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Bill In U.S. House Plans Manned Mars Mission
maddogsparky writes "Spaceref.com has a copy of a bill laying out a roadmap for NASA to send a manned mission to Mars by 2022. Highlights include an manned asteroid landing, building a research outpost on one of Mars' moons and actually providing funds to start mission planning."
I call shotgun!
Sounds good, very reminicent of the National Space Commission report except that had more emphasis on return to the moon versus Lagrange points.
e r.html,
(Of course I know a little bit about Lagrange points,
http://www.finds-space.org/thomasneuraut
We do have some stuff to publish soon.)
Well, as always, I'd like to believe.
-Jay Thomas
http://www.uiuc.edu/~jthomas2
but this will probably turn out like that manned space station we were going to be using in 1980. Plans for it were drawn in what, '64? The logistics of this are unreasonable and currently impracticle. Self-sufficient environments on other planets will remain the realm of science fiction for years to come. The largest problem to overcome IMO is distance. The distance between Mars and Earth is phenominal. Like the English who first came to America, this would be almost doomed to failure. There will be many Roanokes before one Jamestown.
Just my $0.02.
P.S. First post?
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
In this day and age we need to be thinking about things like making sure there is enough money going into welfare, war on drugs, war on terrorism, enforcement of gun laws, etc and not on crazy stuff like going to mars. I hope this bill is struck down as it might be damaging from investment into the social programs of this country.
One of the problems with these various large scale concept/projects is that things can flounder forever in the planning stages.
For those of you familiar with large bureaucracies, everything lies in the funding. By forcing the funding of something and laying out a defined timetable, this bill would IMHO stand a good chance of actually causing this to become a reality. (Technical delays notwithstanding.)
I agree, this probably won't pass... but it would a very clear signal, a strident first step, and a more exciting two decades if it did.
So write your Congressmen, damnit! =)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
If we donate money can we maybe send off a few of the slashdot trolls on the space shuttle? I think Mars would suit them well.
please.
this intrigued me too for about an hour. None of the "evidence" that we never made it to the moon is convincing at all. this is despite the fact that there would be NO WAY to pull off such a "vast" conspiracy.
rage away
NB -- parent is already at -1, So I will quote:
we never made it to the moon you boob. it was all a vast and deep penetrating conspiracy [dibona.com] with key hitters such as RMS [stallman.org] and the mexican government.
In general the /. community is interested in the Space Program and the benefits it provides to the technology community.
/. crowd is numerous enough to put some good pressure on Congress to do something right.
As this Bill progresses it will be important to have the Slashdot (dare I say "geek" crowd) write their representatives and encourage the support of this bill.
Please keep the Slashdot editors informed on news regarding this Bill so that more people can read about it on Slashdot and in turn write their Senators to support it.
Seriously, the
Read the bill, it makes note of some serious issues facing the Country's space program and it's future years down the road... such as no MAJOR challenging missions after the ISS "Alpha" is assembled.
Ever need an online dictionary?
Second, that couldn't happen in the House because of rules about the germaneness of amendments. A Senate version could have all sorts of "Christmas tree ornaments" (as Bush-41 sometimes called them) because they have no rule about amendments being germane.
As much as I long to see a person set foot on mars within my lifetime, I feel like we shouldn't even bother unless we're going to give a compelling reason to go. We went to the moon long before we had any plan or reason (other than "beat the russians"), and look how far that's gotten us.
Personally, I consider "research terraforming" to be the best of all possible reasons, and I think now is as good a time as any, but I don't see a bulk of the population realizing anytime soon how valuable another livable planet would be to the future of the human race.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
I can just see....no more gunman rampages in lawyers offices on the 10th floor of a high-rise. They just fly the car through the window when they seek the ass-licking lawyer walk into his office. A whole new definition of stalking.
If the U.S. had a competitor in this race for Mars like they did for the moon in the late 60s, they would have a man there in a few short, focussed years. So, um, can we maybe pretend there's a competitive nation and get on with it?!
We aren't at the point where Mars makes any kind of sense. It's a bit like Columbus discovered America and now we've been to American 6 times and everyone is saying- hey we've never been to Antartica! Antartica is the next step! It's the future of mankind!
