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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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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!
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artlu.net
Wouldn't that be hilarious of the Martians "plans a research flight up to the year 2009 to" Earth.
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?
Powered by cold fusion and manned by Ewoks.
Goatse has funded several probes to Uranus.
"How can a private group raise the money for a mission like this? I would think the cost would easily be in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, maybe the billion dollar range."
Please! RTFA!
It'll cost 10 million euros! Not a penny less, not a penny more.
I don't remember the exact current exchange, but I think that should be a little over 12 million US. Dollars.
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...
Suse
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Maybe they plan to use the shuttle form the Bahrain deseret.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Private Mars Mission isn't kinky in itself, but if you couple it with the two subheadings in the article:
500 Kilos heavy probe
and
Favorable Mars position
Suddeny, "Private" takes on a whole new meaning...
do you really think it can be done for ten million euros as they say in the article?
This trip to mars brought to you by McDonalds: I'm Lovin' It!
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
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...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
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.
Here is a PDF with some discussion on the planned Phase 5-A mission, or a amateur satelite to Mars
:-)
http://www.amsat-dl.org/p5a/p5a-to-mars.pdf
And here is the main Phase 5-A website on AMSAT-DL, with text in both German and English:
http://www.amsat-dl.org/p5a/
Stuff like this makes you proud of holding a HAM license
73s
I imagine the sub-etha communication system will be provided by WorldCom and the fusion propulsion unit by Enron. Once it launches and hasn't been heard from for a while, Arthur Andersen will certify that the craft did, in fact, land on Mars as projected, steered there by the invisible hand.
A few quarters later, the taxpayer will bail out the investors.
Is the fact that the company formed for the mission is named The Union Aerospace Corporation.
Are they asking for volunteers yet?
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
I'm not a native speaker, mind, but should be a little less incomprehensible than what the fish churns out ;)
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Marburg Consortium plans mars mission before 2009
A German consortium of scientists, engineers, and technicians wants to prove that private groups are also in the race for interplanetary flights. By 2009, the group plans to send a probe and a satellite to Mars.
The Amsat consortium has approximately 1200 members working largely as volunteers on the rpoject. The mission of exploration will cost around 700 million Euros, according to Amsat in Bochum, Saturday.
The goal of the mission is to prove that private organizations can make space flights within the solar system possible, according to Karl Meinzer, professor of Space Flight Technology at the University of Stuttgart. The 500 kilogram probe will be put into earth orbit on board an Arianne rocket.
The space flight organization intends to purchase spare capacity on a rocket that would not be filled enitrely by other satellites. Later the probe would be brought into an orbit around Mars where it would serve as a communications relay.
Ground Control in Bochum
Meinzer says, We'd be able to receive signals from transmitters already on Mars". The Observatory in Bochum would serve as ground control. Before the actual flight to Mars could commence, the probe will have to be placed into orbit around the Earth. "We can't set a term for the rocket launch, but we must begin the flight to Mars within a limited timeframe." In 2007 and 2009 Mars will be in a beneficial location for the flight.
After the nine month flight to the neighbouring planet the probe will begin sending signals from Mars to Earth. The signals will be broadcast on amateur radio frequencies, so that anybody with a transceiver will be able to receive them.
Another goal of the mission will be investigation of the Martian atmosphere. To achieve this, the Munich Mars Society, also an organization of scholars and technicians, wants to send along the "Archimedes" probe on the mission to the red planet. "Once in Martian orbit, a 14 meter diameter balloon will inflate above the probe", said Hannes Gabriel of the Mars Society. The balloon will slow down substantially as it glides through the atmosphere towards the surface of the planet with its landing craft. The researchers hope this will yield better opportunities to collect data.
The 30 year old Amsat consortium has succesfully lanched satellites into space, according to Meinzer. Since the eightiies they have participated in a total of nine missions.
I want the fire back.
...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
Just how stupid does an announcement have to be before working journalists decide not to report it? A private mission to Mars by 2009?
Okay fine, in that same spirit:
"Dear Speigel:
I plan to evolve into a being composed entirely of ionized gas and electromagnetic energy by 2009. I realize this is an ambitious timeframe, but with recent advances in genetic engineering and non-CFC spray bottle technology I believe it's achievable.
Please call me if you have any questions, or I'll be happy to seep into your offices in five years."
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
You know what sucks? Seeing this headline and reading "Planned" as "Manned". I was getting all excited.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
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.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
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.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
"Oil on Titan"
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
"My prediction: If any private company gets within sniffing distance of sending people to Mars, the environmentalists and scientists will go hand-in-hand screaming about contaminating the native environment."
Then we'll just have to grind up the "environmentalists" for martian fertilizer.
"The Company" is more formally known as Weyland-Yutani.
Just FYI..
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."