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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.)"
What good is it sending a pencil to Mars?
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
"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.
I thought the ESA was going to do the same thing, around 2009? Why not co-operate a little, and share the costs?
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
(Sounds like a good reality TV show to me.)"
50 days, no - lets be honest FIVE days of something like Big Brother is enough for anyone - 500 days would be a fatal dose, surely!
Just so long as there isnt a hot tub, and there are no women you'd like to see nekkid we'd be safe from having to view! But just one chick in there and you know we'd all be streaming this 24/7 until it came under the Real Gold Pass (or whatever they call it this week) around about day 480.
As somebody who has been in on the Space Station debacle from the beginning, let me just say that there's NO WAY that NASA could get to Mars by 2014, and trying to do it with the Russians only ADDS to the problem, not makes it easier. The most important thing the US can do to get to Mars is make it an American-only mission. The waste in effort to include other countries is phenomenal and unnecessary. The US space program has got to believe in itself instead of being a branch of the State Department if we are going to go anywhere.
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
but check out the Russian isolation experiment where 6 people will spend 500 days in a simulated spacecraft environment.
Jeez, and I bitch when I have to wear a tie to work.
Old hat. Douglas Quaid cleaned up Mars back in 1990. They have a thriving mining community, breathable atmosphere and leet alien artifacts.
Trolling is a art,
I am all for space exploration, and taking a closer look at Mars is wonderful and all, I'm glad someone is scouting out area for my future apartment, but don't we remember what happened LAST time we partnered with Russia on something outside of our atmosphere? The wretched travesty of the ISS is now loping along in a slowly descending orbit, is years and years behind what it was supposed to be, and will, more than likely, never live up to the high aspirations that were originally held for the Freedom, the space station that the United States planned for years before the global consortium got together on the ISS.
Russia is simply not a viable partner, not due to their science (they were in the cold war too, after all) but their financial instability. It's not their fault, but it shouldn't become our space program's problem (again).
to leave AMIE at home.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
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
The size of our own galaxy is measured in hundreds of light years and the farthest we have gone off this little rock is the far side of the Moon, just a little over 2 light seconds away. It is embarrasing
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Unfortunately there'll likely be an all male crew according to the article. This means less likelyhood of romance, sex, and the usual stuff that makes reality TV interesting. A bunch of stressed out military high-flyers trapped in a house sized environment for 500 days is probably going to be terribly boring.
Having said that, it's a great experiment and I hope it goes well and they learn lots and repeat the experiment a couple of times to compare how a mixed sex crew or all female crew works in comparison.
ME WANTEE!
In Canada, we don't fancy things like socks
People are viewing human life as more sacred than they normally do, and know the risks of this ambitious project. It also comes during a serious global depression of the economy, and will of course cost a sh*tload.
That said, I hope it goes ahead and proves more successful than we could imagine.
__
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Seriously, apart from the bragging rights to say "We put the first man on Mars", what benefit is there to having the US, Russia, ESA and Britain all working independently towards sending probes/manned trips to Mars? If a team made up of the best minds from each of those agencies were to work together, they'd not only be ready to land on Mars sooner, but they'd save billions in the process.
The participants, who will be given 3 tons of water and 5 tons of food, will undergo training on how to act in hazardous situations, the official said. Water and oxygen for the "flight" will be generated by means of the participants' own life processes.
I don't think I want to watch...
And before that it was 2008, now its 2018? Just face it, we will never go to Mars in our lifetime, and why? Because the government doesnt want to give NASA the money to go.
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The six participants have not yet been chosen, and the selection process will be rigorous, Mr. Malashenkov went on, saying an all-male crew was likely.
Why not an all female crew? You could save a couple of kilos on the launch, and their energy requirements (i.e. food) are likely to be lower over the course of a long-term trip, since they don't have to maintain as much body mass.
Of course there's that whole Men are From Mars thing...
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Suggested launch years are 2014 or 2018.
I've checked my calendar and I'm free then. Sign me up.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
Do not touch the pencils. It is a Zionist American trick. They are actually bombs.
Former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
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!!!
Fifteen years may as well be fifty in terms of Russian economic and political stability, not to mention international relations.
The article is light on logistical details, but assuming that we're more Robert Zubrin than we are BattleStar Galactica, the mission will involve a long period of technological development followed by deployments of resources in advance of human explorers. That's a long time for a lot of factors to remain "in the window", IMHO. Even the ISS didn't manage to remain entirely in that window, and that was far more flexible in terms of planets lining up and such.