Even that is pushing the analogy too far. Antartica is a lot more habitable than Mars. Mars has no atmosphere- well just 1% of earths- it's a vacuum; the lightbulbs in your house have more gas in them. Sure we can live on Antartica, or Mars, but we can't thrive there right now. We have the technology, but the economics aren't there- it's gonna cost hundreds of millions per person. That's no way colonise anywhere. It's pure flags and footprints. We go, we plant the flags, we come back. That's it. Yeah, it'd be glorious. But so what? It leads nowhere.
We need to mine something that isn't at the bottom of a gravity well. Mining something at the top means you can slide it downhill to LEO, or towards Mars. Until we have mining, Mars is out of reach for practical settlement; as is most of the solar system for that matter.
Phobos or Deimos- yes. The moon- maybe, a NEA or a comet, yes. Mars? Later.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Personally, I would like to see space exploration start happening, and continue happening. Let's be honest: The moon missions, while probably the most significant and arguably the most complex engineering feat in human history, basically was "Wow! We made it! Now what??".
Instead of throwing all this government money into the sh**hold where we know it will probably never come out, let's give tax incentives to get private companies into space. First company to mine an asteroid gets a 20 year tax moritorium! Same deal for space-based factories!
The key is that space has to pay for itself. If we depend on the government to put men into space, then men in space depends on the whims of budgets and politicians. The only way to get there and stay there is to have an economic incentive to stay there.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Great, maybe congress can infuse a little enthusiasm into NASA, whose lofty goals involve a few decades of launching incrementally better satellites.
Just make sure nobody tries to do inter-dimensional space travel over there. You never know what Hell will do... and I don't want my rabbit to die.
Good bill. It's always refreshing to see politicians work toward dreams in science, technology and exploration. The time table for this bill may need to slow down a bit to be realistic, but what is really needed to make the human Mars exploration and the further exploration of the solar system after Mars practical and economical is the development of nuclear propulsion, something that has always been a political hot potato.
Without nuclear propulsion, a manned mission anywhere farther than the moon will always take too long be too costly and have a much too small margin of error to be acceptable.
In this day and age we need to be thinking about things like making sure there is enough money going into welfare, war on drugs, war on terrorism, enforcement of gun laws, etc and not on crazy stuff like going to mars.
Yeah, alright, we'll just put science on the backburner until every other problem is completely solved. Gees. I got news for you: we're always going to have big problems here on Earth. You need to watch a little less Star Trek. I'm all in favor of social programs but we need to fund science as well.
Now, I'm not an expert on space and, to be honest, I didn't even read the Mars proposal, but the idea of "hold off on the space stuff until we fix problems on Earth" is one of those things that really grates on my nerves. This bill should be judged by the scientific benefits of the Mars trip alone. The fact that there are so many other needy non-space causes shouldn't enter into this.
GMD
watch this
s/2 million dollars per year/2 billion dollars per year/?
:)
I know there's been inflation since then, but 2 million wasn't that big back then... it certainly is not anymore.
I second your proposition for M. Gates. Now, who will try to convince him?
In 2050 we will hear old people complaining
"We can put a man on Mars, but can't make a car that works right"
http://www.kubuntu.org/
...money on funding an Islamic space programme maybe we could get another space race going. That's the only way we're ever going to see any more manned exploration.
-- SIGFPE
Redundant: In 1969, Vice-President Spiro Agnew committed the United States to a manned Mars mission by the year 2000. That beats this bill by 22 years. [As a side note, the Vice-President has traditionally been the administration's point person for space activity. That is why Apollo mission responsibility shifted from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Mission Control in Texas (Lyndon Johnson's home state) as soon as the Saturn V cleared the launch tower.]
Toothless: There are no penalties for failure to execute. If the mission is not completed on schedule, NASA bosses should be looking at some hard prison time. Otherwise, what's the point?
'Nuff said.
If manned spaceflight were that cool, we would be talking about all the nifty things we could add to the ISS right now. The fact is, there is not enough science up there that requires human beings to justify the cost of sending them.
