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Private Mars Mission Planned For 2009
Enkidu writes "Spiegel and other German media are reporting that a complete private Mars mission (automated translation) is planned for 2009. Organizations behind are AMSAT and Mars Society Germany."
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No private organization has even been to the moon, and NASA is going pretty great lengths to ensure they understand all effects and implications from staying in space a very long time.
:-)
Seems overly ambitious to me, although the goal sounds honorable.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Seriously, they can't even get to *Earth's* orbit, and they are planning to go to Mars?
As one of the largest provider of aerospace technologies to the US government, why on earth would Boeing compete with itself? Sure, Boeing isn't going to Mars, but they have produced a lot of stuff that went up into space...
Monstar L
I am surprised that a company like Boeing has not attempted to break into the privatized space arena.
There are US companies in this arena, but Boeing is too big and corporate for it. Big companies like guaranteed profits, not high-risk high-reward ventures like private space flight.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
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So they shelved it.
How can a private group raise the money for a mission like this?
the point is not raising 100 billons to fund a mission to mars, the point is doing it for less than 100 billons...
do you really think it can be done for ten million euros as they say in the article?
...missed or almost missed practically every single major turn of the computer industry, such as the Internet? Has anyone told you that Chicago (MS-Windows-95) almost shipped without a web browser because of that? Have you ever read "The Road Behind^WAhead"? Pile of money? Check. Vision...? Anyone...?
If anyone from Microsoft did such a thing, it would be Paul Allen - who IPOF is funding Bert Rutan - but I think he'd require more signs of life on Mars before he cut a cheque for it, since he seems to be an evangelist for materialism.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Maybe it's because boeing is smart anough to relize that there isn't money in space travel. About the best you can do right now is selling space hardware to others (nasa) or launching commercial satilites.
Space travel lacks one big thing. A true compelling reason that everyone agrees on that makes it needed, and makes it worthwhile, to make money from space travel is all but impossible. If say we ran out of gold on earth, and it became the most important thing to keap life going on earth, and we found some out and space, then you would have something. Until such things happen, it's not going to work. Space tourism will never keap it up since there isn't anough people wanting to go, or have anough money to go. And often people who want to go are those without the money, and those with the money are the ones who don't care to go.
There's no financial incentive to go to Mars. Not for the government, less so for corporations.
Unless you could charter enough of the red stuff back by the ton and sell half a gram for a few dozen millions, then it might turn a few corporate heads.
Maybe it's because boeing is smart anough to relize that there isn't money in space travel. About the best you can do right now is selling space hardware to others (nasa) or launching commercial satilites.
Space travel lacks one big thing. A true compelling reason that everyone agrees on that makes it needed, and makes it worthwhile, to make money from space travel is all but impossible.
Correct, space travel is currently uneconomic. That does not make it pointless to invest in efforts researching it, because if you make it sufficently cheap, it will be economic. Whether space travel is "worth it" is a function of the cost of space travel. Bring that cost down, and all of a sudden your equation changes.
When flight was first invented it wasn't all that practical or economic either. Flying across oceans was simply beyond the range of aircraft, and rail and trucking was almost as fast as airplanes, but a hell of a lot less expensive. "Why would anyone use airplanes for transport? All you do is get a nice view from up there which isn't enough to sustain an industry. Building planes big enough to carry any sort of worthwhile load would be unbelievably expensive - there's just no money in it."
You don't need a compelling reason, you just need to keep researching new technology and improvements to make space travel cheap and efficient. That's what the X-prize is all about - bringing low cost reusable launch systems into existence. Scaled Composites looks like they've pulled it off too - though we'll have to wait to be sure.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
The first company capable of building ships able to go to the asteroid belt and conduct mining operations, then return to Earth with the bounty will make itself unbelievably rich. There's unimaginable wealth scattered throughout the solar system; the biggest obstacle right now is that it costs more to extract that wealth than you could expect to gain.
To think that this situation will remain forever unchanged is just plain foolish. Affordable space travel will be developed no matter the whining of the naysayers. Each advance puts *someone* that much closer to cashing in on a frontier that'll make the current crop of billionaires look like amateurs in comparison.
It won't be a race between corporations who can't look beyond the quarter, much less strain themselves over a five-year plan. It'll be a race between people with vision and the ability to plan 20, 30 or even 50 years in advance. *They* will be the ones to win, and have the last laugh over everyone who said that it couldn't be done.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
And *you're* forgetting that there is no one-world government, and that any country with a corporation capable of make a profit off of space will whip out their willy and piss in the U.N.'s general direction.
Do you honestly think the U.S. would bow to any U.N. treaty over something like this? Pause a moment while I laugh my ass off.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
"When flight was first invented it wasn't all that practical or economic either."
Exactly. But if we learn from the history of flight, I think most people will realize that the major catalyst that is going to get us into a space industry is for its military benefits.
If there is a major war between two world powers in the next 20 years, there will probably be a very large space industry in 30 years.
I think that they should be kicking themselves in the arse now. There is one valuable asset elsewhere---land. I don't see any "new" land here on Earth. Like people have said before, "God isn't making any more land". It's true the most valuable asset out there is land.
The problem that exists is the fact that the land isn't something that we can utilize right now. The technology exists to make habitats in extreme places like Mars or the Moon but the technology to get it there is what's lacking.
I think that is the movitation to get into space personally. It's got to be something that we can keep. Wouldn't it be great to have a home here and a condo on a nice flat out on Mars? Sure the ping time would suck when playing your favorite FPS and the commute would be a bitch but new industries would develop. This is where the biggest payoff would be. If someone privately went to the Moon or to Mars and colonized. If the could colonize and sustain they could charge whatever they wanted to allow people to move into their colony. It's kinda like the expansion of America. Once there they'd need a shitload of transportation, communications, etc. $$$.
UID 1000000 is just around the corner.