I'm pleased at least to see that it's on the TODO list at NASA, but I don't take this too seriously.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Ok, you can stay home, then. The rest of us have places to go.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
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.
again!!!! ARggh!!"
Mission Control: "Comrades, comrades, keep
in mind, when you are in orbit of mars, we will
not be able to resupply you with
constant 'squeeze cheese'"
*dramatic music*
Voice Over: Next week find out who gets
voted out of the training pod and thrown out of
the air lock. Will it be Ivan with his insatiable
appetite for squeezable cheese? or will it be
Ivana and her insistance on leaving tampons in
the engineering section???
A very amusing story. It not that unbelievable, but I don't think it is quite true. I recived a Fisher Space Pen for a gift and it had a short history in it. I belive it said that the pen and design was given to Nasa pretty much free of charge. Of course who knows what they paid for before this pen was created. This link will tell a bit of the history: http://spaceflightnow.com/store/collectibles/penas tro.html
"Another day with Parasites!"
From the office of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob):
"There is no Mars! The red plannet does not exist! It is a trick by the coalition forces!"
More at 11.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Robert Zubrin sums this up better than I can in his essay, The Significance of the Martian Frontier .
The guy on 32nd and Main doesn't have anything to do with going to Mars. You cannot arbitrarily link any two items in the gov't's budget and call it a causal effect. I'm sick of hearing this specious argument. Besides, I think the most promising way to get to Mars is in the private sector. NASA just makes a gigantic sucking noise.
-- Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
I think it would be very difficult to live in tight quarters with 5 other people for almost a year and a half, floating through space on a mission that would bring back all kinds of info that will be useful for humankind. "Just another few months with these freaks", you could think, "and we'll have accomplished something great. When we get home I'll be famous, and I'll have a pickup line that no one else in the bar can hope to match!" Besides, once you've launched, you can't really change your mind, so you just focus on managing the stress.
:)
Now imagine you're just one of the guinea pigs in the 500-day test. You're not going to be famous. You aren't exploring new frontiers. You're like a kid camping out in his backyard... except you promised your parent (Dr. and Mrs. Skinner?) that you wouldn't come inside for FIVE HUNDRED DAYS, even though you know that some days it's sunny outside the tent and you can hear the other kids playing in the park across the street. Sometimes a dog wanders by and urinates on the corner of the tent (days 3, 5, 16, 21, 23-twice, 28, 29...). Twice a day a scientist peers in through a porthole to see if you've cracked up yet. Can you imagine it? Wouldn't you just feel like you were pissing away a chunk of your life?
And just think -- to be realistic, their connection to the internet would start broadband, then go gradually down to dial-up and worse....
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
The simple fact is that we're probably not going to get to Mars in the next 20 years, it simply isn't as simple as people would like to think. Most of the problems revolve around the fact that any expedition to mars would last up to 3 years(apollo 11 took around a week) and for the great majority of this the team would have to cope with problems unaided. Consider this: The CLOSEST that mars gets to earth is 86.5 million KM which means that any communication with the earth is going to take 5 minutes to get there and the response 5 minutes to get back. That means that for any problem that can't be solved in 10 minutes you're completely on your own. The astronauts on Apollo 13 would have been doomed had they had a 10 minute communication lag with ground control. other problems include sickness (its going to happen if you're away for months and illness that are trivial to cure on earth would be major problems halfway to mars, not to mention the degeneration of muscles, bones and the heart caused by being weightless for long periods of time), nutrition(how do we keep our astronauts in tip top shape for months on end when we have no way of getting food to them), radiation and pyschological problems (think being couped up in a space the size of your living room with 5 people for a couple of years). Yes, most of these problems are solvable (especially if we develop a technology considerably faster than chemically fuelled rockets) but the fact is almost everything that a manned mission would achieve can be done for less money and risk by robots. Its just not going to happen.
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
You have to be pretty inane to htink that a mere 500 days will drive people insane. Members of several sailing expeditions have travelled well over 1 year together without that kind of problem. Yes if they choose a black man and a member of the KKK they will have a problem, but we are not stupid enough to do that.
As to why we are going to mars, there are lots of GREAT reasons. Here area few:
Because it is there.
To further develop our manned space craft, so that eventually we will know enough to get a ship to Alpha Centauri.
