NASA Wants Astronauts on Mars by 2010

FeloniousPunk writes "According to this article in the UK Guardian, NASA intends to send a manned mission to Mars by 2010, using nuclear propulsion. President Bush may announce this project, called Project Prometheus, at the State of the Union address." Here's good background and context; for technical background, I recommend Zubrin or Stern. The JPL will be involved in developing the nuclear propulsion tech, intended to cut the interplanetary trip from six months to two. Apparently the theory is that this proposal won't get shot down like the last Mars proposal because the shorter mission will save money. Here's hoping public response has progressed beyond "oh no! did he say nuclear?!" In related news, jkcity writes: "according to this article by the BBC, the Chinese plan to have a man in space by October 2003."

Comments

Re:How does nuclear power help?

[Soft]

Once you're in outer space, the only way to move is by conservation of momentum. That it to move forward, you have to throw something out the back (e.g. rocket engines). So to get to mars or anywhere else, you need to have enough fuel that can be thown out the back.

Correct, and we are still talking rocket engines. Except that instead of heating and expelling propellant thanks to a chemical reaction (hydrogen + oxygen -> water), you use a nuclear reaction (pump hydrogen--or just about any gas--into a nuclear reactor, heat it like hell).

The difference is that a nuclear rocket is much more efficient: the exhaust speed is much higher. Therefore the propellant mass required for a given change in speed is exponentially lower, due to the "rocket equation":
m/m0=exp(dv/u)
where m0 is your ship's dry mass, m its total mass (including propellant), dv the change in speed you aim for, and u the exhaust speed.

Re:because

[freshmkr]

Today, we have the ability to send unmanned probes that can give us detailed information about the various physical parameters of some uncharted frontier. Gone are the days when the only way you could explore something is via physically being there.

It's not as cut and dried as that.

I worked at the JPL last summer with the MER group (MER: the next Mars rovers). It was a great place to be and the technology they had was impressive. Still, there's only so much a teleoperated robot can do with a 20 minute time lag, slow rad hardened processors, and one (sensor-laden) arm. If I recall correctly, the off-the-cuff figure tossed around there was that a human geologist on site could accomplish in 45 seconds what an earth-based team driving a Mars rover could do in an hour.

It has always been more cost effective to send robots to Mars instead of people. Don't think, though, that you can just send one of these guys up and find out everything you want to know!

--Tom