Slashdot Mirror
Russian Group Plans Manned Mars Mission By 2011
weekendwarrior1980 writes "A group of Russian space experts on Friday announced an ambitious plan to send a six-man crew to Mars within a decade, a project it said would cost only $3.5 billion. Russian space officials dismissed the project as nonsense. They plan to have 6 people explore Mars for months before returning to Earth. The Mission would take 3 years, and would depend on fully equipped spacecraft containing its own garden, medical facilities etc."
Of course, there's the alternate explaination of the 1 Trillion figure - which is that it's completely made up.
I suppose this group will become the first to claim land for itself on Mars. They can't claim it as an appropriation by claim of sovereignty for Russia, but if it's a private mission they should be able to claim it for themselves, or Fox-Media-Rocket-Corp or whoever.
The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space says nothing about non-state missions, unfortunately. I'm not even sure the rules apply to entities not parties to the treaty.
Is there a doctor of law in the building?
I remember seeing a documentary when I was a child that said that the Soviet (this was coldwar times) Energia-Vulkan rocket could power a mission all the way to mars and back. Apparently Energia Vulkan was scrapped for Energia Buran (the launch rocket for the now defunct Russian shuttle), but Energia Vulkan's design is an Energia Buran with a total of 8 boosters . . . Apparently its not that different from from the Energia Buran (built to launch the now defunct Russian shuttle). A few details here
Do you have any links to back up your assertion? While the cruise missile guy exists (although he did not actually build the missile, just asserted it was theoretically possible), I have found nothing about the stealth bomber's necessity to be repainted.
You also forget that cruise missiles do not carry passengers. Similarly, if your stealth bomber does show up on enemy radar, there is no guarantee that you will die. If your poorly made Russian reality TV spaceship has problems, then you are just screwed.
Assuming that this group uses a Proton launcher (the heavy Russian launcher currently used to lift ISS sections and Soyuz spacecraft) they would only be able to lift 44,000 lbs into LEO per launch.
The likely weight for a fully-fueled Mars base would be in the neighborhood of 1 million pounds - and that's being conservative. You not only need the habitation modules, but the garden modules, consumables for three years, and propellant. 2 million might be closer.
That's about 23 launches to just to get all the material in LEO.
A Proton launch costs about $35-$70 million dollars.
That's $1.14 billion, just to get everything into LEO. Even then, that's a conservative estimate. The real costs, depending on weight could be close to $3 billion.
That doesn't include the hundreds of millions in R&D needed to develop a working spacecraft, training for astronauts, keeping a working command and control center for 3 years, insurance, legal fees, or any of the other costs.
In short, this doesn't even pass the smell test.
Sterilization isn't as difficult as you seem to think, especially when said "dirty infectious human[s]" would be encased in tough spacesuits which would be easy to sterilize chemically.
Do you have any links to back up your assertion? While the cruise missile guy exists [aardvark.co.nz] (although he did not actually build the missile, just asserted it was theoretically possible), I have found nothing about the stealth bomber's necessity to be repainted.
Taken from the this site:
Stealth coatings present a host of other problems. To be effective, the plane's surface must be kept perfectly slick. Exposure to rain or hail can cause nicks and scratches that dramatically increase the craft's radar signature. Even optimal flying conditions take a toll on a plane's skin. In a study released in June 1998, congressional investigators who observed a B-2 after one test flight reported that the plane "had damaged tape, caulk, paint, and heat tiles.... In addition, we observed hydraulic fluid leaks beneath the aircraft that further damaged the caulk."
If you dig around google, you will find other relavent links as well.
The Russians had the N-1 moon rocket, which they did not brag about because they blew it up 3 or 4 times and never could get it to work.
One of the beauties of "capitalism" was once the government came up with a Moon program (Apollo, Saturn, lunar-orbit rendezvous), they stuck with it and threw money at it until it happened. One of the ironies of centrally-planned "communism" is that weren't sure if they were even in a race to the Moon, and when it was decided they were in such a race, they scrapped all their earlier plans and decided to follow the plan of the "capitalists" (L-1/LK, N-1, lunar-orbit rendezvous), only their head rocket airframe guy was in some kind of snit with their head rocket engine guy, so he had to get a jet engine guy to build him a rocket engine that was so underpowered that he needed 30 of them on the first stage, and the original rocket engine guy went over to the rival rocket airframe guy who was running steady political interference to get the whole program scrapped and start over with the second rocket airframe guy and the original rocket engine guy.