To further develop our medical science so that we no longer have ANY problem with space travel.
To pay the smart people a ton of money to build something positive, instead of having them be unemployed and jobless when the terrorist asks them to use their rocket science to build something.
To give money to SMART people letting them leave lesser jobs. Where upon, slighlty less smart people will be hired to fill those jobs, (after they quit their old jobs - so even less capable people are hired to fill those old jobs etc. etc. etc) Trickle down does work when you are talking about JOBS, (as opposed to money.)
You see, when you spend money on a Science project, the money is spent on EARTH, even if the science is off Earth. This means you are WRONG, trips to mars DOES feed, clothe and house people and it DOES work it's way down to the guy on 32nd and Main under a box, if he is at least willing to try and work.
Mars is a good target because it is just barely within our reach. Once we get there, then we can try for the moons of Jupiter. After that Pluto. Then Alpha Centauri here we come!
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
1. The astronauts use it to write in their notebooks.
2. The notebooks sell at auction 30 years later.3. Profit!!
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
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1. You'll pay for it with your 60% taxes (where did you get that figure from BTW?).
2. What will the benefit be? Your grandchildren will grow up to be geeks in the same way you grew up to be a geeks. Except they'll be terraforming geeks instead of programming geeks. A push to Mars will require technological development. The thing you're writing (computer) on is a direct result of warfare and space research.
3. They also had missiles pointed at your house for thirty years. doesn't mean you can't work with them. Who would have thought that France and Germany could work together in 1945? By the 1950's they were great economic and diplomatic buddies. As far as backstabbing is concerned, France threatened veto, Russia said no but was counting on abstaining in return for a further free hand in Chechnya.
As far as costs are concerned, even an enormous sum like $100 billion over 10 years is $10 billion a year which comes to $30 per inhabitant of the US, which comes to 10cents a day which comes to about a second of your daily work if you're complaining about paying the highest bracket of taxes. How long did it take to complain about the cost?
Or would you rather have the Indians send somebody to Mars so that their grandchildren own your grandchildren as you own the Indians ('own' in the broadest possible sense - i.e. are 1000 times richer, 3 times as well fed and live 2 longer).
Wait, I have it all figured out. They are going to make a Reality based TV show out of it. This is how Lance Bass from N'Sync is going to pay for the trip, except the whole group is going to go. Every 9 to 13 year old girl will be glued to the TV for 500 days. Imagine the ratings.
Even if the mission end in catastrophic failure, at least there will be one less boy band on this planet.
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.
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?).
Why not venus?
Some scientists say it is as probable as on mars to find life there...
Admitted, the surface of venus is just too hot, but wouldn't a balloon floating through venus' athmosphere (at temperatures comparable to earth's) an idea?
I often thought about that, I just don't know why noone is considering it yet. Seems to be an easier goal for human space travel.
And, venus is nearer to earth than mars.
First of all, we could send unmanned balloons.
One summer, years ago now, maybe 10 or more, I worked at a research lab at Brandeis Univesity (high school summer program). They did research into the perception of motion and had a grant from NASA. They had a large room, about 10' in diameter that rotated. At the time I left, they were planning an experiment that would put several people into this room for something like 100 or more days while it rotated contantly to see what the long term effect of this would be for a trip to Mars. I have not idea of they did this experiment, though I have no reason to think not. I wonder now, if the results are published and available on the net.
What part of "no" did the poster of this not understand?
Misreading "NASA...has no plans" as "the US [and Russia] are planning" is pretty bad,even by slashdot standards. I suggest not (note that "not") applying as a rocket scientist until learning how to read a little better than that.
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.
Relevence?
Considering that George W. hasn't ruled out attacking Syria, that he hasn't ruled out some kind of retaliation in regards to France, that he isn't some wimp whose hobbies include "having his penis washed by White House interns", might choose to act on this info (assuming that it is verfied, which as yet it isn't). In short, the Mars trip may be threatened by more than the usual budget issues.
Conclusion?
The geo-political climate of the world is unstable enough that international efforts to reach Mars, or the moon, or even a consensus about countries that harbor terrorism isn't probable. Look for the Mars mission to get cut, and blame to be placed on the budget.
--
Free software, not Iraq, because Gates is evil, and Saddam is just misunderstood.
How about "Operation Martian Freedom?" CNN can come up with some dramatic music to go along with it.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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?)