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Russia Wants to Launch Manned Mission to Mars
Raul654 writes "The Maimi Herald, via the Associated Press, is reporting that Russia wants to launch a manned mission to mars. The article says that the Russians are hoping to work closely with the European Space Agency and/or NASA. The 6 person, 440 day trip would cost around $20 billion. Should be interesting to see how this shapes up. See also here for mirror article."
This could be the boost to get NASA off its duff and on to Mars. The "space race" got us to the Moon, because we wanted to beat the Russians. I think this is just what we need.. some "friendly" competition.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
It's a great thing, this quest. Someone needs to do it, and it's likely that Russia is the best candidate because they'll need financial help...perhaps we can hitch a ride. This could become the first world-uniting space mission. Other countries could become involved, perhaps the world will come closer to the realization that we're all neighbors.
Unless, of course, Microsoft 'donates' the system software. In that case...well, there's still China.
It's about time someone did this.
.. it was exciting stuff!
For a couple of decades during the 'space race', things were really hotting up for space travel. Man in space, man on the moon
But in the past few decades the enthusiasm has died down considerably. I guess the competitive spirit just isn't there any more.
This is good though. If Russia wants to send a man to Mars, you can be damn sure other countries like the US and England will want to as well. Competition is back, and the space race is on again!
Someone to compete against may do NASA and it's funding some good. I'm all for the exploration, and the sooner I can take vacations there, the better.
does anyone actually believe the Russian promise to fund 30% (6 billion +) of the mission? Given their record with the ISS and the sorry state of their economy, I highly doubt it.
Russia couldn't even hold up their end of the bargain on the ISS. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see someone hit Mars, but hindsight is always 20/20.
I'm really surprised China isn't trying to get in on this, considering that, aside from its enormous nuclear arsenal, Russia isn't a competing super power any longer.
Its too bad the Chinese space program can't seem to get off the ground (bad pun I know).
If the United States hasn't tried it yet, there must be something wrong. They had a man on the moon over thirty years ago. They should have been capable to put a man on Mars shortly thereafter. There must be something horribly wrong. Now Russia wants to try and do what the US can't/won't do? Seems odd.
What kind of food do astronauts from other nations get? There are countless movies about American astronauts eating freeze dried food, things out of little packets... but what do cosmonauts eat, and how is it packaged?
Just curious...
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
The roughly 440-day trip is expected to cost about $20 billion, with Russia suggesting it would contribute 30 percent.
Gee.....thanks!
...$20 billion isn't even gonna be enough to buy the paint for the logos on the side of the spacecraft. We are SO overbudget on ISS it stopped being funny a decade ago. Every shuttle flight is $0.5 billion, so $20 billion will get 40 shuttle flights, which can carry if we're lucky 40*30,000 = 1,200,000 pounds or 600 tons to low Earth orbit. A Mars mission is 95%+ fuel so the $20 billion is just TRANSPORTATION COSTS for a 30 ton vehicle and the fuel for it. I don't think you can get 6 people to mars and back in a 30 ton ship; somebody prove me wrong - and then tell me how we build it for free!
I honestly don't see how they are going figure that one out. How do you decide when everyone involved is putting up billions?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Let's all vote for who we want to send to Mars!
One of these days, Alice, Pow! Straight to the Moon^h^h^hars...
it's all about the flux compasitor
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
> and then tell me how we build it for free!
Easy.
1. collect underpants
2. wait
3. travel to mars!!
Who's interested in the IPO?
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Columbus did his thing in 1492, yet colonization didn't really get going until the 1600s. Even then, there wasn't much settlement in North America outside of a strip about 100 miles from the ocean until after 1800.
It is tough to collect enough underpants with all those underpants gnomes running about. I'm up to about 500 pairs, how are you doing?
What?
Please do not go to Mars.
Burning that much rocket fuel would turn our atmosphere in to that of Venus's! Instead, we need to find other extrasolar terrestrial planets before we plan any trips to Mars. Trust me on this one.
Love,
James
entreapaneurs
Is that someone who engages in entrapment?
Anyway, what possible profit motivation would any private company have for going to mars?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
All your points are correct aside from the stuff about the Mir.
Mir outlived everyone's expectations for it. Just because it fell into disrepair in the last few years (a long time after it's expected lifespan) says nothing to the quality of the project.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
...for an agency that can't afford to even built COMPONENTS of the International Space Station without resorting to selling seats to tourists.
Talk is cheap. This isn't going to happen.
Don't knock Mir, it lasted FAR longer than its origional expected lifetime (which was something like 3 years). How long did Skylab stay up?
Valid point. But, towards its end, it was jury-rigged together, endangering the lives of the people who went there. If it was lasting beyond its expected lifespan SAFELY, well, that's one thing... being supported by duct tape and a prayer is hardly worth the lives of cosmonauts and our own astronauts. Lordfly
hookers and grits.
Maybe they'll finally consider nuclear power or something similar for this sort of trip -- it seems to be the only feasable way to make a large trip. Switch to nuclear, and you suddenly cut your fuel mass by a whole lot!
Or, maybe use those spiffy ion propulsion engines they've been using on some sattelites lately.
Either way, this is something that should definitely be done no matter what the cost. You can't eye space travel as a direct commercial gain, but the social, technological, and fringe benefits of such a trip are great. Let's not forget the thousands of useful inventions that came out of the NASA Space program. It's nice to get a nation, or in this case, a group of nations together for a cause other than fighting an enemy.
Its not as though that much of the rocket fuel would get burned in the atmosphere. Probably 3-4 as much as the moon landings TOTAL.
Once you're into space, you orbit around the earth and use the gravity to slingshot you in the right direction, no need for much rockets there, except direction correcting and stuff.
Now, as to the value of a mars trip and return like this? I'd say minimal.
When they come up with plans for [semi]permanent colonies on the moon or mars, then I'll be interested..
Shit adds up at the bottom...
$20 Billion ... what the hell are they spending $20B on a mission to mars for? Think of how $20B could be spent to help the russion people.
What possible motivation would any capitalistic society have for going to Mars? It would cost an extreme amount and would be a logical nightmare... and it's not exactly high up on the priority list for any nation.
Private companies, as technology improves, could use the planet for mining operations, resorts, tourism, terraforming, experiments, research, and so on... the tech just isn't there yet. I'm talking far off in the distance, like 100-200 years from now.
As for the spelling error, it's late and I should be in bed. I usually spell things rather well, or try to.
Lordfly
hookers and grits.
