Slashdot Mirror
Going Back to the Moon and Mars
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting three-part interview with author Dr. Andrew Chaikin discusses whether humans or machines could best explore the moon or Mars and even whether a crew could get along with each other for three years on an extended mission. His Mars planning draws on Apollo mission transcripts, and he cites mishaps with the Apollo 15 lunar rover almost sliding catastrophically down a mountain, an astronaut argument as to who took the most famous earthrise picture and what after 14 months in space, the Russian record-holder uses to recover his land legs: 'One vodka, one sauna'."
To anyone with any authority in the Federal government in general and/or NASA in specific (which means probably not SlashDotters, but hey, a geek can dream...):
1) Stop debating it. Stop doing cost-benefit analysis. I DON'T CARE IF WE DO LOSE A FEW LIVES. We NEED to proceed in our exploration of space.
2) Those who would be at risk to have their lives lost (read: astronauts) are willing to die in the line of duty anyhow, so who the hell are you to care?
3) We made it to the moon in fucking 1969. It's 2004 now, and we're still fucking around in orbit. In fact, we're barely doing that, and we're chicken-shitting out at every possible opportunity. (e.g. <voice timbre="Principal McVicker">Ohh, oh noo, we can't go back to fix Hubble again, someone might d-d-die...uhhhhh....<voice>) Where the fuck did we go wrong? Was this whole "space exploration" thing just the World's Biggest PR Stunt To Piss Off The Commies?
4) A decent space station is the first logical way station in our long-term trip to the stars. Stop slicing the budget of ISS. Actually, better yet, completely forget about ISS (after taking the guys there down...) and build a space station that doesn't suck, and that we won't do a half-assed job on completing. Mir, and the older Russian stations, and especially the American Skylab, were much more impressive in their day than ISS. This is fucking ridiculous. Our computers are 10,000 times faster than when we first went to the moon, and our space station technology is practically back-pedalling?
5) A moon base (yes, a permanent manned structure on the moon) is the second logical way station. We were supposed to have a moon base by the 1990s, right? That's what America was promised in the 1960s...right?
6) Only far-fringe lunatics care if you use nuclear bombs in space as a way to propel space vehicles (read: not as a weapon). Speaking as a very liberal child of hippies, I say: Use them. Use the bombs! If it's the quickest way to make a spacecraft that can travel at appreciable fractions of c, go for it! (Use them together; use them in peace...)
7) Even if we haven't completed (5) or (6): MANNED MISSION TO MARS. FUCKING NOW. IT'S 2004. WE'VE BEEN WAITING SINCE 1969.
8) WHY do we need to continue to explore space? Eventually, we'll lose Earth. Either we'll blow it up (highly likely), we'll wreck its climate (highly likely in the short-to-mid-term future), or an asteroid will hit it (unlikely in the near-term future but virtually ineviable in the long-term future). We have all of our eggs in one basket, and evidently we don't give a damn. What use is your short-term, corporate-style thinking if we're all going to die eventually? Take a lesson from the Japanese and start thinking long-term. Japanese firms regularly embark on projects that won't be finished until all of the founders are dead. They think long-term. America should emulate Japan in that respect.
9) (OT) Do not let Hubble die!!!
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I'm wondering what personal pet project of his Dr Chaikin would rather see the money saved from not sending humans into space go towards.
;)
Are we really content to just sit here on Earth and send machines off to see the rest of the universe? Are we content to say, "Well, yeah, we could've gone to Mars, but it wasn't safe"?
I think the answer to anyone who says we should stop sending people into space should be, "Well, when people stop wanting to go, we'll stop sending them." I mean, I'd be the first one to volunteer to go to Mars.
When it comes to actually landing on a planet and having a look around, a human (equipped with the necessary scientific instruments) could do a much better job than a robotic probe. The Spirit rover spent, what, a week just sitting there after landing because the JPL guys had to decide the best way to get it off the landing pad without it getting stuck? A human on Mars would have no such trouble.
And, of course, having humans on Mars would settle once and for all whether or not NASA's coloration of the Mars Rover images was accurate or not
Eventually we'll need more room and more resources, and other planets in the solar system are just the place to get them.
The "more room" argument, unfortunately, doesn't work. The space program will never been able to successfully ease population pressures on Earth by moving people off to other planets. Getting people out of a gravity well is too costly, and while you're getting a few people off, others are bearing children. If you like science-fiction, try Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, which explores the implications of this problem.
Crossing the ocean and crossing the cosmos are not the same thing. Scale matters in science. Added to which the sea can actually keep you alive if you use it wisely - the dangers of transoceanic journeys hence do not compare with interstellar travel.
Scrap iron. 10 cents per pound. A pound of iron outside earth's gravity well, ready to be used for space explaration. Priceless!