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US & Russia Pencil in Mars Launch by 2018
snilloc writes "The Washington Times is reporting that the US and Russia (and the Europeans are mentioned too) are planning for an eventual manned Mars trip. Suggested launch years are 2014 or 2018. The article discusses unmanned probes at greater length than the manned plans, but check out the Russian isolation experiment where 6 people will spend 500 days in a simulated spacecraft environment. (Sounds like a good reality TV show to me.)"
"NASA is engaged in small-scale studies on manned flight to Mars but has no plans for a mission."
April Fool's was 2 weeks ago.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Actually, China is the one doing the copying.
Shuttle model from the Chinese Pavilion at Hannover Expo 2000 indicates a spaceplane similar to the cancelled European Hermes.
"The spacecraft strongly resembled the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and like the Soyuz, consisted of a forward orbital module, a re-entry capsule, and an aft service module. The configuration was very much like the original Soyuz A design of 1962 (itself, in turn, alleged to be very similar to the US General Electric Apollo proposal of the same period). Orientation instruments, evidently consisting of horizon, ion flow and/or stellar/sun sensors, were located at the middle bottom of the service module, as on the Soyuz spacecraft."
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/shenzhou.htm
Check it out, it's rather cool (still pretty geeky though).
The Flasline Mars Arctic Research Station
The Mars Desert Research Station
If you get a chance to go to one of these, take it.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
It makes sense. Combining two different nations in a space program might look good for the media, but from an efficiency and productivity point of view, it's very poor. You end up with compromises at every stage of the process, with the result that noone is truly satisfied with the outcome.
Bear in mind Russia has a huge advantage over the US in both long term space missions (Cosmonauts in Mir hold the endurance record for space 'flight'), and it also has far superior heavy lift capabilities. The Energia launch vehicle is capable of orbiting a payload of 100 tons - far more than than the 30 tons capable of being lifted by the shuttle. While there have been plans for US heavy lift systems (cf. the 'Shuttle-C' cargo container, or the Ares booster) which could increase payload weight to 121 tons, the Russians designed a system (Volcano) derived from Energia which could loft over 200 tons of cargo!
NASA is at serious risk of falling further and further behind, and becoming largely irrelevant in space exploration. Mars Express (from the ESA) is a clear example of how quality research can be performed at a fraction of the cost of a typical NASA mission. Pathfinder cost 'just' $200M - compare this to the British built 'Beagle' rover, which is more capable, and cost just £10M (~ $16M) to develop! Mars Express, the overall project of which Beagle is part, cost just 203M. Compare this to the $800M cost of the latest US mission to Mars.
If NASA is to succeed in the long term, and to shine at research, it has to learn hard lessons from several sources. Satellites can be optimally placed with cheap boosters, not expensive manned shuttle missions. Productivity needs to get back, at the very least, to Pathfinder mission standards. Using proven engineering, and modularity of design, you can massively reduce failures, and costs.
For more information on Mars Express, check here and the official ESA project page here.
Claim: NASA spent millions of dollars developing an "astronaut pen" that would work in outer space; the Soviets solved the same problem by simply using pencils.
Status: False.
Source: Snopes.
Confronted with the same problem, the Russians used a pencil.
Which adds unnecessary free-floating dust to clog up the whole darn air filtration system.
NASA didn't develop the space pen; IIRC, they used grease pencils for the first serveral missions. The pen was developed by a private inventor, who sold them to NASA at a rather reasonable price (far less than 12 billion) and the general public of space-geeks.
If you're interested in Mars-Exploration, but "NASA estimated 300 billion dollars to do it" got you thinking, you might want to read these, as they come to a quite different estimate: ...and its german branch :-)
:-)
- The Mars-Society...
-
- Robert Zubrin & Mars Direct
- Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars", a book I can absolutely recommend
- The german link again (I'm a german, so please bear with me, ok?
I hope these may be of help...
PS: At least I wouldn't be wondering if Europe and Russia were to cooperate on this, but I sure don't hope for another "space race"... Would be one hell of sight though... Europe/Russia vs. China vs. USA?
Um, the AP over exaggerated or misunderstood what the scientists said. Imagine that.
This one makes more sense.
by the way, that's my boss in the picture from the CNN article.
0xfeedface
Given the risks that the astronauts will be taking en route, landing, re-entry, etc. this is negligable. Of course, we still need to weigh benefits against risks/costs here...
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
Actually, the amount of radiation on Mars (according to Robert Zubrin in his book "The Case for Mars") isn't anything that can't be solved by simply putting some sandbags on the roof of the hab and a light amount of sheilding on the EVA suits.
And I don't know what you people are thinking when you say this will be expensive. We can have 5 manned missions, covering thousands of square miles over 10 years for under $60 billion. That's about 8% more than what NASA is spending right now on failed projects like SSTO and ISS projects. Read something.
Nope, neither politically: Russia is NOT a member of the Eropean Union (nothing east of and including Poland is, btw.), nor geographically: Russia resides on the Asian "half" of the "Eurasian Continent" and is thereby asian (They also border Mongolia and China, remember?).
the keeper
Haven't tried it myself but I have friends who swear by it.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Btw. Never say anything in alt.folklore.urban unless you have read through the whole snopes archive.
The AFU people are notoriously aggressive.
(No? You think _I_ might have burned myself there?-))
Bot Assisted Blogging
Since foreign diplomats owe NY City $22 Million in back parking tickets I don't think anybody should complain about the timeliness of US dues.
Actually the Russians did fly their Shuttle clone, the Buran, once (it orbitted the earth in an unmanned mission). The Russians have also had considerable success with other unmanned missions, from the current ISS supply ships to the Lunakhod series (unmanned full size lunar rovers), as well as unmanned lunar rock retrieval... all done on a budget that is/was a fraction of what the US spends.
No doubt the US space program is in some ways more technically advanced, but I don't think it's right to dismiss the Russians as being in any way uncapable. I think the problems of their space program have been more financial than lack of expertise.
Ah, good one ;) Don't forget the Milky Way's peculiar velocity with respect to the cosmic microwave background (~625 km/s), which means that we are actually moving about 18 light-hours per year.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Now, there's plenty of room for argument as to whether Mars Direct (the name of the above plan) is correct in all its details. However, it seems fairly clear that producing the return fuel on Mars rather than transporting it from Earth makes the mission much more feasible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)