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NASA Plans On Bringing Back Martian Rocks
FortKnox writes: "In this Y! article, NASA is planning on sending a robotic mission to Mars in an attempt to bring back Martian stuff (rocks, soil, etc...). Looks like its a tough mission to plan for; they are calling it 'Apollo without the astronauts.'" I would like to go to Mars in person, but if they're spending my money already, I'd like them to please use robots for a while.
I like NASA's new approach to things. My primary concerns about the mission though are the following:
... this doesn't even include shooting things back.
1) What can we do by inspecting the rocks in person we can't do remotely? We should be able to do everything except touch it.
2) What other benefits do we get out of the mission?
3) Will there be additional scientific study accomplished on the ground? I mean NASA's track record on landing things on Mars hasn't been great
Those who would trade mars rocks for earth rocks deserve neither mars nor earth rocks.
I support an unmanned mission to Mars and back. I think the costs of sending men now versus 20-30 years from now are out of proportion with the results. Twenty years hence we may have lighter, faster propulsion technology and better materials for the ship. The ISS will certainly provide additional research that will be directly applicable to such a trip.
Robots are the way to go!
Here is the lab of Jet propulsion labs that does the robot thingie. This is the software to test the robustness of the robots. NASA has learnt from several failures apparently.
A picture of martian rock with some explanations, if you're interested. Along with some interesting rock with bug patterns!
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Here is the link of the actual Mars mission along with the status and risks. And check out all the robotics projects behind the scene. Cool...
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People are asking why go all the way to Mars and then bring stuff back when we can analyze it there? I think people are missing part of the point. If you're going to send people there eventually, you'd like for them to have a way to get back. There are all kinds of tricky things involved with leaving a planet. Heck, landing on the moon and reaching lunar escape velocity was hard enough!
Part of the goal is to examine rocks from Mars so that we get a better understanding of Mars, our solar system, and space in general. I think another part of the goal is to actually land a craft on Mars and then bring it back. Carrying all that extra fuel to reach Martian escape velocity is going to be expensive, but we need to know that kind of stuff.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
Really, with all the cutbacks in NASA, you would think that they would want to make a mission like this more popular - think about it - battlebots on Mars (just think of the lag time) - the suspense as pictures come back, the contestants make their move - and wait....
On a more serious note it would be neat to have hobbyists designing bots for mars on a competitive level to see who can come up with the most efficent/reliable/lightweight etc design. The guys at NASA have great ideas and implementations - but I think that the bazzar vs cathedral idea could help here.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Additionally, having people actually handling the rocks is more important that you might think. People are intereactive, able to notice things not thought about during mission planning, then able to persue those questions. If you built a probe, you make a set of assumptions about what kinds of instruments you need and tests you'll do. You have to limit yourself more than you would if you have a person actually handling the rocks.
The fullest continuation of this logic is that we ultimately will want to put people on Mars for these same reasons. However, we're nowhere near ready for that at this time.
Can't find terrorists
Search earth, then the red planet.
They hide under rocks.
NASA, and other international groups, has already thought of that and long ago addressed it. Even the Apollo missions were carried out so that the Moon rocks were kept in a quarantine, at negative relative pressure. Scientists worked with them via those glovey things you see in labs. Admittedly, the Apollo mission's planetary protection was done rather half-heartly (I won't regale you with stories, here). But Mars is taken a lot more seriously, as is Europa (Europa is the reason that Galileo is being sent to crash into Jupiter while we still have control of it, rather than let it continue to orbit indefinately). Any Mars mission has be decontaminated to where they're gauged as having less than 1 change in 10,000 of contaminating Mars. Martians samples are to be treated as hazardous until we are certain they are not.
People today don't have the stomach for what it would take to set up a sustainable colony on Mars with today's technology. In the 1700's when europeans crossed the Atlantic they lost numerous colonists and expiditions before one took. And that was going to a place on the same planet where they know had to potential to sustain life. Without further information do you really think we could make a perminantly sustainable Mars colony with todays technology, and not loose a single person? Imagine how fast people of today would can the project after they saw the deaths of the colonists on TV a few hours later.
