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Europe Joins Race To Send Humans To Mars
hereisnowhy writes "CBC reports that the ESA hopes to send humans to Mars within three decades. They first hope to return a Martian soil sample by 2014. They stress the importance of determining whether Mars ever supported life before humans touch down on the surface, because "You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut. Inevitably a human will introduce microbes to the planet ... and contaminate it."" Kame-sennin links to a Reuters article on the plans.
The planet would be fully terraformed within a week.
Cheers.
They are still on a decades-long timeline. Here's hoping that The Mars Society can speed that up.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Suits that are sterlized? Then hit with some sterlizing solution before they leave the ship and before they enter?
1888 Franklin St.
"You can sterilize a robot. But you cannot do the same to an astronaut."
With a chopping block and a knife....
Sure you can, just take the shielding out of his microwave oven.
Unknown host pong.
...is it just me, or does the price tag seem kind of low? I mean, if that's 1.13 billion Canadian, it's well under a billion US over the next 5 years.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
I would like to see us collaberate with the Europeans.
Not only for good relations, but because it is such an expensive venture
for us to go it on our own.
... the ESA and the Russian space agency will be co-operating now they both want to go to the red planet? Kind of doesn't make sense for Europe to have two separate space programs.
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...they probably won't use nuclear craft either. Nevermind that nuclear engines are the most efficient and workable solution. Nevermind that we were building nuclear ramjets in the 50's and production ready nuclear rockets in the 60's.
Oh wait. That stuff was done by the US. Has the EU ever even fired a nuclear engine? Nevermind.
*sigh*
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm sure like most people I read that they were shooting for getting a person on Mars within three decades and thought that seemed a little unambitious.
But then again, the need to return and examine samples prior to human invasion is necessary.
Of course this made me wonder A) can't they still speed up the entire process, even taking into account this need and B) what's the chance that anything we've sent so far has been less than 100% sterile.
Besides, even if we sent a person up and contaminated the place... how long would it take for that to confuse the matter of whether or not Mars previously had life? Can microbes really spread over an entire planet that quickly?
Well you CAN sterilize humans, but it's really not very polite.
Flawed analogy. The pilgrims knew where they were going, and they were going there for good.
Nobody (not NASA, not ESA, not the Chinese) is seriously considering a one-way manned mission. Glorified soil sampling is all they are considering.
Going back to your New World analogy, you forgot that before America was colonised by Europeans that it was explored by them beforehand. Exploration is always the logical first step, whether we're talking about undiscovered continents (Americas, Australasia), extremes (South Pole), or heavenly bodies (the Moon, Mars).
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I'm sorry if this sounds trollish, but I think we really need to focus on stuff down here on the earth (like those WMD's) before we send anyone out into space.
You mean the USA and Russia's weapons of mass destruction, right? The ones that were made possible by the technological advancements of their respective space programs?
The only focusing the USA government wants these days is for people to not focus on their own past and present actions and capabilities (like those WMD).
USA right now is still suffering from a financial downfall. The last thing we should be thinking about doing is sending our money up in a rocket.
Of course, send it to the Middle East instead, in the form of lots of smaller rockets and such. Who cares about the long term viability of the species, or exploration of our universe? Pshaw!
Bitchslapped. Neat.
Yes, but relying on those very, very stupid ppl will doom the colony to a history of mediocrity and poor leadership. You know, like Australia.
What you're saying is only partially true. Let's first take a look at Russia: Yes, they've fallen on very hard times. What's their annual budget for spaceflight? $100M? It's something ridiculously low. But they're the country that keeps the ISS supplied. They have reliable, cheap rockets that get the job done. The US has no rocket that offers the same value as Sojuz does, nor does anyone else. So, some respect is due. Though it's plain to see that these times the Russians simply don't have the money to continue their pretty impressive work of past decades.
Europe: For one, Europe never put much effort into manned spaceflight. In the 60s, there was no European space program worth mentioning, and later on, there was no will to spend much money at it. Apart from some failures of early Ariane 5 models, Europe has shown that they can build powerful rockets. Their first Mars mission is mostly successful, and for an orbiter, Mars express can compete with anything anyone else has sent up there. The SMART-1 lunar probe is tiny and not exactly a racehorse, but its techonology is nothing to just diss either.
So, in short, nobody questions that the US is ahead. But don't discount the potential of other countries. In terms of technology, I doubt that either Europe or Russia are more than maybe a few years behind the curve...
We're seeing the new space race, and it's going to be something. Competition for the "high ground" between Europe, China, and the US is really getting started. If the US continues to become more insular, this will just be one more way that Americans feel the need to prove superiority. But it's also a way for Europe to assert its own primacy, and China's motive to be seen as the next superpower is clear, as well.
Whether any of it happens is almost immaterial: the perception will drive the funding, and scientists on all sides will take the money and attention happily. Let's hope that the end result really is "for all mankind".
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
We need another space race, CMON people, pilgrims didn't send boats to america to collect soil, they populated it!
Why do we need humans on Mars?