Now, getting costs down is smart. We should be investing our money in cheap methods of getting to orbit. That is the kind of thing that will pay off. Once space is cheap, a hell of a lot more space science is justified.
how much do you think it'll cost for some billionare to get a ride on this?
sig - .
Even if this bill passes, which I doubt it will, a simple act of Congress cannot possibly restore NASA to its former glory. Space exploration is no longer a top priority for the American people, now that the cold war is over. Once thought of as essential for national security, NASA is now suffering due to budget cuts.
The public might still think that space exploration is "cool," but few would be willing to sacrifice other government programs or accept a tax hike in order to free up money for NASA. If the public doesn't care, why would politicians care? NASA won't win you votes at the ballot box.
Here's the problem that I see. Even if this bill passes it is only the first step in the grand scheme.
.).
The bill would offer -
$50,000,000 for fiscal year 2003.
$200,000,000 for fiscal year 2004.
This would be used for planning, etc. . . This is only a small fraction of what it is going to take to develop the needed equipment/technology to get there.
They are shooting for 2020? Even if this bill does pass that leaves 16 more years for congress to de-rail or bury this project in favor of something else (see military spending, tax breaks, etc. .
I agree that this bill is a start, but it certainly doesn't offer a lot in the way of a long term commitment from the American government. If only there was a way to get a president involved maybe he could get the American people excited about the space program again.
Well, at least someone is throwing their hat over the wall for the good of mankind.
:)
They've given a deadline.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Every politician is looking for their ticket into the next term, and it looks like Rep. Lampson is going for the space angle. Hell, he may be even trying to capitalize on the ATOC sci-fi brouhaha (it wouldn't suprise me, knowing how the political system works in the USA).
With an administration that has been chopping NASA's budget left and right, this has very little chance of actually taking place.
Dys.
This comment is brought to you by the drug caffiene, and the number 5.
Yeah, the Senators aren't involved in this ... its in the House. So write your House Representatives. No need to mess with the Senate governed by Palpatine... it will just backfire. Lets make sure Natalie Portman gets the office of Senator after her terms of Queen are up!
Ever need an online dictionary?
I'd go in a heartbeat! Unfortunately, I'm just a lowly engineer, not a senator or anything. Maybe I should get a job at Enron... ;)
A tax moratorium to encourage space development would be great... if companies actually paid taxes. Enron never paid a dime of federal taxes. Tyco International dodged $400 million in taxes last year by incorporating in Bermuda. Etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam. There are too many tax shelters already that are a hell of a lot easier to establish than an asteroid mine.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
You don't need to worry, because, no matter how many billions they spend, all those dollars will stay right here on Earth. They will pay wages for people who work in the aerospace sector, they will pay for research done in universities, they will finance companies doing work for NASA.
Not a single penny will be spent on Mars. There's no one there to receive it.
All of these add up to very very little money for Mars.
I would love to be proven wrong, but I suspect that this bill will not see much debate.
shouldn't we be planning a mission to Venus instead?
Not enough votes on Mars.
No farmers, no steelworkers, no Cuban immigrants, no nothin'. It ain't a key "swing planet", it has no electoral votes, no representation, no key industries, and it isn't even a decent vacation spot.
What we need is a lobby. First make land grants on Mars. Slip it in as a rider on some military spending bill. Then, we can start complaining about how transportation is lousy there; maybe divert some funds from Amtrak, grease a few palms here and there. The first rocket needs to be loaded with representatives for welfare mothers, schoolchildren, teachers, steelworkers, farmers, union members, and other key constituency groups who know how to lobby. The scientists can come later.
If the rocket makes it we'll get one helluva Mars lobby. If it blows up, that'll be fine too. It's a win-win situation.
Hey, don't blame me. You were the ones who brought Congress into the picture.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
First USA may not even exsist in 2022 if we dont stop terrorism.
Second by 2022, we should be building on mars, not sending the first man to mars.
I mean damn, If we are going to pollute earth shouldnt we be preparing mars.
2022? Come on, we can go to Mars 5 years from now.
2022? ITs not a technology issue, its cheap Americans who want tax cuts. My Prediction, China or Russia will go to Mars before us.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to go to Mars.
To Terraform Mars it would cost trillions. I think we should start doing this LONG before 2020 though.
