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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."
eventually we're going to have to leave this planet for one reason or another. it would be nice to be able to do it at our convenience, rather than being forced off.
I'm confused on how the use of nuclear power will help us get to mars quicker. I understand the benefits of using nuclear power to generate electricity, or create steam to drive an engine, and such. But these type of engines only work on earth. 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. I don't see nuclear power helping here. Does anyone know how nuclear power will help us get to mars faster. I can see how nuclear power will help generate electricity on the shuttle to help sustain human life, but I don't see how it helps propulsion?
Space exploration and colonization is the next logical step for any technology based society. Its like asking why someone decided to explore the north pole, because no one had been there before.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
We won't know what we will learn until we get there -- much as we didn't know what we'd learn on the moon until we got there.
Yes, we did learn *a whole bunch* by going to the moon, even if most of it wasn't evident until recently (technological gains).
By going to Mars, I'll be looking a few decades later for another kevlar, microchip, or similar coming out of it.
Really, what we learn from mars won't be so big. What we learn from the trip itself could be huge.
Rod Taylor
Because many people think sitting on one planet all the time is boring, if not outright hazardous?
Oh no! Let's never explore! Let's never go anywhere! Why send people when we can just send PROBES! PROBES are CHEAPER! PROBES are SAFER!
Fuck that. That's just people speaking who are to self-concerned and scared to go. Part of exploration is to prove to yourself what you (as a person or society) can do. One of the hardest goals, undoubtedly, is to take a person to another planet over an immense distance and make sure they survive the trip there and back. Even better would be to have a permanent place there.
Of course if you don't think we should ever stick our heads outside the door, you are more than welcome to shut yourself in and look out only through your peephole.
Because it's not about sending people to Mars. It's about sending millions/billions to defense contractors. It will be canceled a year or two before 2010.
Two words for those that say I am wrong. "Superconductor Supercollider".
As far as the US is concerned, if it doesn't pay for itself or get someone reelected, then it doesn't happen. A manned Mars flight does neither, therefore they are not going.
Those in charge of China have a different agenda and a different set of values. They have the basic makeup to succeed in this.
Yes, Mars will be red.
True. Some author (Arthur C Clark?) wrote about the 3 stages of a race.
I'm recalling them from memory from a long time ago - appologies if they are wrong.
Class 1 - Uses the energy of it's sun. Has expanded throughout it's solar system.
Class 2 - Uses the energy of many suns/black holes. Has expanded throughout it's galaxy.
Class 3 - I forget the energy source. Has expanded throughout the universe.
It's humbling to think even reaching class 1 won't happen for a long time yet.
I don't think it's possible to overestimate the inspirational value this would have on young minds. All the ability in the world is worthless without motivation.
Seeing dreams come true is highly motivational, and as such, well worth the expense.
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
That's 10-50 billion spent between now and 2010, at least it makes a lot more sense than spendig $360 billion of the taxpayers money per year on people and technology whose sole purpose it is to kill other human beings.
Who, the Democrats? Let me show you a quote from a town hall meeting with Al Gore in '99That right there is why I didn't vote for Gore. Bush has essentially been mute on the top of space exploration to this day.
"Think of it as a distraction from the pending war,"
The same could be said about the Apollo program (Vietnam). Does that make it any less signifigant?
"Some of GW's closest friends and allies are going to reap billions from the program."
By all accounts, GW's "closest friends and allies" are in the oil industry (where he's originally from). But he seems to be pusing a nuclear solution, and nuclear power is oil's greatest foe.
"Defense companies love space projects"
They're already quite happy with the current missile defense program. A Mars mission has little (if any) defense-related spin-offs. At the very least, none of the spin-offs will be defense-only. We'll see things like more efficient nuclear reactor designs, faster/smaller computers, and other things that benefit not only the military but the private sector and consumers as well.
The only way there could possibly be military-only spin-offs from a Mars mission is if we have to fight a bunch of Martians in the near future.
"good for the local economy for years after he's out of office."
Name one president that has gone into state government after having served as president.
"There's no way that the program can be finished before 2010 (we'll be VERY lucky to get it by then)"
"There's no way that the program can be finished before 1970..."
And the nay-sayers then had better reasons to nay-say as well. Unlike the NASA of the early 1960's, we can reach LEO.