Well, there could always be mining, but we'd need to know what there was to mine, and have a way to get it back cheaply before that would work.
;)
Plus there is always tourism..
Shit adds up at the bottom...
the russians have a better chance at this project than the americans. why? because safety america wouldn't allow a NASA ship to go to mars without backup systems backing up other systems backing up other systems, which costs a LOT of money for all that redundancy.
the russians have a less altrusitic attitude towards their cosmonauts; perhaps a bit like their military personnel.
i mean, when the russians are ready to launch this mission, and it blows up on the pad, their attitude is like, 'whelp, that sucks. here, stick 6 more guys in that other rocket and lets try it again'.
All they have to do is sell their vodka and old MIGs -- that should get the $20 billion ;-)
Karma whorin' since 1999
I ma os glda thta slashdto finalyl catesr to my spellign disabiliyt.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Are you saying that sending people to the moon is more important then feeding starving Americans?
I mean, are you saying that the Space Program should be the no 1 responsibility of the US government? That we should have taxed the nation for billions of dollars for the sole purpose sending people into space?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There was some show on the history channel today, taped before Bush was elected, that talked about exploring mars. It said that a method to do it would be to send a lander with 2 boosters that would go to Mars without passengers and instead mix with the Martian atmosphere to create fuel for the returning trip. Then a similar flight would occur with people on board. The idea was that thus we could save from having a huge expensive mission that had to go both ways and have two relatively cheap flights. It could be done for by 2015 if Nasa was given the go-ahead.
They then went on to talking about instead teraphorming Mars making it suitable for man-kind. That might be the answer, though they readily admitted that our technology and patience are lacking for such a feat.
It ended there and if I missed anything earlier they may have talked about. It just seemed ironic since I turned on the news 5 minutes after and heard of Russia's purposal.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Yeah, that number raises the old bullshit flag with me as well. The cost of the Apollo budget over the years 62 - 73 was around 20 Billion in nomial dollars. Factor in inflation since then and you get something more like $40 Billion in todays dollars. Granted, there were 7 attempted moon landing during the Apollo missions, plus 4 manned test flights, plus the Apollo 1 disaster, but still... I think they'd be lucky to get to the moon and back for $20 Billion today...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
I had a science teacher in middle school (about 1986) that thought the Russians would try this in three years (1989ish if you're not counting). Well, she was only off by 25 years. I guess that's why she was in the minor leagues.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Anybody interested in a Mars mission would do well to use as a starting point Zubrin's Mars Direct plan...
A sensible approach to space exploration might be to set up a moon base near the south pole. It would be a fantastic research, mining, and launch platform for future space missions (actually, it might be better to launch from elsewhere on the Moon, but the availability of fuel could be a more important consideration than simple location). Fuel could be mined from water there, and it would be easier and less expensive than a jump straight to Mars. A permanent moon base would be the first step for humanity in to the rest of the solar system.
Of course, even this is would require more political capital than we'll be able to dig up in the US in the forseable future. There is an end to America's myopic vision!
As for the article, it is pointed out this isn't a formal proposal. The article takes a negative tone on the whole thing, going to great pains to gratuitously mention an ancient Soviet launch failure which resulted in "contamination." I suppose it's not safe to let preexisting negative sentiment work by itself -- better rub in past failures!
That's all aside to the ludicrous notion that Russia could provide 30% of the funding. Note to Russians: it'll be harder to get NASA to agree on a tourist package for a Mars mission...
I do, however, remain hopeful that someday we'll recognize that promise of opening a frontier in to space...but I doubt I'll ever get to see that day.
They're going to need all the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, et al, to sign up for trips to the space station before they can afford that
MIR was in space way too long. Skylab was brought down responsably. Simply put, the Russians kept their flying pos in air b/c they had no alternative.
What is he expecting? A Martian Welcome Wagon?
Maybe it could just be like taking that millionaire sponsorship thing to another level. Get Pepsi to chip in as well, to have their logo on everything.
I vote for Britney to go along as fuck toy / mascot.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
It may even actually get done if America steps up and announces plans of their own.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
If the ISS is an indicator, Russia will ante up a ridiculously small portion of what it's committed to, and the U.S. will pay for the rest.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
As if we needed any more carbon dioxide than we already have. Each shuttle SRB produces many millions of SUV-miles worth of CO2. Please, please trust me on this one.
Here's the walk-through for the critical path-impaired:
Trying to terraform without alternate targets would bee foolhardy. The worst that could happen is far worse than doing nothing until you can make it to another liquid-water planet. There is enough water around to make such planets likely, but we need to actually find them before we know for sure.
I recoommend scraping all manned Moon and Mars projects, and concentrating on stellar occluding, spectrographic, and interferrometric telescopes.
http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript902.h tm
ALAN ALDA (Narration) It's the rocket's fuel that for Bob opens up the possibility of a small, cheap Mars mission.
BOB ZUBRIN: This is the lab where we have the machine that can make rocket propellant on Mars. Here it is. The carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere comes in here, goes down into a reactor here which is something just the size of this, where it reacts with some hydrogen that you've brought from Earth, to turn into carbon monoxide and water.
ALAN ALDA (Narration) Out the other end you get rocket fuel and many other useful chemicals. And it all happens on Mars.
BOB ZUBRIN: This is a general purpose Martian still. It makes oxygen, water, methane, methanol, kerosene, ethylene, anything you want.
ALAN ALDA This is going to affect the whole cost of the mission, won't it? What will that effect be?
.. they will find full 6 billion and much more. Most likely it will get financed as a defence program, and given current state of affairs and changed internal priorities, I'm sure money will be there on time.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
The best way to do this is to make it a one-way trip. Anyone who gets on the ship should be well aware they're not coming back. That'd cut costs significantly. Look at it this way: if we send old people, depressed people, whatever, people predisposed to not living for many more years, well, what's the loss? For the old folks it'll be the greatest time of their lives. For the depressed, hell it may even cheer them up but they'll get depressed when they realize they're never coming back and probably off themselves.
The trick is guaranteeing the depressed people don't kill themselves too soon and get some research work done. The old folks will probably feel better in zero G (arthritis may not bother your without gravity) and I believe their hearts will do well also. No worries there.
"Mommy where's grampa?"
"He went to Mars honey, he won't be coming back."
"Where's Mars?"
"It's that reddish star right-over-there."
Beats the hell out of saying grampa went to heaven, after all.
