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Mars-On-Earth Webcams Online
mkasei writes: "High in the arctic polar desert sits the Mars Society's Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station. Its first year of operations started about 5 weeks ago. There have been numerous technical difficualties but everything seems to be working now. Today they turned on 2 of 3 webcams so people can spy in on them. The habitat as it is called has two decks. There is a webcam on each deck. A third is to be placed outside facing the hab as "astronauts" egress out of the hab for EVA's in simulated space suits. They are working in collaboration with NASA's Haughton-Mars Project and other organizations to learn what it will be like to live and work on Mars. In the next few weeks they plan on testing out several small rovers and a prototype Mars suit."
We get signal!
Rockets is easy. Mr. Zubrin's design for an "Ares" booster incorporates four Shuttle main engines, and two Shuttle solid rocket boosters. The design does not require a Shuttle to be in the stack, so all the payload is Mars hardware.
NASA designs for a Shuttle-C (basically a regular Shuttle stack with a cargo pod instead of the Shuttle) would also be very near the payload requirements.
Energiya would also work...provided we can figure out how to make them stop exploding.
Saying that it's impossible to build a 100 ton payload rocket is absolutely ludicrous. We did fine thirty years ago, and engineers have gotten smarter since then (by virtue of learning from the mistakes of others.)
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
What's on the Moon?
Rocks. Maybe some water.
What's on Mars?
Water. Maybe life.
Which is more interesting?
Once you're out of Earth's gravity well, you're halfway to anywhere. We HAVE put up a space station. What we're going to do with it, heaven only knows. If you're really interested in an in-depth exploration of why Mars is radically more useful scientifically than other space endeavors, I recommend "The Case for Mars", by Mars Society's Dr. Robert Zubrin. You can buy the book on their site. It's absolutely superb reading...it explains in detail how to get to Mars, how much it will cost, and why we ought to go.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Even though there is probably nothing else to do on Mars other than work on having babies, I doubt any woman could churn them out faster than they would manage to kill themselves. There are biological limits here...
You mean like in Barbarella? Jane Fonda is a bit too old now. Who should it be?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Not NASA, the Mars Society. This is a privately funded venture, by a private organization. They're partnering with NASA on research and exchange, but its not a "NASA" idea or project.
http://www.marssociety.org
Here's to private enterprise providing the balls to get some work done towards sending humans to Mars. If they have their way, and NASA doesn't scoot its butt into gear, they intend to try to get the funding to go to Mars without Nasa. Join up, some em some funds, take part.
Derek
I figure they pay a few ladies in skimpy underwear to strip out of spacesuits once in a while and their viewership will skyrocket - then they can reel the suckers in as they do their serious work - when it comes time to spend the billions of dollars a manned mission woul dtake, they'll have better support me thinks because people are de-sensitized to the idea.
Or not - its 6AM, blame father time for my post :0
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Do they get to keep their space suits if they get voted out of the habitat?
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0300issue/0300zubrin.htm l
How about SirCam? It would follow eligible bachelors, and viewers could ask them for advice on the file they're sending :)
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practically an AC
It seems to me Zubrin's plan immediately falls apart because we simply don't have "a single, heavy-lift booster rocket with a capability equal to that of the Saturn 5 rockets from the Apollo era". Is Zubrin talking about something similar to Magnum? According to that article, even if the plans for the original Saturn 5 haven't been destroyed, it is simply impossible for us to manufacture something similar to the Saturn 5 today. Magnum's 80 tons of payload would be a bit less than the 100 of Saturn 5.
But where's the "Up Space Suit" cam? And how do we vote them out of the Habitat?
And how does the system of voting people out work? I couldn't find anything on the site about it.
Thousands of users watched the crew's last agonized struggles over two of the three newly-operational web cams. Again, a prosperous project has been killed by the mindless hacking activities of a group of anonymous cowards.
There is absolutely no reason to panic.