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H.R. 3057: To the Asteroids, Moon and Mars
apsmith writes "Democrats have just introduced the Space Exploration Act of 2003 to the U.S. House of Representatives; the author is Nick Lampson of Texas, with 26 co-sponsors. The bill sets a vision and goals for the future of NASA, beyond the Low Earth Orbit of the Space Station and Shuttle, outlining a series of incremental steps for human spaceflight. These include development of reusable spacecraft for carrying people around in the Earth-Moon vicinity, including to the nearby Lagrange points; sending people to an Earth-crossing asteroid; establishing a lunar base, and sending people to Mars with a base on a Martian moon by 2024."
Rep. Lampson's congressional district includes Johnson Space Center, which would benefit greatly from an expansion of manned spaceflight.
But then again, I could be wrong.
Rumors about their infamous program where true. Their advanced weapon programs contained powerful rockets capable of shuttling us to Mars and back.
Nope, not true. We've had rockets powerful enough to take us to Mars for years. We've just not had powerful enough rockets to take us, and all the oxygen we need to breathe while there, and burn to blast off and get back. If you run the numbers you'll see why, and then see that even super-duper-Iranian rockets aren't going to make up the difference.
The scientists are going to be able to make it to Mars though, and it's not because of a rocket break-through - it's because a few people were thinking outside of the box and figured out a better solution.
Liora
According to this article there's lots of good stuff worth looking into:
(pasted from the link above)
The Lunar rocks may also be examined according to the chemicals that they contain. Such analysis indicates:
They are rich in refractory elements, which are elements such as calcium (Ca), Aluminum (Al), and Titanium (Ti) that form compounds having high melting points.
They are poor in the light elements such as hydrogen (H).
There is high abundance of elements like Silicon (Si) and Oxygen (O).
The high concentration of rare metals like Titanium, and the availability of abundant amounts of Silicon and Oxygen has led to serious proposals about mining and manufacturing operations in the future for the Moon.
but I can read Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars", a famous book that tells of the plan he prestend to Congress years ago. In it, he describes how to use Saturn VII rockets to launch a 2 phase, conjunction-class mission to Mars. The first phase carries no humans, instead carrying a machine to create rocket fuel, air and water out of the martian atmosphere. Once the return fuel is ready, you launch the second trip, with scientists. They get there after 9 months of artificial grav (tether-linked comparments set spinning) and set down to a full supply of oxygen and water, maybe even a backup supply.
They then do a many month investigation of the area surrounding the landing site, find life, invent martian versions geology, climatology, etc., and return home.
His estimated cost: somewhere around $10B, $20B and up for variations.
Repeat, repeat, repeat: settlement.
That was 10 years ago, and that's all off the top of my head.
You need the full GDP of the $US ($10T, or 1/5th of the money in the entire world) to do the same? I hope this isn't how the whole of JPL thinks, but if it is, perhaps that's why our space program is stagnant.
Now tell me what's wrong and ludicrous with his ideas (if you care to investigate them) and I'll find someone who can help you understand them.
If it turns out you're right, write a letter to these poor, misguided chumps in Congress.
Otherwise submit a proposal for their funding.
Or, get out of JPL and join me at McDonalds.