This means less resources for robotic missions, which frankly make a lot more sense than manned missions. From every practical standpoint. What do humans bring to the table? Propaganda value, and local decision-making ability. That is all. They need to be pampered and babied with one atmosphere of room temperature oxygen for the entire trip. And worst of all, they must be guaranteed passage back to Earth. So they have to take a huge rocket for a return trip with them when they go up- which is grossly impractical. It was bad enough when we had to do it from the moon. Mars is a much deeper gravity well to rocket out of. For some reason we are unwilling to accept the notion that we might send someone to another planet like Mars and leave them there or expect them to efficiently commit suicide. But that's because we're hypocrites. With failure rates as high as they are, committing suicide is practically what you're doing when you get on a NASA shuttle or rocket. So why don't we just admit this is a one-way trip and at least junk the requirement for a return trip? Or this is not going to happen.
"But we're running out of space for all these people on Earth!" I hear you say. May I point out that sending a man to Mars will deplete far more of the Earth's resources than merely allowing him to quietly live here in a crappy apartment. This probably implies that sending people into space will not be a practical method of relieving Earthbound congestion.
Serriously, Earth is the only suitable planet where we can freely exist in the natural environment, and there is nothing even close anywhere near by. Humans will not be leaving Earth in our current form. If the cosmic rays don't get you, the loss of bone mass will...or maybe the insanity imposed by the ten thousand years you would be travelling to get anywhere...if you could live that long.
I was at a book signing by Robert Zubrin (Earth on Mars, The Case for Mars) and he had a Q&A session - I asked him "Have you ever seen any opposition to plans to send a man to Mars due to contamination concerns?".
His response was twofold - secondarily dismissing the possibly of a "superbug" from Mars (apparently he gets a lot more paranoid people than myself asking a similar question). On the question of us contaminating evidence of life there, he said that while we would probably spread some microbes and the like around that if we did find anything it should be easy to trace the origin back to Earth instead of Mars, so that is would pose no serious problem for scientific research. Also of course he brought up that Mars had very likely had some meteorites cast off from earth "contaminating" Mars already, so to worry about bringing new things there was foolish.
Besides, it seems like if you were really worried about contamination you would seek a few million samples, not taking two or three and then starting the landrush!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Australia was a dumping ground for poor people the mother country didn't want and threw away as "criminals"... and hasn't turned out badly anyway.
A while ago, I heard some Aussie comment that he was glad that Australia got all the criminals and America got all the religious people.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
...and back here at Mission Control, Bob, they're all speechless. Noone seems to even want to try to explain why Astronaut Nolan decided to write his name on the Maritian surface with his own urine. Back to you Bob ...
RFC2119
So we're already contaminating Mars. There's nothing we can do about it.
I am excited at the prospect of multi-national space competition. Now that we have a small handfull (the EU/Russia, China, India, and the US) of countries, rather than two, with endevors focusing on projects out of Earth orbit, prospects for that competition we have all been looking for are getting better and better.
My second thought is that its nice to see a government policy toward space which isn't pure politi-bullshit. Its cool that the ESA came out and said they want to make sure to get the soil samples before they send people. Their statements sounds like commitment, while Bush's space plan sounds like election year politics.
Last time I checked, babies needed to learn how to crawl before learning how to run a 6-minute mile.
How about we take some baby steps first? Or....Lets wait the thousands of years it would take to get a probe to even the closest star, let alone "the deepest reaches of space". That would be a REAL waste of time.
Why do we need humans on Mars?
This means less resources for robotic missions, which frankly make a lot more sense than manned missions. From every practical standpoint.
As evidence, I point to the 2 rovers currently on Mars. As recently as last week, we didn't even know if they'd be able to move and collect data, all due to a programming glitch (and yes, I realize I'm simplifying greatly). Now that they're working perfectly again, we have the opportunity to explore perhaps a few dozen/hundred metres in any given direction.
Humans are self-programmable, and can potentially fix their own antennas when they go out of alignment. We have amazingly dextrous manipulators and locomotion systems that are simply beyond our current technology to reproduce artificially. A rover can get stuck on a rock, the human steps over it.
And a human can cover several KILOMETRES of ground to do experiements, with little added expense.
From a practical standpoint, there is a hell of a lot that robotic missions can't do.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Actually, the topic here was travel to Mars, not to another star. It's true that we'll probably never have a 6-hour flight to Mars. But there are no major engineering obstacles to reducing the time to a few months. This is quite comparable to the travel times from England to the New-World and Australian colonies in 1600.
It is well within our capabilities to colonize much of the solar system. Whether we'll ever reach another star is indeed a serious question, or rather a topic mostly for science-fiction writers. Unless we discover some Star Trek physics, we may never make it.
And in comparison with the Cro Magnon "invasion" of Europe 50,000 years ago, what little evidence we have of that implies that it took generations. The conquest actually took around 10,000 years. Scandinavia was only settled by modern humans about 5,000 years ago. The Solar System looks fairly easy in comparison.
