making it as safe as it was) week long outings. This is an eighteen month voyage. It is like assuming you can stay under water for two hours just because you managed to hold your breath for two minutes.Twenty years? Dear God, the American rocketry program went from zero to the moon in eight years.
Yes, but the moon is much closer than Mars.
If we had rockets which could take us from earth to Mars in a couple days, we'd probably have men on Mars within a few years. When it takes at least 6 months to get to Mars -- which means at least 6 months for probes and equipment to get to Mars -- things are obviously going to go a bit slower.
Somehow I doubt we'll go from zero to Alpha Centauri in less than 8 years either.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
If this is ever tried, it either has to be a faster trip (which would require something other than chemical rockets) or a big spacecraft that rotates to provide gravity. Nuclear propulsion would work, but the political problems are tough.
We would have ended up with much cooler stuff if we had invested those enourmous sums of money into other areas. Instead of spending money going to the moon, we could have spent the same money on semiconductor research in the 1960's and 1970's and have jumpstarted the computer industry by 10 years.
You seem to be assuming two things:
1. There are insuffcient resources to engage in both space exploration and semiconductor research with any degree of success.
2. That desireable avenues of research and exploration are trivial to identify and commit to.
Re 1: History suggests that this is not true. Generally, resource shortages have always been due more to bad resource management than a true scarcity of resources. We could conceivably have both "successful" space exploration and "successful" semiconducto research - at the same time.
Re 2: Isn't it a little anachronistic to demand that your predecessors have the same desires and goals as yourself? Just because you would have chosen semiconductor research over space exploration in the 60s and 70s - if you knew then what you know now - this doesn't mean they should have made the same choice. In fact, it looks like everybody - the goverment, the populace, the scientists, &c. - wanted space exploration. So that's the direction they went in.
Your argument is like saying the ancient Egyptians should have researched Existentialism instead of Pyramids, or that the ancient Greeks should have come up with a polio vaccine instead of the Socratic Method.
Your criteria for evaluating the prior achievements of a society are underspecified.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Yes, we have everything we need here in Olduvai, so we don't need to do anything like explore what's over the horizon.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
It would probably be a wise move to attempt colonization of the Moon before colonization of Mars. The moon would serve as a shakedown field test for technology and techniques. If something goes wrong, it's a lot closer back to Earth.
The key to major investment in the Mars program is potential profit. Mars is an untapped planet of ore, minerals, and *potentially* fossil fuels. While Congress might hesitate to fund a Mars mission for humanity's sake, they'd be happy to do it for Diamond's/Gold's/Oil's sake.
And while the concept of stripmining Mars may seem unpleasant, it's quite necessary, and is the only way we'll ever see real colonization attempts. (Such mining would be severely limited, anyhow, due to purely geographic reasons.) Just as the New World provided land and resource to 16th-century Europe, so would a new world to 21st-century America.
I imagine that such a massive endeavor is also going to require privatization. We've had the technology and resources to set foot on Mars for years. It's been a cf of silly alternate programs and disasters that have been the restraint. After the Martian rover wowed the American psyche, NASA should have intensified its efforts to get a manned expedition underway. A simple American flag on the surface would have been the catalyst for colonization.
Dennis Tito has probably done more for the space program than he ever could have dreamed. I suspect that cash-strapped Russia will continue it's space tourism sideline. Eventually, it's going to allow a private commercial enterprise (no pun intended) to begin space flight and exploration. American industry will eagerly invest in such programs, (think of the profits and PR) pressuring the American government to allow similar commercial exploration (under the auspices of NASA, who would serve as an administrative body. NASA would undoubtedly continue it's scientific work as well.)
In his upcoming report of massive military overhaul, Secretary Rumsfeld also seems to be casting an eye towards space for military endeavour. (Beyond the missile defense shield.) Not to sound too Trekker, but Starfleet may be closer than we think.
GenChalupa
Better coffee (be it better tasting, just a bit cheaper because of larger crops, or something else) could lead to the NASA Engineers being able to pull more all nighters and get us to Mars sooner!
The road to Mars is paved with double cream, double sugar!
Dark Nexus
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
Seriously though. You don't get advances by pumping money into something specific (better microprocessors), you get advances by pumping money into a *goal* (reaching mars), and then solving the new problems that arise. The former just gets you refinements of existing things, the latter tends to get you things that are completely new.
My mention of war was because war is often the other great instigator of technology. The amount of technical development we've had from the two world wars alone is staggering, simply because the necessity arose.
I'd rather set a goal, then reach for it, than depend on market forces or the coming of some dire necessity.
Gezundheit.
All personal feelings on this topic aside (and I assure, I've got 'em), let's stop for a second and ask ourselves what people really want out of NASA, anyhow?
/.'ers) as well as the guy/gal next door's. On the one hand, you have the fact that a lot of emphasis recently has been put on "staying close to home" with federal R&D money, which is what NASA funding essential boils down to. For people who lean this way opinion-wise, NASA should spend its time figuring out ways to enhance human life on Earth through space research.
Yes, I know I'm risking a science/culture/gov holy war here (so please DON'T GO THERE). I simply pose the question: What do the people want?
NASA is funded by YOUR tax dollars (at least, "your" applies to American
On the other side you've got the folks who are advocate pure research and "science for the sake of science." This crowd might as well start slapping "Mars or Bust" bumper stickers on their cars tomorrow.
I tend to go for a more middle-of-the road approach, as in "leverage *all* forms of space research, whether far from or close to home, for the direct benefit of all on Earth." Unfortunately, this requires more of the average citizen than is commonly found: the ability and interest in taking the time to *really* research what's actually happening in space tech, *really* research what's actually lacking in our societies as a whole, and merge the two into concrete objectives.
I'm as guilty of this as the next Joe, but it's generally a true statement the most people who are heavily involved in hard science and research aren't heavily involved in "human matters." Kind of a paradox, I suppose.
I'd appreciate comments on this (seeming) issue.
High-quality Linux web hosting for geeks and coders.
The guy you replied to said:
"You don't get advances by pumping money into something specific (better microprocessors), you get advances by pumping money into a *goal* (reaching mars)"
You said:
"This is just isn't true."
To back this up you used the following example:
"Take the Human Genome Project. We get something very useful out of it (The human genome map) and we have devoloped several useful technologies along the way (better gene sequencers)."
How does your example support your statement that what the guy you were replying to said was untrue? The goal was to map the human genome. To accomplish this goal, new technologies had to be developed.
Now, I know the point of your response was "choose worthwhile goals." But the "not because it is easy, but because it is hard" reason for sending people to Mars seemed to be a good enough reason for sending people to the Moon. Besides, how is sending people to Mars not a worthwhile goal? You must think humans eventually being able to colonize other worlds to be a total waste of time.