James Cameron's Illustrated Mars Reference Design

An anonymous reader writes "Terminator Director James Cameron commissioned renderings of the NASA Mars Reference Design [HTML, 4 PDFs]. The mission profile calls for a cargo ship sent ahead of a crew, a huge (Terminator-like?) rover, and inflatable habitats. It's not clear where Skynet and the T-800's hyper-alloy combat chassis fit in yet. Between now and then, the 5 Mars missions: 2005 Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter, 2007 Phoenix and Netlanders, 2009 Science Lab Rover, and 2011 Scout. Skynet comes in 2026."

Comments

Skynet and Mars

[DarkHelmet]

It's not clear where Skynet and the T-800's hyper-alloy combat chassis fit in yet.

What part of Arnold going to Mars do you not understand?

I personally don't mind him going to Mars, just as long as This Terminator stays and becomes my personal bed buddy.

Of course, since I browse Slashdot, that's never going to happen. Thank you OSDN! You've ruined not only my life, but my odds of scoring with her.

Being somewhat of a luxury

[mccalli]

James Cameron commissioned renderings of the NASA Mars Reference Design...

What, Magrathea built Mars too?

Cheers,
Ian

Good idea...

[John Seminal]

Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. I think it is a great idea to get some of the most imaginative minds to offer ideas to scientists on how to send humans to mars. My only question is, if they will send some large cargo container/ship ahead of a manned mission, how will the manned mission be able to land near enough to the cargo/habitat ship?? Or will this just orbit Mars? I hope I get to see a manned station on Mars in my lifetime.

Re:James Cameron explores the planets

[silentbozo]

James Cameron may have spawned the Terminator franchise, but he had no connection T3 (the film was directed by Jonathan Mostow.) Rumor has it that Cameron was planning to buy back the rights to the Terminator franchise, and then produce/direct his own script, but was outbid. When the guys who bought the Terminator rights tried to hire him for T3, Cameron turned them down.

The Collier's Space Program, half a century later

[Animats]

Back in 1952, Collier's Magazine published a six-part series later called the Collier's Space Program. That series is credited with inspiring the US space program.

Those pictures are famous, and there's even an animated Disney documentary from the period.

The "Collier's space program" was far more ambitious than what's been done to date, or even what Cameron had drawn. The Collier's program had a big rotating space station in Earth orbit, a Mars rocket under construction in orbit, and heavy industrial traffic to and from orbit. Cameron has much lower ambitions.

Good for Cameron, NASA, and us

[spun]

Cameron gets more realistic looking images for his movie, NASA gets some more money for things they were doing anyway, and we get better movies, a better space program, and more public interest in going to Mars.

I'm 33, and I damn well better see a person on Mars in my lifetime! And a moon colony. And those flying cars are LONG overdue...

I'd love to be sitting in my little cabin on mars in my old age, doddering on about "In my day, we had to live in inflatable huts, and we had an oxygen ration. We were only allowed to breathe ten times a minute. You kids have it lucky!"

Re:First mission in 2005?

[BTWR]

Bill Clinton authorized NASA to launch missions to mars every 20 months when Mars is in an opportune window. It is actually cheaper to launch a $300 million probe every other year than wait every 5 years and launch a $500 million one (my cornell profs, who run the current MERs explains it) - sitting around w/no payoff loses you money. Sucessful missions like pathfinder and MERs 2003 get you science and grants. The 20-month (or whatever the window is) has been followed pretty closely:

1997: Pathfinder/Mars Global Surveyor
1999: Mars Climate Orbiter/Mars Polar Lander (both lost)
2001: Mars Oddessey/Mars 2001 Lander (Code name: Apex - cancelled after the 1999 failures)
2003: "Athena:" A lander that was planned back in the late 90's, then cancelled after the 1999 failures(much of Athena became incorporated into the current MERs). Spirit/Opporunity (also Japan and ESA took advantage of the opportune planetary alignment).

Also, before the 1999 failures, there was an amazingly complex Mars Sample Return mission in it's initial stages planned for 2008. Professor Squyres (Spirit/Opportunity leader) was also to have been involved in that. It was a sort of "Rube-Goldberg" trick that would have had a lander on the surface, scoop up some soil, put it in a rocket not much bigger than a model rocket, launch it into Mars orbit, rendezevous with an orbitting satellite, launch it back to earth and finally be snapped up by a helicopter as it paracheutted down over the American desert (this parachutte technique happens to be how StarDust's sample will be retrieved). That mission woulda been so cool though. Honestly, making it work sounds even cooler than the actual specimen we woulda gotten back!

