Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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
...$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
They've actually sent a number of test flights up that have landed intact, and are supposedly going to be trying a manned mission in the next few months. Maybe they're planning on getting there before us and showing everyone else up (remember the book 2010? :-)
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...
> 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?
...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?
NASA's funding is ridiculously low. My college (University of Florida) was recently announced as one of the partner schools for NASA to help develop new launch procedures and vehicles so going into space is as safe and inexpensive as commercial airliners. The budget for this monumental task that will revolutionize mankind? 15 million. NASA has got 15 mil as a research budget. It's fucking NASA. They should have a few orders of magnitude more funding. Someone needs to convince Bush that in order to get a space-based laser missile defense system (for all those rouge ICBMs laying around) we need safe and efficient space flight. I mean, really, 15 million? The technological advances that have arisen from the few missions they've done have led to thousands of new products to improve every day life. Really, when is the US gonna take care of that?
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.
Really, blaming it all on welfare is absurd. How about the massive amounts of money spent on SDI, or the billions lost in "pork barrel" amendments to bills, such as $600,000 for "fighting Goth culture" in some small town.
Sorry, but blaming it on welfare is silly. (you're a Republican, I assume... they like to rant about welfare...)
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.
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!
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.
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.
Exploring another planet in our solar system is just what the space programs need to generate newfound interest. Nobody really cares about the ISS. It barely makes a 50 word story in the paper when they send up another branch of it. Sad but true. OTOH, Mars is a much more interesting topic. It's our nearest neighbor and will generate tons of info maybe even regarding our origins. The research could take decades to complete, thereby leading to advances in space travel, which naturally leads us to explore other planets. I think Mars is the ideal stepping stone and probably the most important goal in the near future.
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.
The Moon is magnitudes closer... why not send up a proposal that outlines a semi-permanent base on our satellite? Perhaps cheaper, as well. It would also get alot of press coverage, seeing as the media could hark back to "RETURN TO THE MOON" on the front page.
Lordfly
hookers and grits.
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
[I think NASA should concentrate on the long term and come up with solutions for making space travel cheaper and commercially viable]
Come on, NASA is run by the US government. They are incapable of making something commercially viable. Read the news...AMTRAK just proved that the government can't make trains commercially viable.
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?
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?)
Where's the excitement? Where's the buzz? Most Americans probably have the 'been there done that' feeling about the Moon. It's really not fascinating _at all_. It's been measured, probed, sampled, flagged. Done. I think the best idea is to use the moon as a jumping-off point to explore the rest of the universe.
My personal feelings on the matter is that any space exploration is a good idea because I like science. I don't think most Americans really care unless it's something as grandiose as "Men Travel to Mars: Russia Splits Bill" on the front page. The ISS is hurting due to lack of interest and funding. Sad as it seems, the nations of the world NEED to do something like visit Mars to generate interest. Interest=cash flow.
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!
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!
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.
Ummm...
SDI came nearly twenty years after the key decisions were made that cut back the space program. It really was the cost of welfare and the Great Society, not to mention that little scuffle over in Vietnam that clobbered the space program.
OOC: Republican or not (I'm not), since when is it "a rant" to mention welfare programs and their effect upon the budget? Enacting the Great Society programs meant cutting budgets in other places. Many people thought (and still think) that cutting back on space exploratoin in favore of welfare programs was a sound choice. I'm not one of them, BTW, but it ain't rocket science, if you'll pardon the pun, that you've got to cut back somewhere if you ramp up major new spending initiatives.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Not necessarily. Mars is better for humans. It has atmosphere (not much but still better than nothing); it will protect the surface from meterorites and space dust. On Moon there is no atmosphere, and you can be killed by a grain of sand sailing through you at 10 km/s. The atmosphere is non-corrosive (95% CO2). There is plenty of water on Mars (and not much - on the Moon).
Temperature on Moon is extreme, from very cold to very hot. On Mars, however, the temperature is more smooth, and averages -63 degrees Celsius - this is what we have at Arctic and Antarctic research stations.
Presence of atmosphere will help Martian colonists because they can use lighter, simpler spacesuits instead of vacuum ones that are necessary on Moon.
Neither Mars nor Moon have planetary magnetic fields. That is not nice because magnetic field of Earth helps in deflecting the Solar wind. There are regional magnetic spots, but they are not very large.
Mars is farther from Earth, true, but colonists are not going to fly back and forth too often anyway. In many aspects, given the launch system already in place, the cost of launch to Mars can be comparable to the flight to the Moon. The most expensive part is to get started.
The US is a republic because of a technical limitations of implementing a total democracy "back in the day" (not to mention that it was a "union"): This was no great foresight of the founding fathers, and in reality the electorate generally (I believe there was one deviation) exactly duplicates the voice of the people : If they didn't the system would be changed pronto. Democracy isn't perfect, but neither is an ivory tower "people who know better" type of system.
