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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."
Sounds good, very reminicent of the National Space Commission report except that had more emphasis on return to the moon versus Lagrange points.
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(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
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,
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.
I have to say I disagree that the logistics are unreasonable. We made it to the moon 33 years ago - a third of a century - before we even had modern computers. Getting to and from mars is simply a matter of scale... it takes longer and takes more thrust to get back off the surface. But that doesn't remotely mean it can't be done. The distance is phenomenal, yes, but in space distance just becomes time. Possibly the biggest logistical problem is medicine ... in the apollo program there was a maximum return time of about 4 days... if someone gets sick you can get them home to go to a doctor. For Mars, that's not an option because you're 6 months away with limited opportunities for orbital transition. But there are a *lot* of people working on this very problem, even while NASA hasn't yet made concrete plans for a mars mission.
Take a look at some of the plans invented by groups outside of NASA, most notably Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct concept. I'll spare you going into detail but this plan has so many fail-safes it's ridiculous. The entire thing uses more-or-less existing technology.
Meanwhile, there are two experiments already running to study the difficulties of having people live isolated on Mars for an extended mission (many months until the next launch window floats around). Check out the Mars Arctic Research Station and the Mars Desert Research Station (site temporarily down?). All this research and work is already being done, independantly of NASA. (usually marssociety.org is a great reference... at the moment it seems to be undergoing maintenance or something. Bad timing.)
Technologically, it can be done; I think there's little question about that. As for the policital will and the money, that's a different issue. But maybe this bill shows that there is some interest after all.
Personally, I put my money on commercialization of space being the primary driving force in the next 20 years. The profit motives and the opportunities of space tourism and potentially near-earth asteroid mining will outstrip anything the US government will deliver in the near future.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
The same boon we received by sending humans to the moon - huge technological advances being made in short amounts of time. As a species, we need to do this. With one self sustained dome will come another, and another. It would be less of a giant leap and more of a 3 1/2 second Wright Flyer hop.
But there needs to be competition involved. The reason the Apollo missions were so successful is because you Americans were obsessed with beating the Russians. Perhaps a multi country backed privatised race?
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
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.
"It's a bit like Columbus discovered America and now we've been to American 6 times"
Columbus stumbled across the New World in 1492. How many permanent European settlements were established between and the end of the 15th century? Heck, let me be generous: Between then and the end of the 16th century?
We got to the moon and back six times in a span of half a decade or so. Starting from 1492, when's the first time that there were six expeditions to the New World in such a small time frame?
"it's a vacuum"
For a planet with no atmosphere, it sure seems to have a lot of dust storms. Not to mention all the erosion that's apparent on the surface...
"We need to mine something that isn't at the bottom of a gravity well."
As I recall from my physics courses, if it's something, by definition it's in the bottom of a gravity well.
And while we're on the subject of asteroid mining, sure they tend to have lots of heavy elements, but if you're looking for light stuff (say, oh, I dunno... reaction mass!?!), you need a heavy duty gravity well to hang on to it and collect it.
"Phobos or Deimos- yes."
After expelling enough reaction mass to get to Mars in a reasonable amount of time (ie. before the crew gets microwaved into crispy critters), you honestly think bringing enough fuel to reach Martian escape velocity (remember, 1/3 G) is really going to make that much of a difference? Heck, landing on Mars has the advantage over its satellites in that it at least has SOME atmosphere, so you don't need near as much shielding once you get there. Especially when you consider how long you're going to have to be there until Earth catches up with you again (even if you're using nuclear rockets).
"a NEA or a comet, yes"
Instead of going on a manned interplanetary expedition to someplace we run into once or twice a year or so, you're in favor of trying to catch up with and land on something that doesn't come anywhere near here for a few centuries or millenia? And what will the crew do when they get there? Start digging their own graves?
"Mars? Later."
"If not now, when? If not us, who?"