Shit, for the purpose of the exercise we could build Saturn V's, or the Russians could build their 200-ton booster design they had on the drawing board.
As for the minimum mass you need to do the mission, you're probably right, but even so the transportation costs with the shuttle are horribly inflated.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Why is it that whenever there's a story mentioning Russia on /. that every patronising, xenophobic AC thinks that it's his patriotic duty to post some negative "reds-under-the-bed, they're-still-commie-bastards, huh-they're-all-drunk-on-vodka" comment?
Some simple facts for the uneducated:
1. Russia has the know-how.
Russia still has more experience of manned space flight than everyone else put together, in terms of both man hours and missions. During the 80's and 90's, when NASA shuttle launches were red letter days, the Russian space agency was putting up cosmonauts as often as they wanted to.
2. Mir, the Russian space station, was the best permenant orbiting platform ever built.
Laugh all you want, but it was a damn sight more sucessful than Skylab, NASA's 70's project. Yes, Mir's final few years were dogged by near-disasters but virtually all of those could be traced back to some bean counter cutting back the budget here and there - the technology, engineering and science wasn't to blame.
Mir was in use way past it's planned retirement date, and was the first true permenantly manned space station. A great deal of the ISS's design is based on the lessons (good and bad) learnt from Mir.
3. Going to the moon was a competitive race. Going to Mars will be a collective journey.
This isn't a road trip we're talking about. It's a voyage.
NASA can't afford to go to Mars single-handed. Neither can ESA. And neither can the Russians. The only way this is going to get done soon is through cooperation.
Yeah, cooperation. That dirty "c" word. Sometimes, you can't do everything yourself so you call in someone else, pooling resources and talent to get the job done as best as possible.
Politically, economically and scientifically, there are many reasons why such an endeavour will be one of cooperation rather than competition. As much as anything else, a Mars mission will be used to foster closer relationships between the US, Europe and Russia.
(And, before you mod this down as a troll, re-read what I've written. It makes sense. Which is more than can be said about many of the posts so far.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
As will undoubtedly be mentioned multiple times on this discussion, that's Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan, and the concept of making the fuel there for the return trip seems to be the only vaguely sane way to do things.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
COLLECT ROCKS!!!
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Yes, god forbid anybody ever die in space for any reason. I mean, we certainly should spend buckets and buckets of money to make riding atop a big pile of explosives safer than staying in the bed in my house.
It's a risky business! It shouldn't be made more risky than necessary, but we're swinging a bit too far the other way in a lot of cases, I think.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Micorsoft should fund part of this.
"Where do you want to go today?" answer= MARS!
It's a great thing, this quest. Someone needs to do it, and it's likely that Russia is the best candidate because they'll need financial help...
Well, there's the problem. I'm all for space exploration, because there are many intellectual, scientific and national pride benefits to this pursuit.
But this seems to me to be the nation-scale equivalent of buying a new E-Class on your credit card while you're still trying to get caught up with the electric bill (and gas bill, and rent, and food, and...).
I think Russians could be better served by spending this money on infrastructure to attract businesses and build employment for their people. Space exploration should probably be the realm of rich nations only. Once they've got their fiscal house in order, I'd love to see the Russians come out and play again.
perhaps we can hitch a ride. This could become the first world-uniting space mission. Other countries could become involved, perhaps the world will come closer to the realization that we're all neighbors.I thought that's what the International Space Station was for?
Unless, of course, Microsoft 'donates' the system software. In that case...well, there's still China.I can see the AP wire story now: "In other news, officials at Microsoft say that a kind of error known technically as a 'buffer overrun' was responsible for last year's launch of the manned mission to Mars becoming a manned mission to the sun. Mr. Gates himself blamed the problem on catering to obsolete open standards."
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
First, the section of the flight from low earth orbit to mars most probably won't be on the same fuel as that used for launching from the ground, for the simple reason that it's not the most efficient way to do it.
Second, the most cost-effective method of hauling heavy equipment into low earth orbit from the ground is not the space shuttle. Even the ISS gets resupplies in soyuz pods.
If they launch to the ISS, then they don't always need to send a crew with it, becuase the ISS crew has a robotarm and can to spacewalks to assemble things in space.
this company already launches commercially in both ksc in florida and in baikonur in russia. With the Proton K rocket and also with the largest version of the Atlas V, they can launch over 45000 pounds into orbit, that's more than what the shuttle can, and I'm sure a protonk launch from baikonur is a lot cheaper than a shuttle launch from jfk. Maybe energia can make bigger rockets for this, but I don't speak russian to the website is all 'chinese to me'.
(of course this all assumes they're launching spaceship parts and fuel to the ISS and assemble there).
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
We are already getting behind, and space could be the one thing that would bring this planet's superpowers together.
Another quote:
Either a threat of thermonuclear war (as Sagan, Erhard, B.Fuller thought) will bring us together or space exploration will.
Simply the bigger picture is that this is the bigger picture.
It is our destiny to return to space, the place from which we came when we were just particles....
Get your Unix fortune now!
Good grief, at least get the pollution right!
The problem with launching things into space is it damages the ozone layer!
Pth, you global warming fanatics are a threat to our environment!
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
Extrasolar travel just is NOT going to happen for several hundred years though. The technology is not around.
I really do hope we come up with an alternative to rockets soon. Rockets are expensive and messy. That said, we shouldn't stop launching rockets into space b ecause they release a small (relative) amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. I do think that we should do something useful when we get up there though.
Going to the moon and bringing back rocks is not good. We shouldn't go to the mooon again unless we plan to stay a while or use it as a stepping stone. It just isn't worth it, and mars won't be worth more than 1-2 trips either.
IMO, they should send a few more probes to mars to see how viable a colony would be there, and then we should set up at least a semi-permanent colony, not just do some lousy touch and go so we can say we were first...
Shit adds up at the bottom...
/--rant
/--end rant
Actually, there were a lot of settlements in the North American interior prior to 1800. I'm not talking about the Native Americans (although they are included as well). Santa Fe existed before the Pilgrims ever thought about coming to the "New World". Of course, I guess it all depends on how you define "settlement".
At any rate, I agree. Even if anyone gets to Mars, it would be a long time before anybody decided to settle there. No one has done anything with the Moon yet, and we went there 30 years ago. Mars is further away, so it stands to reason that the cost of settling there would be that much higher. Still...gotta love Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.
btw, I lived in Colorado for over 20 years. I always thought it a bit strange that the pop-culture history pretends that the "Old West" didn't start until the 1800's.
such as cancer or Aids. Before you mod me down, think about it. What BETTER gift could you give to a person who is going to die then to let them make history?