1. There has been no indication of this project anywhere I've seen. It would stick out! The NERVA/Zeus project was thirty years ago. The engineers are long gone, and there are no new ones.
2. The U.S. has no nuclear (nook-you-ler, if you're a C-grade fratboy from Texas) rocket program.
3. Nook-you-ler rockets are illegal under current treaties -- I think. Not that that would stop Bush -- treaties are for the evil, not the good.
4. 8 years is not enough time. The U.S. doesn't have the infrastructure to mount a mission.
5. The U.S. is going into debt at the rate of 1.3 billion dollars a day. We're spending ourselves utterly broke while cutting taxes. I don't think even the current regime is stupid enough to go to Mars when schools are setting up two daily shifts to save money. Or are they?
6. Politically impossible -- tho I qualify this in saying that this is the first marketing-driven administration in U.S. history. They've sold us on the idea that Saddam mounted the 9-11 attacks. I may be underestimating their maniuplative abilities.
7. This story is based on the world of one, count 'em, ONE "NASA administrator". The threshold used to be at least two believeable sources. The collapse of standards in the '90's set us up for any clown to float a story now -- bubonic plague vials on the loose! News at 11!
8. As an old space junkie, I wish the story was true -- sort of. I'd have preferred an ion drive, which is easier to maintain, ulimately faster, and doesn't carry the nuke label for marketing reasons.
9. If the story is true, why do I sense that the speculative capitalists that are now in charge of the guvmint (as opposed to businessmen -- the difference between Enronomics and the local Chamber of Commerce) would be trying to wring even more tax money out of us all? That would be on top of the 100-200 billion that the current contracts to attack/rebuild Iraq are going to cost the U.S. We are getting robbed here. NASA did the moon landings on the cheap -- I don't think the prvate equity managers will be as motivated to keep costs down.
Rousseau once said, "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." Mars is the opportunity to break these chains, and regain what freedom we may.
:) free software. :) Than has ever existed before.
Mars is our destiny. That is, outward. The possibilities for new expressions of freedom and humanity, and economic systems, lie in building new civilizations. On earth there is a gigantic infrastructure of economic powers that RESIST change. The best ideas are not readily implemented, or are practically impossible to implement.
America became, in some sense, what it was BECAUSE we had a frontier early in its career. That frontier, and the spirit it developed among its settlers gave America its sense of independence, innovation and a GREAT sense of self-empowerment.
To the point, a paucity of western infrastructure westward of this expanding America better empowered the formation of a culture radically different than its predecessors. Not wholly, of course, as old money still existed.
But now, America has few or no frontiers within its borders. America's infrastructure has become stiff in every corner. The people at Slashdot.org know this. Microsoft's infrastructure is outstanding. Oil industries pull our strings. We cannot fundamentally change what America is, how it conducts its economics, without a fight. The root is dug in and will not give up its space as long as it lives.
Mars has no infrastructure and therefore new social, economic, and political ideas implemented by colonists there are more apt to emerge into their natural designs undistorted by the effects of competing institutions.
Like the original colonists of America, cultural artifacts, physical and ideational, brought over to the frontier will be freely reinterpreted without undue outside influence. However, the opportunity of social self-determination on Mars is unparalleled by any in history, for none has had at its disposal the vast library of knowledge and technology available today. The coupling of knowledge and self-reliance will allow the best ideas to flourish. The culture of the second and third Martian generations has the potential of being truer to the ideals of social justice, equality, and
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I agree though that missile interception is a worthy project (with nifty spinoffs), but it's too much of a fuck'n wasteful porkbarrel as it is!
I think they'd have better luck selling a missile "shield" to the public if the shield also included funding for more and better radiation-detection at ports & in cities around the country, AND they sent more of that pork towards alternative energy projects that reduce the cause of the conflict, rather than defending against the symptoms.
--
Power to the Peaceful
The only other reasonable thing you could do in space would be to mine asteroids and start building things in orbit and on the moon. But going to Mars at this point doesn't make sense. It's going to cost too much. I am all behind nuclear rockets but I think going to mars is premature. Let's put a city on the moon, and start sending politicians there.
I'll start voting republican if republicans start putting money into space research. I shit you not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"