Been there already...

[Anonymous Coward]

... or is it just one of those memory implant holidays??

The technology is not the problem. Will is.

[Tau Zero]

If we had to develop something really new and different to do this, it might take the 8 years that Apollo required to put people on the Moon. But look at what we've got on the shelf already:

1. Very high-performance hydrogen-oxygen rocket motors, courtesy of the Space Shuttle program.
2. Two different final descent and landing systems:
   • Rocket-assisted, descended via the Surveyor (Luna) and Viking (Mars) landers.
   • Airbag, descended from the Mars Pathfinder system.
   (I note that Cameron's proposal is to use both, with the crew landing via rocket and cargo bouncing down inside inflated habs.)
3. In-situ propellant production has already been demonstrated using simulated Mars inputs.
4. We've had most of the other necessary re-entry heat shield, space suit, rover and other technology since Apollo, and the rest (mostly space suits and bigger rovers) are either relatively straightforward or outgrowths of things like the Shuttle EVA suit.

The technology is ready for us. The problem is that we are fearful and refuse to take the idea seriously enough to put real effort into it. This is largely due to people (like the idiot BBC commentator this morning) who see Mars as a sideshow or even an immoral waste of resources. Their goals are served by pushing any real mission ever-further into the future, so that it never gets done. If you really DO want it done, you have to get to Mars before the political will to do it has been sapped by the obstructionists. This means that you cannot get to Mars in 20 years, you only have a hope of doing it if you do it in 10 or even 8.

The answer

[Tau Zero]

Just to play a devil's advocate: what business do we have throwing our limited resources to other planets when we have so many problems already down here?

I am not a philosopher, but I've got these proposed responses:

• Throwing resources? What's a few tons of aluminum to the Earth? All the money stays right here.

• We are not throwing resources, we are exercising imagination and initiative. These are not limited resources, they are amplified by being used... and they are the same things needed to solve problems on earth.

• "When there is no vision, the people perish." Giving people a reason to look up from their petty squabbles to see a possible future on another world might solve some of those problems. Crime fell drastically during the first Moon landings, because most everyone was glued to the story unfolding on live television. We should try to do this again.

• Shouldn't we consider it a general religious imperative to learn what we can about where we came from and what else there is, starting with the history of other planets (including the life on them, if any)?

That's hardly an exhaustive list, and it won't convince anybody who doesn't want to be convinced. But something along those lines might persuade even the moralists that they don't have the high ground all to themselves.

A normal HTML page would be nice

[cmacb]

That is the weirdest HTML formatted article I have ever seen. Let me guess... they converted a DOC file to PDF, printed it, faxed it to themselves, scanned it and then ran it through a OCR to HTML conversion program using a Microsoft designed XML parser (Patented of course!)

Gees whatever happened to content oriented plain old HTML.

*shakes head*

I'll read the friggin thing when I have a couple of hours to wait for the pages to load.

PS: for anyone else having trouble: you have to click on those microscopic VCR style buttons at the top of the page to get the page transitions. Then go get a cup of coffee.

News for Nreds, Stuff that Matters

[Crypto Gnome]

From the HTML page of the PDFs

Stephen J. Hoffman, Editor
David L. Kaplan, Editor
Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center
Houston, Texas

July 1997

And this is NEWs how exactly?

Design Reference Mission?

[Trejkaz]

Finally a DRM we don't need to attack.

Inflatable habitat

[Muhammar]

Mars is a very windy and cold place. Hard-shell from composite pieces - the kind of they use in Antarctica - seem more appropriate habitat. The weight of shell is not that big - compared to the weight of all the necessery food, air, water and life-support equipment. (They can place inflatable tent inside the shell - to keep the leaks down).

Re:The technology is not the problem. Will is.

[Aglassis]

You said: "Just to play a devil's advocate: what business do we have throwing our limited resources to other planets when we have so many problems already down here?"

I can answer that with a simple quote from Larry Niven: The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program.

Its a silly quote but its very true. The probability of humanity being destroyed or anhillating itself will drop dramatically once we have a self-sustaining colony on an extraterrestial object. Its like insurance for humanity in a way.