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Make that Settlements
How do you know unless you build the TPFs to look? It could be as close as Epsilon Eridani.
Until our resolution increases to that level, we will have no way to estimate the amount of time such voyages would take.
Together, Russia and NASA can come up with a good design for a Mars-mission vehicle. Unlike the Space Station (ISS), there are a huge number of unknowns which would have to be dealt with, and consequently, novel innovations for them cooked up (we got a huge amount of cool stuff out of the space program from the 60s, but nothing really interesting in the 80s and 90s). Here's a short list of totally new problems which would need to be solved:
NASA really needs a kick in the pants. Unfortunately, that requires some leadership and real vision from the President, and we haven't had that kind in awhile. They really should relegate the lift capability to private industry and just concentrate on making the Mars ship.
Oh well. Maybe someday...
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
The shuttle puts out lots of CO2, right. What, exactly, are you smoking?
s -newsref/srb.html) First three ingredients, no carbon. The last two might have some carbon, but they're not major ingredients (14 percent total), and they're not the fuel, so they probably aren't combining with much oxygen.
Let's actually examine this, instead of spewing random statements. We have two engine systems in your average Shuttle, the main engines and the solid rocket boosters.
Main engines burn liquid hydrogen with liquid oxygen. Result, mostly water, along with various nitrogen compounds that come from the nitrogen in the air. No carbon products because there's no carbon!
The solid rocket boosters contain ammonium perchlorate, aluminum, iron oxide, a polymer, and an epoxy curing agent. (Source: http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/st
Anyway, I hope these facts don't stand in your way too much.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
If there are sources comparing the deleterious effects of rocket fuel on the ozone layer with those involving carbon dioxide, then I would like to read them.
nt
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
a mars mission is by no means 95% fuel unless youre looking at the design present to reagan in the early 80s. We now know we can get all the fuel we need and refine it and store it right on mars.
It mentioned a two ship approach. Presumably the first ship leaves a couple of years earlier and starts filtering oxygen out of the atmosphere and hydrogen out of the ground water/ice and storing it before the manned mission even takes off. Once they know things are looking good they leave and find a fully fueled space ship for their ride back sitting on mars. Its been proposed by Robert Zubrin a thousand times over (though he didnt even assume the hydrogen could be extracted on site, which we now know is possible)
Its not at all unreasonable and its very refreshing to see the Russians having balls where our leaders havent.
-- http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/st
And this contradicts my claim that each exausts many millions of SUV-equivalent miles in carbon dioxide how?
It doesn't matter how close they are, because we wouldn't be able to reach any of them with current technology. The nearest star is years away traveling at light speed. Traveling at current speeds would make that a several hundred year trip most likely. There is no way we can support a crew of astronauts for several hundred years of intrasolar travel.
Where would the fuel for heat come from? There is no way you can launch a couple hundred years worth of fuel up with the rocket, and solar power won't work too well once you get that far out. Food could be grown on board, but even this would be hard with current technology.
Plus, we have no clue what kind of junk is floating around out there.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
Maybe NASA will develop a more efficient fuel-cell based power system because it's obviously just not sound to power everything by solar cells.
Fuel cells are a power _storage_ medium, not a power generator.
For a trip that will last more than a year, solar panels will give you a lot more energy than an equivalent weight in hydrogen and oxygen to supply fuel cells.
Of course, the ship would still have fuel cells for temporary power storage (they're lighter than batteries), but power generation for any craft inside the asteroid belt will be solar.
Rocket fuel is made from frozen hydrogen and oxygen. It produces water vapor. And the majority of it would be burned in space, not in the atomosphere.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!!!
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Um. Because it doesn't actually put out any carbon dioxide?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Codeposition fusion.
Yes we do; it's called dark matter, and there's not enough the endanger ships at generation starship speeds.
At thermite temperatures, all the carbon in the glue burns, and given that most of the fuel is an oxidant, what do you think it burns with?
The Russians should swing by Venus as well and pick up some of those women I've heard about.
There must be adequate demand in the Slashdot community.
Some (very little) rocket fuel is LH2 and LO2. None is solid H2 or solid O2.
Think you got that backwards bub...
Skylab came down uncontrolled because NASA budget cutbacks ended missions to it and the orbit decayed to the point of no return. NASA never provided a system for an orderly bring-down
Mir was brought down by an unmanned Soyuz, as planned and on-target.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
I said it was negligible. Now I'll back it up with numbers.
First, we need a number for CO2 output from the SRBs. This is hard since we don't know what exactly the makeup is of this 14% of the fuel that could be carbon-bearing. Let's assume that at the end, an amount of CO2 equal to 14% of the fuel weight gets created. That gives us 1100000*0.14 = 154000lbs of CO2. Now, according to http://www.psr.org/news-apr99.htm, one gallon of gasoline gives us 26 pounds of CO2. So, 154000/26 = 5923 gallons of gasoline burned. Assume your SUV gets 14 miles to the gallon, and you have an SRB output of 423 miles' worth of SUV CO2. Don't forget to multiply by two, since there's two SRB's per shuttle, and we get 846 miles.
Compare 846 miles with "many millions of SUV-equivalent miles". I think I can confidently state that you're utterly, dead wrong.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
A NASA engineer and his manager were asked to estimate the chances of failure of a critical component in the shuttle engine. This was a component that could cause loss of vessel and crew if it failed.
The engineer and manager's estimates differed by two orders of magnitude.
You're right. There is a difference in the approach to risk between NASA and the russians. I believe their managers are not that far out of touch with reality. They accept the fact that space exploration is dangerous and spend more of their time preventing the next disaster than covering their asses. I am sure that russian engineers and managers have just as much respect for human life as americans and they do their best to ensure the safety of their cosmonauts within the costraints imposed by physics, engineering and, let's face it, budgets.
Safety reports spanning millions of pages printed on tons of dead trees do not make a system safe. They just help managers to live in denial.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
"You want to impress us, go to the moon and bring back our flag"!
Slightly paraphrased for clarity.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
Well, Get some cold fusion systems up and working, then give me a call.
And dark matter is a theory to explain gravitaional anomalies and hasn't been fully proves AFAIK. There could be all kinds of small objects floating around outside the solar system that we can't see. Plenty probably big enough to punch some serious holes in spaceships. The chance of an extrasolar spaceship running into a comet or something is not insignificant over the course of several hundred years
Then, if you get lucky enough to find the thing and get the tech to launch a ship there, you have no real promise that the frikking thing will even be there when you finally get there. That'd be a big letdown, a 500+ year trip only to find out that the star supernovaed or the planet got hit by a comet.
