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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 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
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.
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.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)