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Bush To Announce Manned Trip To Moon, Mars
edmunz writes "Foxnews just placed an article on their website saying that Bush is expected to make an announcement towards the middle of next week, proposing a manned mission to Mars as well as a return to the moon. Bush hopes to spark a renewed public interest in space exploration. No mission would happen any time soon, rather a preparation of over a decade would take place before the first men/women set out to explore Mars."
Before we can go to Mars, however, there are some issues we need to figure out. A Mars mission (round trip) is expected to be somehwere in the neighborhood of 2 years. Thats 2 years without the possibility resupply from Earth, or the ability to quickly return to Earth should a serious problem arise, not to mention you simply can't land on Mars and expect to live off the land.
What I'd like to see is a Moon base be built and have some volunteers provide the proof of concept that a 2 year mission without Earth's help (except for remote control where needed) is doable. Its easy to send up a few barrels of water to the ISS every few months. Its quite another problem when your talking about sending it to Mars. We didn't go land on the moon wit the first Apollo launch. At least one (I can't remember how many) Apollo missions circled but didn't land on the moon prior to Apollo 11, taking the incremental approach to what would turn out to be a very successfull project.
Sure you can send stuff on ahead of the humans (which is what some proposals I've seen suggest), including habitation modules and equipment that can manufacture the needed fuel to return home, before the humans even leave Earth, but none of this has been proven to be practical for a Mars mission yet. We have a hard enough time sending unmanned missions to Mars to help understand what is and isn't on Mars.
Personally, I see a human Mars mission being an international effort. After all, the USA isn't in a space race against any other country humans to Mars first (okay, maybe China is thinking about it, but Russia definatly isn't).
The ISS and Shuttle were great concepts when designed and planned, but frankly, both of them keep us chained to LEO with no place to go. And the ISS isn't even close to living up to what it was supposed to be.
Now let's get down to it:
Let's take these one at a time.Dude, I hate to be the first to tell you this, but humans breathe air. This means that, from a pure economic standpoint, Mars won't be settled until Antarctica is full. Since I think the planet Trantor is more fun to imagine than to actually live on, I think we'd better find a solution to the population problem that takes effect before Antarctica is full.
They're called "robots". You may have heard of them, since one is on Mars right now. NASA designed and launched two of them for $860M, less than the estimated cost of three shuttle flights. We could and should build a lot more of them, at very reasonable cost. They're fun, they're cheap, they work pretty well, and even if they occasionally blow up... nobody dies.
I'll bite. Which ore is this, exactly? Dilithium? Here's a homework assignment: after you realistically estimate the cost of mining an asteroid and shipping it back here, tell us which asteroidal element could be mined profitably. And please don't try and pretend that humanity hasn't invented recycling.
I can't argue with this, I guess. Pass the pork! All I can say, though, is that you can generate gratuitous tech jobs with useful projects (zero-pollution cars?) as well as you can with useless projects.
There are already plenty of inspired youngsters. They become postdocs. For every scientist with funding, there are 10 scientists working as postdocs, or accountants, or cabdrivers. Instead of spending billions of dollars trying to put spam-in-a-can where no spam has gone before, how about if we give that money to actual scientists? So we can cure diseases, or reverse-engineer the brain? Or even... build robots?
Please, do go on. I can already hear the violins, warming up to play the Star Trek theme.
Do we really want another flags & footprints Mars mission? If so, go there first, get it over with and then we can all forget about interplanetary travel for 50 years like we have with the Moon.
:v)
I suggest a more thorough approach, which incidentally gets around the problems associated with a quick and dirty Mars mission.
Establish a lunar manufacturing base, and build what is essentailly a moveable space habitat, say, 400 metres in diameter. Shield it with a fixed shield of several metres of lunar-derrived material. Fill large storage tanks with more lunar material. Establish a known working, self-sufficient, rotating habitat inside the shielding. Build a solar-powered mass driver pointing out the back. Fire lunar material out the back, taking large numbers of colonists and thousands of tonnes of materiel for colonisation to Mars nice and slowly.
It won't run out of food as the habitat is self-sufficient. Psychological stress is minimised because of the habitat's large size. Gravity is sustained, and a full medical team can go out to maintain health. Shielding removes the radiation issue totally. Journey time becomes irrelevant.
What's more, the vessel is completely reusable so rinse and repeat. Refuel from Phobos/Diemos and go back to the Earth/Moon system or head on out as far as the asteroids. Any further and the solar panels will have difficulty powering the mass driver.
There's an old joke related to this:
An old bull and a young bull are at the top of a hill, looking at a herd of young, healthy, and dare I say attractive cows in the fields below.
"Let's run down and do a few," suggests the young bull.
"Let's walk down and do the lot," replied his elder.
There's an immoral moral there.
Vik
"Sources said Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing programs that do not support the new effort"
What about the exploration of the (possible) oceans on Europa? The rest of the solar system? The Terrestrial Planet Finder?
There's more to space than Mars.
I over heard a conversation yesterday about the recent Mars Mission. To sum it up the comments where, " All that money for pictures of a bunch of rocks? You could get that in any dessert for nothing". You expect the general public with notions like this to support a multi-decade effort to Mars? This isn't TV or game console instant gratification and special effects. This is decades of hard work and trillions of dollars.