I agree with all your ideas, but you're thinking about 10 steps and a few hundred (at least) years ahead of our technology...
Shit adds up at the bottom...
You mean 165844 miles, not 846. And given that CO2 has more oxygen than carbon, I think your 14% estimate is a little untrustworthy.
However, I stand corrected. Not utterly, dead wrong, just off by about a decimal place.
This does not change the fact that it is much wiser to look for extrasolar planets before trying to colonize Mars, because then you can get dual-use from your generation starship.
Yeah, dividing instead of multiplying, right.
Anyway, you realize that a generation starship isn't needed to get to Mars, right?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I don't think you can get 6 people to mars and back in a 30 ton ship; somebody prove me wrong - and then tell me how we build it for free!
No one said they had to be live people.
Ok, ok, $20b might be too low a number. Is there a company with $40b in the bank that could send six of their lawyer^H^H^H^H^H^H astronauts to Mars?
-ez
Yes, and I also realize that Mars will never support human life without the kind of attention that can only be given by having a generation starship, including a genetics and biochem lab, in orbit around it.
Also, if we hope to terraform mars, we might have to smash a comet or several into it. There is an ongoing mission right now to study cometary cores.
You forgot
5. Develop Illudium Q36 Space Modulator
6. BOOM! There's supposed to be a Magnificent BOOM!
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
This seems like fodder for longbets.org. Anyone got $1000?
Forget manned missions. They are expensive and pointless. Sending a human being into outer space requires so much life support it is not economical. And there is always the possiblity of a PR disaster if there is a mission failure (e.g. Challenger). Is the PR bonus that you get from having humans on Mars worth the risk and the expense? Instead create lots of smart robots that can handle exploring Mars automatically without human intervention (because Mars can get up to 16 light minutes away from Earth, and unless we put satellites in place when they are on the dark side of mars they will be unreachable), that are solar powered (and so can run indefinitely (barring accidents, and cosmic rays, and maybe meteors)), and capable of traversing any sort of terrain (spider-like legs) and can conduct any sort of scientific experiment humans can. They will need powerful AI, but I believe that is within the reach of current technologies. If we want to be really ambitious, we should aim, one day, to create an industrial robotic settlement on mars which can create new robots by mining ore, smelting, etc. (perhaps just the chassis, etcetera, we could send them the more difficult to make (but light, and so cheaper to send) components like the ICs). But this is approaching science fiction. I just can't understand the fascination people have with manned missions. Humans are just too expensive to sustain in extraterrestrial environments.
Oh, there was plenty of settlement in the Americas well before even Columbus got there. History did not begin in Europe.
Well, considering that "history" means a written record, then history began in the Middle East, and didn't include the Americas until the Europeans brought writing.
(At least for North America. The Aztecs had some written records, which the Spanish destroyed. In which case they no longer exist as "history", because they're now unknown.)
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
No matter what the Proposal, we hear the same alarmist claptrap from the eco chicken littles.
" Burning that much rocket fuel would turn our atmosphere in to that of Venus's!"
Any solid scince to back up your contention? Any thing besides the warmed over 1960s Hippy Dippy nonsense that dominates the eco movement?
"Trust me on this one."
After the alarmist nature of your post I have far more reason to distrust you than to trust you.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
That's what they told Columbus about the Western passage to India.
Would be great publicity if they decided to use GNU software for the mission... If someone could get Linux running on a PDA and a PS2, then why not a 'space' computer?
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Wasn't there some technology that was experimented with to launch things into orbit using mini nuclear explosions? I think they mentioned it on Discovery channel a few years ago. The idea is that if they researched it enough, it would mean very cheap way to reach space (you could lift heavier loads a lot cheaper). But they shut down the program because of its taboo nuclear thingies (not great for public relations nor environmentalists).
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Not because of any paranoid mistrust of the Russians. Not because of any BS about spending the money on the earthbound poor. Simply because we don't know if there is life on Mars yet. A Manned mission will "contaminate" Mars with our micro-organisims making it very difficult to discover any native Martian microbes unless they are very different from the mundane Earth microbes that would arrive as colonists with the manned crew. If unmanned exploration fails to discover any native life on Mars Then I'll be one of the biggest supporters of Manned exploration. If there are "natives" on Mars their existance will have to be protected from the contamination that would go with a manned mission. Life that evolved off Earth could provide us with many answers about the evoulation of life and of how common life may be in the Cosmos. It would be a far more valuable resource than any bennifits that could be gained from a Mars Mission.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Hrm, I guess I communicated that poorly. I meant 'frozen' as in 'one step lower then their normal states'
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Apparently, Russia thought of a plan back in 1989, proposed by NPO Energia. It was to be 716 days in length, with a crew of 4 (only 2 would go to the surface for 7 days). The craft that would go to mars would be constructed in space, and 5 Energia-class heavy-lift boosters would take it up there. Read about the plan here. Apparently, the project never got off the ground, so to speak.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Those two things are just incomparable...
And guess what?
The western passage to India WASN'T there!
What you are suggesting is closer to Columbus crossing the Atlantic in a rowboat.
Not that I don't agree with the vision, it's just a long way off..
Shit adds up at the bottom...
How can Russia afford to spend $20 billion on a stupid trip to mars, when at the moment most western societies are funding poor Russia with billions of dollars to demantle their nuclear warheads, clear up all the mess surrounding all that scary biotech-shit they created in the 70s and 80s which is now easily falling in the hands of terrorists, etc., etc.?
Given the failure of Russian communism on earth, it's only natural that they would set their sights on a planet that's already red.
Russia can't afford a manned mission to New Jersey. What makes them think they can afford to go to Mars?
Get off this stupid planet for a while, with all of it's fighting, wars, and terrorist bullshit...
- This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along, move along..
The article says that the Russians are hoping to work closely with the European Space Agency and/or NASA.
Translation: They need someone else to pay for it.
NASA, to their eternal shame, looked at the question like this:
Shuttle = thousands of ground crew, "new" technology so big R&D budget, immediate, locked in "market" (discourage booster innovation - be the only sattelite launcher), etc.
Mars = much smaller ground crew, "old" technology (you could get there with a Saturn V), long-term, no "cashflow".