- The California 210/30 freeway extension costs approximately one billion for 28.2 miles of freeway. [The Big Dig in Boston is over 10 times more expensive, for you easterners.]
- The federal government spends about one billion to pay interest on the federal debt each day.
Really, one billion dollars isn't as much money as you think it is. It's enough to pay 1,000 people $100,000/year for 10 years...and you have to figure that it takes at least 10 years and 1,000 people to build, support, and fly a spacecraft to Mars and back. Not to mention materials costs.[www.dot.ca.gov]
[www.publicdebt.treas.gov]
"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."
It seems like every 6 months now they some out with some new "discovery" that turns out to be just a rehash of old science with a new twist. Truth is, if you think along the lines of timothy here, you could also say that:
- NASA Plans on Sending Astronauts Back to the Moon
- NASA Plans on Sending Satellite Fleet to Jupiter
- NASA Plans on Searching For Life on Titan's Oceans
- NASA Plans on Tripling Space Station Size
- NASA Plans on New Hubble Replacement
The list goes on and on. I love NASA, don't get me wrong, but the only serious stories worth looking at are the ones that start with NASA Receives Budgetary Committment From Congress For [insert project here]. That's the point where any serious planning really starts.There's a limit to how much experimental equipment you can shove onto a Mars probe.
Of course the price of one manned mission would equal hundreds if not thousands of probes which could cover many different parts of the planet with different objectives. A manned mission would be very limited in scope and certainly not worth the price.
its a much better idea to bring back a near earth asteroid (NEA), or mine a near earth asteroid and bring back the good bits.
Why?:
a) NEA's are nearer
b) mining asteroids can turn a profit (Mars probably can't)
c) we can use ION drives to get there (like Deep Space 1 used), but they don't work to-from Mars due to the gravity of Mars
d) there's no chance that we catch the never-get-overs (the asteroids should be dead)
e) they contain useful stuff like water (steam is a fairly good rocket fuel in fact)
f) getting lots of stuff from NEAs to orbit is looking cheaper than getting it from the earth, therefore it may be possible to send people to Mars using the fuel collected from NEAs; in the meantime we can turn a profit boosting satellites into GEOsynchronous orbit and such like...
g) Basically Mars would be a white elephant right now. Cool as heck, but pointless.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"It's important to keep in mind that the money doesn't just vanish. It's not like NASA has a huge furnace that they shovel money into while they work on the spacecraft.
Most of the money ends up paying people's salaries and buying components from aerospace/electronics companies. A portion of it will end up right back in your hands as the recipients spend their money on other things and it circulates back to you. Government projects like this usually create value, rather than destroy it, because these people might not have jobs or be producing anything without taxpayer dollars, and there wouldn't be as much money in circulation. Generally, everybody benefits.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
NASA would love to do a Mars sample return. However in reality no such mission is going to happen anytime soon. Last October NASA outlined its long term plan for Mars exploration with a sample return slated to start in 2014. However recently it became known that the October plan is now more or less dead. The only Mars mission not touched at this time is the 2003 twin rover mission (MER 2003). The 2005 orbiter mission is still a tentative go, however everything after that is up in the air.
NASA's budget is being used to pay for the ballooning space station cost overruns which means other programs get the axe. The space station is at least 4 billion over budget. NASA's budget is about 14 billion. Do the Math. The Bush administration has told NASA to get the station budget under control. So NASA has to cut a lot of programs including Mars. Look to the Europeans to potentially do a Mars sample return first with some NASA participation.
Useful Link: A Year of Mars News: It was the worst of times; it was the best of times.
An average space probe nowadays costs about $350 million, and we can do it right now. NASA has firm plans to launch one or two Mars probes every two years, with the design of the 2003 and 2005 missions already well under way.
Manned space flight , in comparison, is still hideously expensive. The final cost of the ISS will run into the many tens of billions of dollars in order to keep 6-7 people in low Earth orbit. A permanent Lunar base capable of supporting a similar sized research crew would be comparable in cost, at the very least. As for Lunar production/launch facilities, check back in a few decades.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to take a Lunar holiday one day. But putting everything on hold until that remote possibility becomes a reality would hinder the very real and immediate science we can do for comparatively little right now.