While the Russian Moon program was underfunded and supposedly got a lot less money than the American one, and would have worked if their rocket didn't blow up, I wonder how may guys they had working on L-1/LK/N-1 and if it was really fewer guys than Apollo/Saturn?
And how is it that the Russians who couldn't get a successful N-1 launch were able to get (I believe) 2 successful Energia launches without any failures. And how many guys did they have working over what period of time to pull that one off? And even given the starvation wages a person makes in Russian aerospace these days, does the small-n billion dollars for a Russian Mars program make sense?
Even if they throw safety out the window, they are going to need to bring back the Energia, which I understand that exists only as an enormous doorstop right now, and the level of effort of the Energia is a minimum requirement for just getting off the ground.
The garden part is what shows that this project is nothing but talk. I've seen studies that show it's cheaper, lighter and more reliable to pack the food/air/water for a person than to rely on a garden to do the work. And for a 3-year trip? A garden would only be efficient if you are going on a REALLY long trip, like one of those multi-generational ships proposed for interstellar travel.
I think the garden is marketing to the masses, who may not know about the Biosphere debacle but grasp quickly the theoretical concept behind it.
Maybe they should just make the TV show here on Earth and pretend it's in space, sort of like what they claimed the US did with the moon.
Of course, the N1 never successfully flew. Energia was a good rocket, but only launched twice, and much like Saturn V, it no longer exists; they've all been broken down. The Russian circumlunar program was plagued with problems - they had 8 failures prior to a successful circumlunar (which occurred post-Apollo 8).
Don't get me wrong, the Russians have made some great hardware - the Soyuz is an amazing capsule. And their liquid-fuel engines are generally much, much better than ours (note that the EELV Atlas uses a Russian-built engine). But their experience with launches headed out of Earth's gravity well is no better, and arguably worse, than that of the US.
Really, in the end, a joint effort is the only thing that would make any sense, but with Bush in office, that is (to say the least) unlikely.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
This is getting really, really dull. A few /.ers spew some FUD about how it's dangerous or expensive or 'a pipe dream' and then I gotta come in and lay out the truth for them to not believe again.
While it is indisputable that the technology that is required to travel to Mars and establish a rudimentary colony around the hull of the space craft and any transported plants and animals exists and can be taken to Mars (at great cost), it is highly doubtful that they would be able to bring themselves back from the red planet.
All the materials exist on Mars to make fuel and oxygen and even a spacecraft for the return trip. Between the water in the soil and the CO2 in the atmosphere, it would take very simple and well-known chemical reactions to turn them into methane for fuel and oxygen to breathe.
Plants can be transported as seeds and planted in Martian soil (with some fertilizer, probably from the crew) or in hydroponics. In pressurized greenhouses with CO2 gas in them, they'll grow like gangbusters, providing more than enough food. Animals can be brought later (starting with tilapia, a readily farmed fish). But it should be stated that until there is a good farmacological ecosystem, we shouldn't think of bringing things like cattle; they're just too expensive to grow.
The cost of taking the fuel for the return trip would be absolutely astronomical considering the extensive modifications necessary to ensure that the fuel does not leak over the course of the three year mission.
Then don't take the fuel! Make it there. Do you think Lewis and Clark brought all the food and firewood they were going to need? Of course not; that would have made the mission prohibitivly expensive.
Besides all that, should we really be sending living organisms to a virtually uncontaminated environment so soon? We have just discovered real evidence of flowing water once existing on the planet, and this in turn could lead to evidence of fossilized microbes and other lifeforms that we would threaten with destruction if we were to introduce Earth microbes that the Martian microbes could not fight.
Earth microbes are so different from Mars microbes there would be almost no way for them to survive outside of the spacecraft. It would be like trying to infect a human being with the chemosynthetic bacteria from the bottom of the ocean; the habitats are too different for them to survive. You don't see people disinfecting the submersibles that travel down there, do you?
More study is needed, as is more thought on the impact of colonizing Mars. We will no doubt go there eventually and it may become our home away from home, but sending up a bunch of Russians to tromp around what may be a life-rich planet (under the surface) seems like a mission of putting the cart before the horse.
The goal of exploring Mars should be to colonize it. There is little threat to Martian microbes (should they exist) from Earth organisms, and if we are going to terraform it, that could take 500 years, more than enough time to study the microbes, who will adapt.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
So you refine your return fuel on the surface of Mars. Entirely feasible.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!