....
I find your angle regarding welfare interesting, and I'd say that it's a very short sighted perspective: Many of those people who are "incapable or unwilling" to contribute are there because of economic perpetuation (there is a caste system alive and well in the United States today), racism, or poor government economic planning (did you know that unemployment is intentionally kept inflated to keep inflation in line? You see, that helps out your retirement plan, but it doesn't help out the "unwilling to contribute"). If you refuse to cast them a line to help them while the system that favours you screws them, realize that many of them will logically decide to foresake your system and your rules, and they'll be the ones shoving a gun in your face to take your wallet, etc. These people WILL survive, and this ridiculous "well let them starve!" concept is absurd: Welfare is pretty damn cheap compared to a police state.
I'm not even commenting on the worthiness of going to Mars, but I find it sad that of all of the ridiculous government waste programs that you could pick on (SDI anyone?), you chose welfare : You a fan of Rush Limbaugh, by any chance?
Sidenote: Who knows, we might need to get to Mars quickly.... I have noticed dramatic temperature differences in the past decade where I live (20 years ago it was a rare day that it hit 30C here....now it's hitting 35C daily), and I find it odd how little commentary there is regarding this. The other day I caught a little scrolling piece of news that the US government has purchased and stockpiled $1 billion dollars worth of powdered milk (as a single purchase..meaning this is just one individual stockpile purchase)
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
Now, look. Your premise seems true, in that interest sparks funding. But that is a "fad investment" paradigm and it can and will be pulled back with the same irrational set of desires that pushed it. It will be pulled back when the going gets rough ... and space is rough -- there will be deaths, accidents and cost overruns.
... they are now mostly part of our atmosphere, and the damned things cost about US$10K per pound to put them up.
After that big space fad in the US and USSR in the 1960s, Humanity ended up with tons in orbit that slowly rained back down, occasionally lighting up the sky to illuminate rusting gantries. Of greatest note are Skylab and Mir
It is very foolish to send a mission to Mars without sufficient infrastructure around the Earth-Moon system to push it. The mission will be terribly expensive and all things involved in it will be viewed as temporary and will eventually crumble back to the Earth in one form or another.
People need to live and work in space permanently before we can say there is actual infrastructure. That is why we absolutely need a base or two on Luna, with monthly ferries making the Earth-Moon trip. It may not be sexy and interesting, but mining the regolith for material to build system missions is essential for sensible space investment -- it takes 22 times less energy to get material from Luna to LEO, than from Earth to LEO.
Please, please, please don't encourage people to repeat the Apollo Project boondoggle. Apollo left no Moonbase behind it; Mission Mars will also leave no Marsbase behind it; and $60 billion will vanish once again into the military-industrial complex. Then we'll have to go through at least 2 more generations of putzes again trying to make a buck over trying to honestly improve the Human condition.
[also misbehaves on Kuro5hin as Peahippo]
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.
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.?
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..
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.
Think of how $20B could be spent to help the russion people.
Who the hell do you think they were hoping we'd hire? They already supply part of the crew and return capability to the ISS, they'd love to actually pay their engineers and rocket scientists to work on a bigger project with lots of hard currency, which will then spill into the local economy and circulate a few times, before being absorbed by the Russian mafia, and exported to numbered overseas accounts.
Remember,their offer to pony up 30% of the 20 billion was just a suggestion...
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! :)
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.
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"
Umm. Hold on. What do you think the $20B will be spent on? The largest cost in spaceflight is paying all the engineers, and other staff. Last time I checked, they were people.
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.
It is easy to want and dream, when you have no cash.
Get a free ipod.
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!"
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.
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.
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.
I'm failing to see how that's different from here... Slashdot fits that description pretty well.
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.
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.
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
And we probably would have, if it wasn't for the STS-51 (Challenger) disaster. After the Challenger disaster, NASA has greatly reduced their manned missions.
Unmanned missions are cheaper and when things go bad the only loss is resources, not lives. They also tend to be much less popular, but robotic explorers can survive on planets for much longer times in a harsh enviornment than people, who need their air food and water transported everywhere they go.
Granted, I would love to see, in the way distant future, manned exploration of space and the colonization of Mars, but for as long as the main goal is to just learn what's out there (which is an obvious prerequisite for colonization and travel) let's let most of our missions be unmanned.
I would say that the USA is capable of a manned misson to Mars. And I would also say that none of us should second-guess Russia's capabilities. They did beat the USA in getting a man to space, after all. (Personal sidenote- anywhere I can get the footage of the first CCCP spacewalk online?)
-bugg
That's because the ISS exists solely to support and encourage the antiquated, backward, money-pit of a shuttle program, and they know it.
**>>BELCH
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.
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