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

[antifoidulus]

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...

Re:American Companies

[qbzzt]

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.

Re:American Companies

[Seoulstriker]

I am surprised that a company like Boeing has not attempted to break into the privatized space arena.

Boeing doesn't have the technology or motive to travel to Mars yet. I think we'll see Union Aerospace Corporation really go all out on this and try to establish a Mars base by 2145. The UAC has the mining and space technology to outdo easily any other space ventures.

Re:American Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Boeing did an internal study on building a business out of privately funded exploration of Mars. Unfortunately, the resulting 3-phase business plan was:

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???

So they shelved it.

Re:American Companies

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

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.

Re:American Companies

[Coryoth]

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.

Re:American Companies

[maxpublic]

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

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:American Companies

[maxpublic]

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

Re:American Companies

[UID1000000]

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. $$$.

Irony

[jdkane]

Wouldn't that be hilarious of the Martians "plans a research flight up to the year 2009 to" Earth.

Wow, better get cracking...!

[Jugalator]

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. :-)

Re:Wow, better get cracking...!

[ZZeta]

"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."

Be careful, this has nothing to do with staying is space for a long time. They aren't sending a human, living, person.

It's all right there in google's attempt at translating.

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.

Yeah right....

[gnuman99]

Yeah, and by 2001 they will go to Jupiter... oh wait..

Seriously, they can't even get to *Earth's* orbit, and they are planning to go to Mars?

Re:Yeah right....

[mjbkinx]

Seriously, they can't even get to *Earth's* orbit, and they are planning to go to Mars?

they have sent up private amateur radio satellites into earth orbit for years using some spare space in ESAs arianes since 1980.
they're a rather large group of scientists who work on the project for free in their spare time.

here are some infos in english (and german)

Let me guess...

[Sponge Bath]

Powered by cold fusion and manned by Ewoks.

shuttle

[IAR80]

Maybe they plan to use the shuttle form the Bahrain deseret.

You rocket scientists out there...

[MisanthropicProgram]

do you really think it can be done for ten million euros as they say in the article?

Re:You rocket scientists out there...

[bwy]

Considering SpaceShipOne rings in at around $20 mil US, and most people would say that they operate pretty efficiently and without any ridiculous overhead, I'd hate to see what 10 mil euros will buy when it comes to building a Mars ship.

Private??

[euxneks]

This trip to mars brought to you by McDonalds: I'm Lovin' It!

About AMSAT's Phase 5-A

[Koyaanisqatsi]

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

Absent from the article...

[irokitt]

Is the fact that the company formed for the mission is named The Union Aerospace Corporation.

Are they asking for volunteers yet?

Translation of the Spiegel article

[Daikiki]

I'm not a native speaker, mind, but should be a little less incomprehensible than what the fish churns out ;)
--
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.

Re:Translation of the Spiegel article

[Daikiki]

The mission of exploration will cost around 700 million Euros

Oops. That was supposed to read 10 million Euros, not 700 million Euros. I do apologize.

Sorry, are we talking about the man who...

[leonbrooks]

...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.

Re:Sorry, are we talking about the man who...

[AKAImBatman]

Has anyone told you that Chicago (MS-Windows-95) almost shipped without a web browser because of that?

It DID ship without a web browser. Internet Explorer was shipped a few months later with the awesome ability to *snicker* show web pages while they were loading. Yet all downloads happened in the same browser windoe. i.e. If you clicked on a link to download, you'd then have to wait as the browser load bar told you the status of the download. If you left the page, you'd lose the downlaod.

Hey, let me ask a question. . .

[Sialagogue]

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."

with an 'M'

[LuxFX]

You know what sucks? Seeing this headline and reading "Planned" as "Manned". I was getting all excited.

Three Words

[CiXeL]

"Oil on Titan"

Re:Prepare yourselves...

[bigpat]

"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.