So they picked the Shuttle. It looked like the right thing to do. So now, in 2002, we have a 100 tonne lifter that brings 90 tonnes back to earth in the shape of that stupid orbiter. We have all our "space going eggs" in one basket, the 1970's tech Shuttle. We have the ISS, the largest boondoggle of all time, up there to give the shuttle something to do. And we still don't have a Mars Mission.
Of course this is history told with an eye to making a good story and not completely 100% accurate, but it's good enough to illustrate the point, which is accurate: NASA had a choice and they chose Shuttle.
Or go to this site.
It's all been costed. You CANNOT compare the shuttle. But if you want to, the Shuttle is a 100 tonne launch platform, that brings 90 tonnes back in the shape of the orbiter. It's stupidly inefficient. You could launch the whole ISS with ONE Saturn V. Now do your maths based on 100 tonnes to LEO. Better still, do your math on the 140 tonne to LEO booster you could get if you stripped the Shuttle off the STS and re-configured it slightly.
Bottom Line: $20 billion is real. The numbers have been done by experts, not back of the napkin stuff like the ISS. And $20 Billion buys you a ten year program with 3 shots to Mars, crew of four each shot, total of 18 Man-Years on the surface. Woohoo! Let's go!
1999 called, it wants your business plan to come back.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
But I guess you didn't do any research before you posted, right? And links to slashdot don't count as research! God, I wish they did, I'd have some kind of PhD already! :)
going to mars this early is such an "mommy look what i can do" deal -- completely a waste of money...
we all know we can make it to mars and with enough cash infusion, and a dose of luck that the equip does not crap out half way there (and there are no f*ed up danger lurking out there like little green men etc) -- from what i've been seeing -- all the satellites comming back to life and what not - i'd say that the darn things built for space are pretty bullet proof... so, again, we can make it there if we wanted to.
but WHY?
(same point with why put a person on the moon back in the days -- but back then we had a space race, we had a president's promise, we had a "nation's pride", and we sure as hell did not have a clue how it was gonna be done)
but this time it's different, we can do it; we *know* we can.
the problem is that with this knowledge - there goes half the fun (or, purpose) -- so the other half have to make up for it: are there sufficient scientific and economical benefits to this? i don't think so. economically certainly not. as for scientifically -- other than collecting some data on how bad solar radiation really is on the human body when away from the magnetosphere, not much. besides the craft will probabbly generate a magnetosphere of its own anyhow - to make sure the astronauts stay alive. and again -- we already know how to get there, it just costs money; so what we will get out of it as for learning the "unknown" is scarce at best.
the one last possible benefit is "experience" in manned deep-space flight, for preparation of the future; but see -- we don't need to goto mars for that. for that much trouble -- it would be much wiser to get a moon-base / moon-colony going, sufficiently advanced to do some manufacturing, so that when we do go to mars, 1) the exploratory trip will be a helluvalot cheaper, 2) if the first trip runs into ANY kind of trouble it's much easier to send a rescue team, and 3) the second or third trip to mars is a colony ship; and all those trips to the moon? well, how's that for "spacetravel experience"?
any money (this 20 bil included) toward a moon base will pay for itself within 3-4 trips to mars; probabbly less if the moon becomes self-sustained and actually exports stuff to earth or becomes a serious tourist attraction.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Seriously, I can't believe I haven't seen one yet. You know, Russians, red planet, get it?
Not to mention, without MIR, there would have been NO US crewmember with long-term experience in space when ISS went up. We owe them (despite the nasty condition of MIR, and that nasty space fungus.) I'm surprised that the US didn't take a more proactive role in partnering with Russia after the fall of the old Soviet Union. It sure would have saved a lot of money, and provided lots of cheap hardware and experienced scientists and engineers. Picking up the pieces after 10 years of neglect is not quite as nice a deal.
They can get $20B by simply diverting funds from their efforts to stop Moose & Squirrel.
But seriously, no sane person would even contemplate using shuttle technology to launch a Mars mission, so you're math is almost certainly whack.
As someone else eluded to, the fuel for the return trip could be produced on Mars and even be waiting for the cosmonauts to arrive.
A serious Mars mission would send supplies and "still" ahead and then the crew later when the ability to return was assured.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
They could have pulled this off for a lot cheaper if they wouldn't have killed their best scientists under the stalinist environment.
Well you sure and hell couldn't eat her if something went terribly wrong, so you might have to fatten her up a little.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
My sister is always complaining, "Why are we spending so much money on NASA, when there are starving people we could feed?" I get rather frustrated every time she makes a comment like that. Does she not realize how much potential the space program has? But then, I guess that the people running the space program lost sight of any kind of ultimate goals themselves. Content to just launch a couple of experiments, that are really only of interests to theorists and philosophers, instead of making real progress in to moving out there.
*sigh*
BlackGriffen
even though I loved the U.S. space program all of my life, I hope the Europeans and the Russians freeze us out of the Mars mission.
Why? To get out from under American dictation of goals. To get away from our shortsightedness. To...
get something DONE.
Let's face it, the Russians have a major advantage over the Americans in this.
They have the best expertise on not just the physical effects of long-term space flight, but they're also experts on the psychological effects of being cooped up in a big space can for a long time. You need to know all that for this trip.
They're also the only nation with the big dumb boosters you need for a trip like this. Their hardware is pretty bulletproof as they use tried and trusted hardware rather than going for the most high-tech option.
And at the moment Russia is the only nation on earth with manned spaceflight capability. All Shuttles are grounded, and who knows whether they'll ever fly again?
"Information wants to be paid"
As a Russian told a NASA adminstrator, "just because you pay $20 for a bolt doesn't mean it's a $20 bolt."
There's no physical law that says stuff has to go up on the shuttle at $15k/lb, especially if the Russians are involved. They do have rockets of their own that are cheap enough for tourist flights.
(Of course, I still haven't figured out why we would even want a manned mission to Mars.)
If, on the other hand, the goal is public relations and media coverage, then let the entertainment and media businesses pay for it.
Easy mars mission requires either a breakthru in rocket technology (in that case US might go as well) or massive space infrastructure spending (IOW we have the technology to make Mars our backyard, but cost of building the infrastructure is far higher than just going to Mars a few times without it.) As it stands, going to Mars is hard, doable but hard. Nuclear rockets do not solve the problem and ion propulsion isn't even relevant.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
It is easy to want and dream, when you have no cash.
Get a free ipod.
Tell you what, Russia... You guys get to the point when you can pay your cops, doctors, nurses, and soldiers, and let countries with viable economies send people to Mars.