We do have much better technology now. But we'll have to learn to do farming on asteroids and such to make a go of it.
And if there are living bacteria on Mars, it would be a real shame to contaminate them before we have a chance to study them thoroughly. They're probably not on the surface, of course; too much UV there. But it'll be interesting to see what's a few meters down.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
No, you cannot compare cosmic distances to travelling across the oceans. Sorry, in the real universe scale matters.
Approximate travel time to Mars: 1 year. Approximate travel time to row across the Pacific ocean: 6 months - 1 year. These are comparable figures, therefore your bald assertion above would appear to be incorrect.
The ocean analogy has been brought up before and it continues to demosntrate how ignorant most people are of basic science.
The ignorance being demonstrated here is your own. We are talking about going to Mars, not to another star system.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The shuttle has definitely cost a lot of money (and lives), and perhaps has lived longer than it should have, but it was an important step in our ascension to space. It is not entirely clear that any other path would have been faster or even possible, given the issue of funding, and the positive feedback loop resulting in getting the USAF and government behind the program.
The shuttle was a marvel for its time, and now somewhat antiquated in a large part due to the onward march of technology. This will be the history of every major human technological achievement for the forseeable future. It is easy to look back and see all the flaws. But it is not so easy to stop a multi-billion dollar project and start from scratch when you barely have the funds to continue operating on the current path.
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Admittaly, the conditions are harsh, but bacteria and other animals grow here under harsher conditions. At the mars equator, there is warmth. There is a small atmosphere that will support micro aerophilic bacteria if there is water. We have bacterial life here that grows literally at the south pole. It is not as barren as many would claim.Likewise, we have lots of nematodes, alge, and bacteria that grows in the total absence of sunlight (feeding on valcano's sulfer). We have lived here for quite some time on this planet and we still have new life that shows up in strange locations. It is very possible for life as we know it to be on Mars (assuming that there is water), or for a different type of life
As to a change of agenda, I seriously doubt it. The Europeans have been explorers for quite some time. They are keenly aware of the reasons for expanding explorations. Besides, it would be useful just to get mankind of this rock to help ensure the survivability of us
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We (the US) had a space program in the early 40's? Wow, cool.
You (the US) had intercontinental ballistic missiles before the space program? Wow, cool.
Bitchslapped. Neat.
The Soviet Union managed to combine all their resources towards acheiving just a few goals. Military power, a world class space program, and Olympic sports superiority. And they did those things pretty darn well.
Of course, with everything else neglected, life there was hell in more ways than I care to enumerate. I have to prefer the society where everyone does what they feel is important to get done, and only unite behind goals for their own purposes.
The scientific answer would be that we can adapt to our surroundings. Robots may be designed to do one or many things well, but humans can do almost anything reasonably.
The philosophic answer would probably be that it's in our nature to wander off and explore, just like Columbus.
The political answer is that "no one ever threw a ticker tape parade for a robot."
In the 50s-80s, it was about beating the USSR, now, Europe is still behind Russia and Russia is a 3rd world country!
Perhaps your impression is just related to the fact that the US media like to portray joint missions domestically as pure NASA successes, a phenomenon not entirely absent from other kinds of international ventures the US participated in. One of the examples that annoys many people to no end is the US seemingly taking sole credit for winning WWII.
In any case, Europe has mostly focused on commercial and astronomical use of space: unspectacular, but either financially or scientifically profitable. "First to..." kinds of missions don't seem to have been of so much interest.
Imagine there's no heaven, etc. No doubt you are right that a united humanity could achieve some impressive feats, be it for good or ill. One question, though: if there are to be no political, religious, or cultural boundaries, then whose political, religious, or cultural agenda is being followed?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Unstoppable plagues from outer space really are the stuff of science fiction. Virii and Bacilli here on earth have a hard enough time jumping the species barrier as it is - true it happens (and when it does it can be very nasty indeed) but it's an extremely rare event.
The possibility that live from elsewhere could do this are really nil. In fact there's two scenarios here:-
a. By far the most likely is that alien life uses a biochemisty different from our own. There's all sorts of potential reasons why you'd expect this - even if alien life is based on dna/protein the triplet coding could differ, the amino acid set could differ etc etc. Chances of an exact match are very, very low indeed and with it the chances of the alien pathogen being able to attack our biochemistry are extremely low to non-existant.
b. Biochemisty is the same as ours. This is unlikely but if it is true would be very, very interesting indeed as it would be virtually certain we had a common ancestor - which in turn would indicate (galactic) panspermia as championed by wickramasinghe and hoyle. In that cas the species barrier thing still makes infection unlikely, but a minor risk compared to the implications of the find!
You didn't mean it this way, I know, but that kind of uniformity is just what our good friend Osama bin Laden is aiming for: Once God (his), one Nation (his), one Vision (his). No thanks, even if it is "mine" instead of "his". Maybe 150+ countries are a bit much, but a world government concentrates power in a way that makes me nervous -- ask your average German or Brit what they think of the European Union, and you'll see what I mean.