I think 2008 we should send a Man to mars, 2015 try to terraform mars.
By 2030 Terraforming will be done, and we can build stuff on mars because the pollution and the population will increase to the point that by 2050 we will need to be on Mars.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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pour the equal amount of pressure on your congress critter to vote for this as we poured on to not vote for things like the SSSCA! I'll be writing some letters tomorrow. of course, I'm unemployed so I have a lot of time to do such things..
---
I post links to stuff here
A problem with Mars Direct is that it uses nuclear energy. I don't have much of a problem with nuclear energy when its on another planet, but it makes it politically more difficult. I think its use stems from Zubrin nuclear engineering background and from his unwillingness to consider advances in technology that will be obtained by the time a Mars program actually starts.
I don't think any possible chemical fuel could provide enough energy to do what is needed for his plan, and I doubt you can carry solar cells to get enough power.
The nuclear plant is the key to this plan; everything else hinges on having tons of electricity available on Mars.
Why cant we invest in both? Increase taxes by about 2 trillion dollars
(it was cut by about 1.5 trillion)
This leaves 500 billion for a manned mission to Mars.
The terraform project would require trillions, we cant afford to terraform mars. But we can send a man there, the reason we dont is, is it worth all that money just so we can claim we were first?
The terraform project is more important, we should begin now taxing for it, so that in 10 years we will have a few trillion dollars which will be enough to begin.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
POLLUTION, We wont have air in 2020, there wont be any rainforest left, and the Ozone layer will be completely gone,
yeah thats when we will send a MAN to mars, when will we terraform? 2050? If we wait until then, it will be too late, We'll all be dead.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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My dad was 12 years old when he first saw the television broadcast of Neil Armstrong take the first steps onto a world of wonders.
The whole world stopped and watched. People in the former Soviet Union and the world sat dumbfounded at the accomplishment. It wasn't just 'America' that made it to the moon, it was the entire world.
Now imagine that feeling, for one moment. What would it be like for just one second to actually have a sense of accomplishment that goes above anything and everything. Above all the petty differences regarding possessions and wealth. I would give anything to have that excitement in my lifetime. What was your feeling on Sept. 11th? I can tell you mine, horror. Can't we have something different? Something spectactularly humbling and amazing?!
I think it's time that we as humans actually try to accomplish something more then making money and material wealth. That we prove to everything and anything out there that we will continue to survive if we actually try to work together. Think of the jobs that this type of project would create.
I've read some other posts regarding this...ppl saying we should do this to welfare and blah blah blah. What if this created 100,000 more jobs? What if this actually motivated ppl to get off their butts and do something?
What if for even 10 mins, you could say that you someway, no matter how minor it was, YOU contributed to something so grand, so spectacular, that nothing or no one could ever take that satisfaction away from you.
But then again, we as humans will probably never be able to experience that feeling. We'll continue to argue about welfare, who gets what money and what possessions. Who's house is bigger. etc. etc. etc.
I just turned 21. I hope for just one second I will be able to experience something that will atleast leave me somewhat satisfied so that before I die, I can actually relfect on the accomplishments as a race that we have accomplished. What I have accomplished will never compare to what if we all worked together to accomplish.
I wish for that feeling my Dad had...33 years ago.
That is my dream, and hope.
This is cool. Don't get me wrong, I like the Idea, and am for it 110%, but, there are other projects that need funds, like projects developing impulse and warp drive.
:)
And maybe a faster then light communications method... Plus, we need to setup a sensor permiter of our solar system
Maybe if the government didn't give $180 billion to farmers then a mission to Mars would be possible. I know let's send the farmers to Mars.
There will always be problems here on Earth. We should go to Mars because we don't know we can do it. The science that can be done by real live people on a planet is far more than robots can do. And we can then have off site backup as well.
I wonder how fast we could get a colony on Mars if we could cinvince people that our entire specieis is in danger of being destroyed. If we spent half as much effort as we currently spend on religon or anything else, how long would it take? Perhaps it could become it's own religon, saving the species by getting some of eggs out of the same basket.
