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

First post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Moon landing == fake. Deal with it.

Nasa?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want First Post by 2010!

Once they fail that..

[Angry White Guy]

Are they going to fake that landing as well?

Great, scenes cut out of Red Planet...

no problem

[s20451]

When the prez says the Mars ship uses "nukular" power, nobody will know what he's talking about. Problem solved.

Re:Cool

[Angry White Guy]

A new strain of the flu, a new federal defecit, and a new rash of conspiracy theories is about all they're going to find up there. Oh, and a green babe for Shatner...

He's dreaming

[Moderation abuser]

Like most of NASA's projects, it'll go massively over budget, eat vast amounts of cash, take several times longer than anticipated and ultimately fail to deliver.

culture ref

[l33t-gu3lph1t3]

All your Space are belong to us ;)

Come on, you cannot land on mars.

[Krapangor]

If you take a close look at Marses ecliptic parameters, its size and speed, you'll come after some basic calculus to the result that either the average density of Mars is 0.2 or its rotation speed is about 20 angle minutes per second. The latter can be proven wrong by observation.
This lead to the fact that is body "Mars" is in fact a could of red gases with some solid rocks floating on the surface. This explains why Mars has no atmosphere - it is an atmosphere by itself.
You will know argue with the pictures from Viking/Mars Lander etc. But NASA usually uses "clean" wide open spots for landing. These (very few) sites on Mars are the above mentioned rock parts floating on the gas. The "mountains" you see in the background of these pictures are in fact "hills" of frozen gas (temperatures on Mars are very low). This strange structure explain also the "canals" on Mars watched in the 19th century. If you check Mars ecliptic you'll see an opposition with Saturn and Jupiter at this time. This lead Mars to be drawn nearer to the sun, heating it up and letting the frozen gas on the surface crack. That's why we don't see canals today. The "valleys" of Mars come from the different freezing temperatures of different gases carbonmonoxide has a higher freezing temp. than diheliumtrinitroamide (DHTNA, very common in space) and so craves out valleys like water in the frozen gas.

So I don't think you can land on Mars. A real grown spaceship is no small probe. Scientists exstimate the carrying capacity of the floating rock parts to be very low, they were surprised that not more probes just vanished (some did as you'll surely remember). Most people I know won't bet a dime that it's enough for a full grown spaceship. I think Bush must think of something else to demonstrate his national pride.
Venus, Merkur are not options due to the atmosphere resp. the heat and the moons of Saturn/Jupiter are already the goal of the Europeans. So you have to wander real far like Uranus of Pluto.

Re:why

[blibbleblobble]

It's about advancing US nuclear reactor technology enough to replace our hydrocarbon-based power plants with generators that don't fund al Quaeda?

No, it's about funding projects which are far worse than al quaeda