I'm not saying Russia couldn't do it-- I am saying that a country shouldn't spend that kind of money in the situation Russia is in.
Yes, it is interesting to see the secrecy labels and warnings on the old Apollo Guidance Computer documents. Wouldn't want everyone building Moon rockets...of course, at the time a guidance computer was dangerous due to competition to engineer nuclear missiles. (Now there's more computing power in a handheld GPS unit than is needed by a simple ballistic missile)
Assuming, that is, that you aren't one of the boneheads that thinks "backward is never the right direction." Sometimes you leave stuff behind you really shouldn't have.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Also, the Russians weren't THAT far behind being able to land on the moon.
The wonderful thing about Slashdot is that I am sure that someone actually involved in both programmes will reply, presently.
"In person, WAP'ed up and making your life a misery!" BOFH, 2003
Not because of any paranoid mistrust of the Russians. Not because of any BS about spending the money on the earthbound poor.
Well as far as I can tell, the money for a crewed Mars program is squandered every year by the US gov't, catering to the earthbound rich. And any "paranoia" about Russia is probably partly a strong, founded suspicion that they can't really afford to contribute significantly. So I wouldn't shed any tears for those putative Mars organisms right now. It'll be a while before anyone sets foot on the red planet.
Shed tears for them later. When resource extraction companies and venture capitalists reach Mars, they're f*cked, just like every other "indigenous population" in the history of human exploration and colonization.
Freedom: "I won't!"
If I recall correctly one of the effects of spending so much time in microgravity is that calcium is not deposited correctly, hence astronauts exhibiting low bone mass after long spells in space. However this also works with teeth. 700+ days would result in every one of them falling out.
How's that going to look in the pictures? Mankind sets foot on a new planet, and 6 gummy grins stare back.
The only thing that holds back the US in space is the budget its given. If you look at it now we hardly spend anything on space.
If you could get a tenth of the pork in the budget into NASA they could pay for the trip easily.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I'll pass up the obvious opportunity for 'flat earth' comments.
If you think you've got a case, by all means lay it out. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy.
Watcha got?
The question is not whether Russia is going to try to launch a mission, but whether or not they should send a probe and eventually humans. In fact, why should any government be involved in these endeavours? We should realize where this is all going to lead to; specifically, colonization of other planets. Did the Russians think about Mir when they launched Sputnik? Did the US believe they would end up with the Space Shuttle when they started with Mercury? Let us learn from history that we might have the foresight to look ahead and analyze the consequences of our actions. Where will manned missions lead to eventually? Truthfully, I place my bet on colonization. And when, not if, we set up a base, maybe not in our lifetimes even, who will govern and control that base? Do we want the Russians to have a political hold on Mars, the Moon, or any other planet? Furthermore, do we want even our corrupted American bureaucracy there? Look at what happens when politics rears its ugly head in places where it should not belong. Look at the International Space Station, for example. All of the normal, expected engineering problems are multiplied a hundredfold! Government has no place beyond the Earth's atmosphere, and should eliminate its stifling grip to give private funded companies with their own initiative a chance. We don't need any government controlling us these matters, and if we allow them to continue to do so we will reap the troubles of our own making.
If you care about story quality, why even bother submitting here rather than K5? If you have a quality report on this, pop it in the edit queue there and revel in the feel of actually being appreciated rather than reviled for daring to submit.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
...and still be a billionaire, according to the current figures at the Bill Gates Wealth Clock.
:-) to go, but it's a tough argument when many people live in abject poverty and the world has many problems. I don't believe these could be solved just throwing 20 billion at them, but I'm sure we could all find a lot of ways to help disadvantaged people with 20 billion. In any case, if someone DID come up with the cash, might it not be better to spend the cash on the so-called Space Elevator? Similar costs have been quoted for that project, and it would seem to me that would bring more tangible benefits for the world. Making access to space cheap would make all space exploration, research and commercial exploitation (including manned mars missions) much cheaper, thus making a greater range of potential payoffs available to us. What do others think?
But seriously, it's interesting to read the comments here. I think the poster who said that we don't have enough "political capital" said it best. It's a large simplification, but in a democracy, this basically means the majority of people don't want to go. They've got other things they care about more. In the decades-old "billions for space vs. other stuff" argument, other stuff is winning. I would suggest that this will remain the case in the forseeable future, unless the world climate changes considerably, or proponents find a more compelling argument for the general populace than "let's do it to see what's there".
I'm not sure where I stand. I'd love for people (preferably me
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Russia suffers from massive corruption, rampant crime, ecological disasters of the first order, and a miniscule GNP (per capita equivalent of Guatemala or Algeria). The poverty of its people keeps the nation in constant danger of its citizen's re-instating Communism. Now that's desperate. They can't pay their military or their nuclear weapons researchers what even a Costa Rican shoemaker earns. Because of this their nuclear arsenal is disappearing to God-knows-where and their nuclear weapons scientists are more bribable than a Chicago city official. There's so much testosterone at the upper levels of Russian management that they can't even allow help on a submarine rescue to save their own men. And now their bruised Stalinist egos want a trip to Mars? Fucking brilliant!
I can't help but think that the Kursk (Oscar class sub) disaster is still fairly recent (relatively speaking). I'd hate to see the mars mission add to the long list of disasters for Russia. The Russians may try but I don't think they will succeed. How bout China?
How much cash does Bill Gates - thats one man - have?
Comparatively little, I suspect. Do you really think that rich people have all their money in a checking account? Most of Bill Gates' wealth is his stock holdings, especially MSFT.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Let's not forget the thousands of useful inventions that came out of the NASA Space program
."
"Would you like some Tang?"
"Tang?"
"Its what astronaughts drank on the moon - Astronaughts on the moon - heh heh heh heh . .
russians have a way of using /100 money for their missions. so 20 bil for the russian space agency is like 200 bil for nasa. serious. (sorry for the flamebait, i'm not saying nasa is worse or better, its just how the nasa and rus SA compare economically)
CO2 + 4H2 -> CH4 + 2H2O
All you have to do is bring the hydrogen; the carbon dioxide is already there on Mars. And the reaction is exothermic, so you can do something useful with the waste energy too.
If you electrolyze the water you can produce more oxygen:
2H2O -> 2H2 + O2
Now for each unit of hydrogen that you bring to Mars, you get twelve units of methane/oxygen. And this is the simplest case, you can do better if you use some clever chemistry.