Krispy Cream is people
How appropriate that this bill should be presented to Congress now, just after I have finished reading Frederick Pohl's "Man Plus." (For those who don't know, "Man Plus" deals with sending a man to Mars.)
I was thinking about how an actual Mars mission might be accomplished, with minimum cost and maximum gain. Here's what I came up with:
1. Construct a large ship in orbit--launching the entire ship on one rocket wouldn't really be feasible for a Mars expedition as it was for the lunar missions.
2. The ship might need to simulate gravity by spinning on an axis--after all, this will be a long mission (1-2 years) and we can't let the astronauts get too weak.
3. Send the ship off to Mars, land with a couple (or three) landing vehicles, then bring the ship back to Earth.
4. Use the ship as an orbiting space station. That's the real brilliance of my plan. We get a free space station in the process.
Well, that's all.
At the very least some very strong basic science (with applications) in MEMs and nanotech, not only for the machinery needed to get to Mars, but for construction and terraforming. To make a large scale settlement there, we will have no choice but to build with local materials.
Second, major advances in space travel need to happen. We could possibly cobble together something that would get there and back but it would be of little lasting value. We need to understand more about alternative propolsion and energy adaption.
Third, we have very little useful information on human spaceflight, other than it is harmful. We need another twenty years for biotech to help offset the effects of space travel on our muscle and bones.
Fourth, some major advances in environmental science need to happen. We can barely keep the garden of paradise from turning into a sewage pit, so there's a lot of work to be done if we hope to take something as fragile as Mars and make it liveable.
Lastly computing still has a ways to go insofar as creating robust systems that can operate autonomously, although consumer applications from blenders to driveless monorail cars seem to be making progress.
We'll get there, but right now we just don't have what it takes to make the trip worthwhile.
There's probably no way to reverse serious weather disruptions in the next century or rising water lines as a result. I have heard 17 ft as being a possible amount of rise over the next fifty years. That's dramatic.
It seems to be that the population density is too high in our cities, and a great way to thin that out would be to put some businesses on the Moon (or Mars).
Radius of Moon 1,738 km
Radius of Earth 6,371 km
Surface Area Earth : Surface Area of Moon = 50:1
Somehow I don't think moving people to the moon is going to significantly ease overcrowding on earth. Besides, honestly, who would want to live somewhere like the Moon or Mars? Don't get me wrong, it would be a sweet place to visit, but the pros of being on Earth greatly outweigh the pros of being anywhere else in the known universe.
The hypocrisy of this aside, legalizing pot and leaving gun owners alone won't get you as far as Pennsylvania let alone Mars.
As for the comment about the "war on terrorism", let me get this straight, America shouldn't defend itself, but instead go to Mars. Okay!
Mr. Lampson is the congress-critter for the area around the Johnson Space Center, which is about to get hammered for inducing a $5 billion overrun on the International Space Station. The Houston Chronicle recently had an article stating that 4000 jobs were at risk at JSC (out of ~16,000 total). Lampson wants to be able to say that he tried to save jobs at JSC in order to bolster his re-election chances.
NASA funding has been in a slow decline for decades. During the Apollo program, NASA had a lot more money to spend on the people and equipment needed to do the job right. Today, the agency is in a slow-motion implosion. Many people are retiring or are being forced out by budget cuts. Very few new people are being hired. There is little money for developing new technology or replacing old equipment. Faster, cheaper, better, pick two.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Buzz Aldrin has some interesting ideas for getting to mars, again and again for relatively cheap. I actually read a little blurb in this month's popular science that got me interested. Basically you put a few 'space hotels' as the media has begun to call them in orbit around the Sun. Once you've got those puppies in orbit it makes the trip much cheaper then using rockets to get all the way to Mars and back.
