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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."
It's about time someone set a goal like this. Human expansion to Mars is a great idea -- it will push our technology (and some human beings in the process) to new limits. Personally, I've always wanted to go to Mars... I just don't want to take the trip there. Zero gee ain't for me! (Even if it's just for a while until we get a centrifuge running)
My first reaction on reading this, like the Russian bigwigs', was "bullshit." A Mars mission for a signle percentile of the estimated cost, with funding from a TV show? It sounds like every bad sci-fi "masterpiece" ever written by an over-enthusiastic fourteen-year-old.
... what if they know something NASA and the Russian equivalent don't know? I mean, just about every time some obscure group of private would-be genius inventors announces something great, it turns out to be vaporware. But every once in a while, these obscure people turn out to be the Wright brothers, or Goddard.
But
So, what if they pull it off? What actually happens then?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Seems to me that any "low cost" mission to mars would be suicide seeing as it's still dangerous with expensive NASA tech, I sure wouldn't want to get on a ship for mars that only cost 3.5 billion, seeing as the U.S. has Bombers that cost 1 Billion and a bomber is far simpler than an interplanetary voyage.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have been pwned because my
...in Russia, in aerospace/military contracts, it's unlikely the gov would be paying $1100 for a screwdriver, $90 for a single common LED, $150 for a single rack-mounting bolt etc.
If a New Zealander can construct a viable cruise missile for less than $5000US, then quite possibly $3.5B would go as far in Russia as $200B goes in the USA
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
It's funny, the Russians say it'll take $6.5 billion, privately funded, officials say it's impossible on such a budget. The Bush administration says it'll take $12 billion over five years, without setting a definitive timeline for a mission. "Experts" say it'll take upwards of a TRILLION $ and suspect it to happen, at the soonest, a decade. Everyone is just speculating, estimating and without any real plan or budget.
Sounds simplistic but what happens if we just split the bill?
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"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."
So sending 6 people there and bringing them back. Ok, so you got a space craft loaded with a garden, a medical facility, and a way of getting there and back. What they don't tell you is the people are expected to die about 2 months into the jouney, and the exploration on Mars will be done by bots. Afterwards, the robots are to be brought back to earth.
-Grump
Maybe that is what is going to happen, oh well. What do I know, I'm taking a history class, not a futre-ory space travel class.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
The only thing that I like about this article is the notion that a voyage to Mars could be made into a reality TV show. Because that's what it should be.
Space exploration is exactly that - exploration, and not science. Every time I turn on the news, I hear of a group that's trying to mountain-bike to the pole, or walk to the pole unsupported, or hot-air balloon to the pole, or walk there backwards. It's so futile it makes me weep.
I believe that exploration is a human need, important to us even when it serves no tangible purpose. Leave the poles to the Scientists. It's time to head for Mars!
Stories that have been rejected the first time over are often accepted later on, and appear on the page.
For instance, this particularly story I submitted at Sunday April 11, @05:54AM. It got shortly rejected after. I imagine a couple factors come into play:
The editors are, quite simply, editors. They don't go grousing for material, but rather rely on people to submit stuff for them. A problem logically arises in timing when news stories don't make it through the first try.
I haven't actually taken a look at how Slash works, but maybe it would make sense for editors to have to look through stories rejected by other editors before searching through new ones. This way, stuff that gets rejected by one editor doesn't end up on the front page days later by another submittee, approved by a different editor.
I'm not really complaining about my story not making it on the front page. I just imagine that if this story is really so old, that somebody else also submitted this one before me. Better having fresh news than stale news, right?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
And does the russian space program have $3.5 billion?
RTFA
Its clearly stated that this is private money and is not a Russian space program project.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
I doubt that this company really has the financial backing to do this. But upon thinking about it, I suspect that they do. Russia has proven that they can get us there (good rockets) and survive in space (1.5 years vs american 6 months). I am guessing that this group has an American backer who believes in getting us off this rock, but with a real plan. Is there anybody who has been backing space programs? anybody who has backed the X-prize as well as the group who was the front-runner from the gitgo? anybody who fits in the top 10 richest ppl in the world?
I suspect that Paul is backing these guys. This is the same guy who bet on a small software start-up, moved into a new industry called internet over cable ( he started in 1992, before others were even thinking of it), and now backs Burt Rutan for the X-prize. In addition, he is backing seti, and had monorail ran through his rock muesum. Quit a few accomplishments.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Zubrin has said before that the $trillion price-tags for a mars mission were wildly overinflated, and suggests a way that it can be done for around $20 billion/mission.
Off the rop of my head, each Soyuz mission costs Russia about $60 million - compare that to the $500 million/shuttle-mission cost ("cheap reusable"), or the sky high costs proposed for the possible replacements..
So yes, I think it could be possible that the Russians could do it all for a few $Billion - they dont mind taking a few more risks too. Whether these particular people are the right people to do it - that is another issue - a few Billion is still a lot of doe to hand over to someone.
As for the USA, I say if they dont want to give the money to Russia, let people like Rutan have some & see what comes out of it.
NASA seem to have lost the ability to effectively stage such a project, at least at an affordable cost. The whole question arises as to whether government agencys are the best way to exploit a technology, once it has reached a certain level of maturity. Zubrin wrote an excellent article comparing NASA productivity 61-73 (Apollo motivated) vs the Shuttle years - NASA were so much more productive, for much the same cash when focused on Apollo..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
About the same story was on telepolis (German online magazine) on April 1st 2004 ("Europa und Russland starten 2009 erste bemannte Mars-Expedition" (German) (Europe and Russia launch the first manned expedition to Mars in 2009)). The article on telepolis was obviously a joke and I guess this story also.
Zubrin estimates the cost at $20 billion, assuming typical government overruns. He figures a private company could do it for under $5 billion. These trillion-dollar estimates are based on what Zubrin calls the "Battlestar Galactica" plan...giant spacecraft assembled in orbit, carrying its return fuel out to Mars, preliminary moonbase, etc.
Why don't this Mars-centric missions do a Moon base before sending something to Mars? It's cheaper to send things to the Moon. And it's only a second (in transmision time) from here. If something begins to go wrong it could be fixed almost real-time. And after having a Moon base, making the equipment for the mars missions would be made in the Moon, having to escape from a sixth of Earth's gravity (cheaper launch).
...) should be send closer. And there's metal in the Moon too, so a mining factory is posible, sending back to Earth some of the minerals (more money to fund a launch) and things done in lower gravity environment (chips? medicines? 1kg tomatoes? :-) ).
Material (propelent, water, food,