See Robert Zubrin's book, The Case for Mars for more information.
2^5
ahh... it appears you have misread the dotbomb businesss manual. There is no profit in the list. number 5 should have read 'spend money on office perks and dog walks until the venture capitol runs out, then move on to next venture'
Hope that helps clear things up for you:)
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
yeah right, Liberals love to modarate on political grounds, and hate being reminded of the nature of their political philosphy.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
The Space Shuttle has a payload bay of 15 feet around and 98 feet long. Payload weights can be up to 65,000 pounds.
The Saturn IVB stage, used to leave Earth orbit to the Moon was 58.4 feet long and 21.7 feet around. The Space Shuttle can't carry that up, but it can carry something almost twice as long and almost 3/4ths the diameter -- should be enough volume for fuel tanks large enough. The S-IVB weights 23,000 empty, which is well within the Shuttle weight limit. The 230,000 pounds of fuel would require four Shuttle trips -- probably five or six due to weight of tanks.
Assuming we have to take the spacecraft up in a separate launch, an Apollo CM/SM/LEM weighs 43,196 Kg/95,230Lbs. That's 1.5 times the Shuttle payload max weight, so have to carry those up in two trips. The SM and CM are 12.8 feet around, so can fit in the Shuttle. The LM ascent stage is 14.1 feet, so it fits too. The LM descent stage is 31 feet from leg-to-leg, so a different design for that is needed.
Project Orion
2^5
Because they havent researched an Alien Leader first.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
If you're american, and I suspect you are (if I'm wrong, I'll eat a bug), the political "Left Wing" in your country is a joke, which exists solely to "buy votes from the poor" (a purchase paid for in empty promises and lip service to social justice) as you quite correctly put it. Hell, the Left up here in Canada is pretty much a joke too, ineffectual, poorly-led and torn with internal struggles between Labour and Green elements. It's no wonder we haven't got a person on Mars yet, the hands holding the purse strings are tied to eyes so short-sighted they can barely see to the end of a 4-year mandate.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I actually HAVE done quite a bit of reading on the subject of Russian boosters and let me tell you, they ain't got much. Which of these Russian boosters are so much better than the Shuttle and are ***actually flying today***?
As will undoubtedly be mentioned multiple times on this discussion, that's Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan, and the concept of making the fuel there for the return trip seems to be the only vaguely sane way to do things.
Not necessarily.
Mars's escape velocity is slightly less than half that of Earth. A rocket with a fuel-to-cargo ratio comparable to an earth-to-orbit booster should be able to land on Mars and take off again without refueling. You get an even better ratio if you can use a gliding or parachuting entry on Mars, but that's a lot more difficult with the thin atmosphere.
How about getting to Mars in the first place? Well, getting into Earth orbit doesn't affect your total craft fuel, because you'd logically either build the ship in orbit or launch it from Earth (using all of its delta-v in one shot), and the refuel it in orbit from supplies brought up by the shuttle. This isn't cheap, but it would be easier than trying to build a craft with a 20-25 km/sec delta V.
Getting from Earth orbit to Mars orbit can use any of a variety of low-thrust, high-Isp drives, thus avoiding eating into most of the fuel reserves for the trip.
So, while it would probably be cheaper to produce fuel on Mars if it's practical to do so, you could still get to Mars without horrible problems by carrying your fuel with you and refueling in Earth orbit.
The Russian Energia vehicle flew exactly TWICE and the last time it flew was almost FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. The Shuttle has flown well over A HUNDRED times and the last time it flew was a couple of weeks ago. The Shuttle is expensive and the Shuttle isn't a mass-payload booster but it unfortunately is ALL WE'VE GOT (humanity, not America) to do a serious space mission at present with real equipment, not fantasy sand castles. Wanna use nuclear or a heavy lift vehicle? Hey, back to the drawing board for a ten-year development project...and it ain't gonna be as cheap as you think. Even if the Russians do it.
Only Russia has the balls to try a trip to Mars. NASA is just plain too scared.
In 1968 the movie 2001 was released. The Mission to Jupiter was considered far fetched, but the large Space station and the Moon base were things that many expected NASA to have achived by the 21st century. Instead of a Moon base and a Space Station we got Food Stamps and Public housing projects, thanks to the vote buying scams of the Left.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
.. so we can put it in the Smithsonian.
;-)
Thanks
Live web cams
A nuclear nuke of the flag spot on the Moon would be enough to please you?
One good thing that could come of this is a renewal of the "arms race mentality" between the US and Russia. If the Russians and the ESA get together and go to Mars, and at first we tell them to go suck a fig, then after a little while when the Russia/Europe partnership starts to work out, we're going to want to get back in it because the good ol' USA doesn't like to be beat to the punch by anyone. This arms race mentality would be much more likely to be instilled if the Russians go in with the Chinese and the Japanese rather than the Europeans.
If the idea comes about that "we must beat them no matter what," then we're going to go do it. That's what happened with the Moon, but in the current state of affairs, it will not happen with Mars. Say what you will, and I absolutely love peace, but the fear that came along with the Cold War got us to do some amazing things. Man, would I love to see us go to Mars.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I can do better. I can promote telecommuting over a much wider area. So can you.
At the time, Shuttle was the only technology to bring stuff (read: enemy satellites) back to Earth. If not mlilitary reasons, Buran would never be built - just because of its the cost.
Technically, Buran was far superior (it was designed much later), yet not enough economically effective to survive in the new times.
BTW, in 70s, one Russian scientist did a research that showed a real possibility of Shuttle dropping an atomic bomb from a very low orbit. This triggered some significant changes in our defence structures.
As Grechko - a famous Russian cosmonaut, said in his interview, the primary reason for not sending a manned moon mission was lack of perspective: "OK, we'll get there, what then?". It would be roughly as expensive as building an orbital station - which proven to be a good choice (much better, I think).
Go to marsnews.com we can get a system of constant colonization for 20 Billion. Cmon space angencies dont dream high enough.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
N1 rocket (Saturn V equivalent if memeory servers me well).
Cheers,
Dan
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
O.k. just a further slight rant on the state of the planet.....the world wildlife fund for nature releaced a report yesterday that states that their is only about another 150 years of resorces left on this planet. that if we continue at the pace were going things are going to start getting bad about 2030. that by 2050 we'll need another planet the size of Earth just to keep up....the full report can be found at http://www.panda.org/news/press/news.cfm?id=3017 Hope you are all keeping well and all that.....have a nice day....:>
This is not a test, it is just a distraction.