For geeks going to Mars is a technological achievement, a cool thing to do with no material benefit returned to the people (taxpayers) investing in it. Even the lowest estimates for a Mars mission run in the tens of billions for a single mission. Tens of billions of dollars to...plant a flag, take some measurements, and shoot some pictures? Apollo was a similar sort of mission though they actually had some nice returns on the investment because the technology to accomplish the mission didn't exist. The universities and contractors that designed and built equipment or just worked the numbers for the Gemini and Apollo missions gained immense amounts of knowlage about working in space. Had Apollo not needed small powerful computer systems which didn't exist at the time, slashdot probably would not exist and neither would your PC. The problem with a Mars mission is we have much of the technology needed to get there meaning putting an investment into the project isn't going to give you much of a return. It is inefficient and wasteful to mine Mars or even fabricate materials there for export. Say you had a Mars colony with a space launch infrastructure, it would cost them about as much to send something to Earth as it would cost us to send something to Mars. It is much more efficient to send a self sufficient manufacturing/refinment system to a much less massive body like an asteroid and have it send material back down to Earth. It's like mining the top of a mountain and rolling stuff downhill. As long as you've got a method to stop stuff it requires much less effort than trying to send your material up hill.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Creating jobs is always popular. A manned mission to mars would create millions of jobs on earth.
Why? Because it's there. Because it serves a fundamental need of humanity: To expand and explore. When we will get there is another question altogether. It might happen suddenly because the Chinese are already planning to start a lunar colony by 2015 (astonautix.com) and the US feels the peer pressure. It might happen because the technology eventualy advances to the point where in 2030 say, it is relatively easy to do so. It might happen because someone might realise that the comet/asteroid wacking into the earth theory a la deep impact and armegeddon is not so far fetched (Just ask the dynosaurs) and they need to be able to rendezvous with asteroids. It might happen because of political reasons such as a president needing something to take away the focus from other important problems.
But it will happen. And even the deepest cynics don't even seem to doubt that. The how and when they doubt, but not the if.
Asteroid mining: no strip mining, no environmental concerns. Nickel-iron asteroids have a very high percentage of metals (common and valuable) in their composition, and they're solid - it's not like following that narrow vein of material through the Earth's crust. You can break apart and smelt the entire asteroid. Abundant solar power, 24 hours a day, to power clean furnaces.
It may be hard to get stuff into space, but it's pretty easy to get stuff *down*.
Assorted calculations show that the market value of the metals in a single smallish nickel-iron asteroid is on the order of a trillion dollars.
Still think there's no reason for it? It's further away than tourism, but ultimately it may have a much bigger market potential.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
You can kiss those projects goodbye in your lifetime if NASA wants to make a propaganda win by landing some people on Mars. The probes are about as good for most purposes. You simply can't say the same thing about a permanent moon base.
There are some risky and practical applications for moon missions, yet regarding Mars we'll be lucky to make it back.
The trick is to go there in two steps:
Send an unmanned ship containing an unfueled return vehicle, six tons of hydrogen, and a chemical catalyst. Use the catalyst and the Martian atmosphere (primarily CO2) to create methane and water from the hydrogen (CO2 + 4H2 --> CH4 + 2H2O, exothermic). Store the methane for later use as rocket fuel. Elecrolyze the water to create oxygen gas (for later use as, well, oxygen) and more hydrogen, which you re-use to make more methane and water. This reaction eventually produces 24 tons of methane and 48 tons of oxygen; the plan calls for making an additional 36 tons of oxygen by reducing CO2.
So far we've hauled six tons of hydrogen into space, thrown it at Mars, and used it to produce over 100 tons of rocket fuel, which is now sitting in a depot on Mars. Compare this to the cost of hauling 200 tons of rocket fuel into space, much less sending that much mass on a round trip to Mars.
Three years later, launch the manned rocket. With the return vehicle and fuel already on Mars, your manned vehicle only needs enough fuel to get there, and doesn't need the ability to lift off from Mars again; in fact, the vehicle is designed to become a permanent, habitable fixture of the Martian landscape. Your first rocket has already explored the territory with a few roving robot probes, and is even providing a landing beacon.
At the same time as the manned vehicle launch, launch a second unmanned rocket, identical to the first. This is your redundant backup for the incoming astronauts, in case the fuel depot springs a leak while they're in transit; at worst they'll have to wait for the second chemical factory to ramp up production, but otherwise you can have a complete failure of the first rocket and still be safe.
Spend 1.5 years on Mars. No need to worry about getting home before your fuel runs out, because you're making more fuel as you go; you brought enough food supplies to last at least three years (and will leave some behind as a backup for the next manned mission, just in case), and you're producing oxygen and water faster than you can consume them.
