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."

Comments

American Companies

[artlu]

I am surprised that a company like Boeing has not attempted to break into the privatized space arena. It seems like the government regulations/costs are too constricting to focus on space travel from a government perspective. Maybe we'll have an X-Prize to mars within the next 25 years!

Re:American Companies

[bilsaysthis]

You're forgetting that the nations of the world, though the UN, have already signed a treaty that prevents any single nation or private corporate entity from exploiting extraterrestrial resources. No corp would be allowed to go to the Asteroid Belt and bring *anything* back unless they agreed to give the minerals to the UN for use/dispersal.

Re:Money

[imsabbel]

Hm. The last missions by the usa or the eu didnt cost more than a big movie...
There are plenty of people that could finance a probe to mars instead of, say buying a football stadium or a fleet of privat jets or whatever billionaires do with all their money...

Aiming High

[ravenspear]

While I applaud attempts like this, if governments couldn't get it right with Beagle then private orgs are certainly going to face some very difficult work to make this happen.

Re:Money

[miu]

It'll cost 10 million euros! Not a penny less, not a penny more.

I defy you to find a group of people who can manage to bring in lunch in at the initially projected price. Unless these have purchased all their hardware (and none of it fails in the meantime), paid all their people (and none of em die or jump ship), paid all their service fees (and none of the providers goes out of business or sells the service out from under them), and 10 million other things I can't think of then "not a penny less, not a penny more" is the kind of head in sand statement that will cause them to fail or flail around missing deadlines until they fail.

Easily fixed

[CiXeL]

SPOIL the environment there. Send a simple probe containing dozens of cultures of bacteria and lichen that would most likely survive the environment and have it land in an area most suitable. If the environment is already contaminated. There won't be as much opposition. Besides, we're going to have to contaminate it one way or another unless we just never intend to colonize it which is just a waste.

Re:Easily fixed

[Reality Master 101]

Theoretically possible, although I tend to think you could bomb the area with high temp bombs to sterilize the landing area. In any case, sure, it's possible, if you want your ass landed in jail for the rest of your life. One nut can't just send a "simple probe", it takes a lot of nuts with a lot of money, who don't mind being villainized for the rest of human history.

As for whether it's a "waste" to not colonize it, I'm not convinced that it isn't a waste. Mars a big freaking ROCK. It's not that interesting of a place to colonize.

I personally believe the future of colonization are huge human-built space stations with spin gravity (probably Cylinders) with earth-like environments. There's little that can't provide over living on a rock.

We just need to get over the romantic notion that it's fun to live on a rock that's not the earth. The only thing that makes it exciting is the fact that no one has done it, but from a realistic standpoint, there just ain't that much that's interesting about it.

Re:Wow, better get cracking...!

[fname]

Maybe not what you meant, but there has been a commercial satellite that orbited the moon. This was in 1998, when a launch mishap left a satellite in a useless, near Geosync orbit. It was sent around the moon (twice, I think) to help it get into GEO. I think getting a moon orbiter is well within reach on a commercial scale, but Mars is a lot tougher and landing is a lot tougher.

Re:Wow, better get cracking...!

[JambisJubilee]

NASA also has the responsibility to make sure our bioforms don't contaminate other (possible) ecosystems - not only pre-mission, but end-mission as well. Take Galileo's crash into Jupiter for example.

I'm not sure whether we can trust private corporations with the same responsibility

Re:What's the point?

[Rxke]

So these scientists studied and worked all their lives for nothing? They'd better give up doing what they're good at, and search for another job in wellfare/environmental development etc.?
Think about it, this is in essence what you are proposing.
No use to be a scientist/engineer/whatever if you decide to use *all* your money for 'better' goals. For them these goals you propose ae equally valid, but it's just not *their* forte. And again and again and again: money 'wasted' on stuff like this doesn't disappear into thin air, it is an investment in jobs, material science, etc.
You can't just go and kill sciencebudgets to use that money for the 'good cause.'

And this 'trying to compete with NASA' mantra is getting old. What's everyone not working for NASA supposed to do? let NASA run 100% of spaceflight business and bail out?
That's like saying to Microsoft: "yea, you're the biggest, we (other OS'es,) quit, have fun."