Get in the return vehicle and go home. Repeat the cycle until you've colonized Mars.
The problems with Mars Direct fall into two broad categories: It requires a small nuclear reactor (smaller than the typical nuclear submarine's) to provide the initial power supply for the first unmanned lander, which makes the anti-nuclear lobby go nuts. The second problem is that Mars Direct doesn't scratch enough backs within the NASA bureaucracy to get funded: It bypasses the need for space stations, lunar landings, orbiting space fleets, warp drives, etc., and thus doesn't get support from any of the intra-NASA groups that want their pet project funded instead.
The reasons we haven't been to Mars have nothing to do with practicality or affordability: Getting to Mars is achievable with current technology, and could be done for the cost of a steel tariff. It's all about politics and votes -- if half a million people marched on Washington to demand a Mars mission, we'd be there by 2010.
If you can get to it and put yout little flag on it, it's yours.
Deleted
Very slightly odd geological formations are a lot less important than looking for liquid water or micro-organisms.
Here's an interesting story you might find useful when dealing with various claims about aliens, pyramids, and Mars.
Last year my girlfriend and I went to Egypt to spend the millenium (Jan 1st 2001) at the Great Pryamids. As part of the two week break we flew down from Aswan to Abu Simbel to see Ramses' great temple to Ptah, Ra, and Osiris. The 'plane flew quite low (~8000 feet) and we had a good view of the landscape.
Guess what we saw?
Pyramids. Hundreds of them, and dozens of Sphinxes. All natural shapes carved out of the stoney sand by the wind.
At Abu Simbel itself we could see a couple of these natural pyramids, with one even sticking up out of the water of Lake Nassir.
This tells us several imporant things: The Egyptians did not need alien visits to inspire their pyramids, or the Sphinx; that such shapes in a desert are not uncommon; and that resources expended on a trip to Cydonia are very likely to tell us nothing that a quick trip in a cheap Egyption airliner didn't tell me.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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The response of some /.'ers ticks me off. Granted, it's because I expect a rather more intelligent debate here than in the general public (foolish optimism), but still...
For every person who complains that a mission to Mars would 'cost too much' or 'be of little/no benefit' I say fooey.
1) Let's take the long view, for ONCE. It's hard enough to get corporations to look into NEXT year's returns. It's hard enough to get politicians to plan for any time after their next re-election campaign. But please, can't anyone see that interplanetary travel will significantly benefit the entire human race, FOREVER? To ever achieve it, someone, somewhere, somewhen HAS to make the first faltering, tentative steps. Someone has to spend the money to TRY. We're the wealthiest, (arguably) most technologically advanced state on the planet. We are basically at peace and have been for 50 years. To echo another poster - if not us, who? If not now, when?
2) for those who argue that there's too little return to a Martian mission I also say fooey. The gains in terms of working knowledge regarding long-term space travel, propulsion systems, long distance communication, life support systems etc are already a long list. But the subsequent gains - if you see the mission to Mars as a stepping stone in a vital and thriving space program - are truly stunning. Asteroid mining - they are a HECK of a lot further away than Mars (in general). Having the nuances of long term space travel well understood would allow the reasonable pursuit of asteroid exploitation in the nearer future. A billion tons of nickel-iron already in orbit anyone? Anyone care to calculate how our space opportunities would explode if we already had the raw materials in space to work with?
Or further: what about longer-range missions? Ganymede? Titan? What if there's a reasonable chance of finding life on these worlds (or even still Mars)? How much is it worth to us to know that there is other life out there? If you are talking dollars and cents on the bottom line this year? Probably $0.00. How much is it worth to us philosophically and as a species? Those of us who are space-optimists would say it's of incalculable value. Those who aren't would still say $0 and I pity them. They're also the ones who said man wasn't meant to fly, either.
-Styopa
It's not that the Saturn V blueprints are missing, more that all those 1960s components are no longer in production, and all those engineers are retired... NASA are having to scour eBay for 8086 processors for the Shuttle, so finding the parts for a Saturn (which last flew six years before the first Shuttle) would be a nightmare!
The Russian Energia rocket is much more recent, but it would still be difficult to reactivate. It's heartbreaking to see Buran as a lawn ornament... But realistically our best bet for a BFB is the US Magnum, which is basically Energia built out of Shuttle technology. Shuttle tanks, engines and SRBs *are* still in service, and the components and engineers are readily available.
The Russians would be a key partner though for anyone else. In particular they still have the most expertise for long-term missions, in particular of building stuff that is maintainable.
Yep, that's their big advantage. You'd want the Mars ship to be Russian-built. They kept Mir alive through disaster after disaster, seven years after it was supposed to be replaced. That sort of durability is an absolute must for interplanetary work.
Question: could we supply a Mars ship by leaving a string of Progress drones along its path, and let it collect 'em along the way?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
In my opinion, no country, how powerful and rich they may be will ever be able to cough up the money for a mission to mars, let alone the things that might come after that. So I think the best way to do it is to make a world wide coalition to get ppl sent to mars. If we can get the ESA, NASA, and NASDO into this and perhaps even the russians, (they have a huge knowledge on living in weightless conditions), this project might have a better chance than when the US would do it alone.
Sure it'd be a cool engineering feat to put men on mars, but so what? For what purpose? Real world mars? There's only two things I really want to see out of the space program:
1) Find extra-terrestial life
2) Create extra-terrestial human colonies (MUCH lower priority)
1) Can much better be accomplished using robots than manned missions, and the seas of Europa seem a more interesting destinationn than mars. By all means send a serious exploratory robotic mission to mars too, though.
2) We'll learn 99% of what we would on mars by putting a colony on our moon, and it's be a hell of a lot cheaper and safer.
When you write your Congresscritters, be sure to mention that you're talking about bill HR 4742.
www.marssociety.org Check out operation Congress. Sure looks like a lobbying effort to me.
A terrorist is a person who kills civilians to advance a political aim. Yes, this means that Dresden was a terrorist act (since military aims are inherently political) and the murder of Pim Fortuyn was a terrorist act and so on. The US is theoretically attacking terrorists with "global reach", which would rule out the domestic variety of political murders and such. A freedom fighter, presumably a person whose political goal is to remove the influence of a government over a particular geographic area or some population subgroup, can still be a terrorist, if they kill civilians. Not all terrorism is bad, and not all freedom fighters are good, and the whole thing is mixed up together. What we are currently engaged in is the routing out of terrorists who target people across borders or in some way contrary to our interests.
As to gun control, I believe that Switzerland has a higher per capita gun ownership than does the US. Oh, and the US also has the most murders by knife, defenesration and a number of other methods.
-jeff
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
First practical method of production in 1959.
It was initially very expensive. Development of the lunar lander guidance computer drove world-wide production of ICs in the 1960s. At one point, over 90% of all ICs _in_existance_ were in this project! Funding for Apollo is what drove the research and resulted in the basic building block of the modern computer. And without modern computers, a plethora of other inovations would not have come into existance, such as the Internet and anything else you can think of that had something to do with heavy number crunching.
science is a religion
The father of their space program was a Chinese man who help put the US in space, then went back to China.
When the US and USSR were competing, nobody knew if it was possible; now that question has been answered.
Russian has been selling China space-related technology. They have more experience in space than the US.
The US are 15 years behind schedule because the corporations started milking the system. The Chinese leadership just has to say "it shall be thus" and it is--the reason they haven't started sooner is because their leadership made the concious decision to work on other things first. Now they have turned the corner and decide that they want to go to the moon--permanantly.
And to top it off, they are (in theory) communists, so the capitalist US must oppose them! And as a bonus, they have a red flag, so we can just recycle the rhetoric about "the reds"!
science is a religion
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I'd rather they stayed where they are and NASA took us up there to see them in-situ!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
The precision isn't as great as some would have you believe (so you're right-it is unbelievable!), but is high. The pyramid shapes at Cydonia are nothing like as good, even at the resolutions we've seen so far. Which is what I'd expect if they were natural.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wired did a story a while back about why sending people to mars with a 40 year supply of gear is cheaper than sending a return vehicle. Henry Spencer (of regex and usenet fame) was even willing to go along for the one way trip.