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ESA Aiming for Martian Probe in 2011
allanj writes "According to the BBC, the ESA is set to send a robotic probe to Mars around 2011. They apparently want to return samples of Martian soil with the probe - cool idea if it works better than Beagle 2 did..." From the article: "They still require a great deal of further detail and the agency's member states will also have to sign off the mission. Ministers will have their say when the Esa Council meets in December."
Today the Council of Elders confirmed the rumours that the sinister blue planet third from our star is planning to send yet another one of its mechanical invaders.
K'breel, speaker for the Council, stressed that there was no cause for alarm:
When questioned whether the rumours that the blue planet was almost covered in poisonous, corrosive di-hydrogen oxide, as many independent scientists have asserted, had any validity, K'breel declined comment.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
why does NASA and the ESA (and other space agencies) have to each send their own probes. Due to the cost of space missions, wouldn't a more sharing of resources be useful. For instance, one agency pays for the ground control, another for the rockets, another for the actual probe. Sharing of costs and resources would allow for more missions and less parnoia about how one nation uses space.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
They tell subscribers they can alert them to dupes, but when subscribers do, they're often ignored. Yes, they're ignoring the people that PAY THEM REAL MONEY.
If they dupe, then they should suffer all of the comments about the dupe. They not, under any circumstances, delete a story after it has gone live and people have commented on it. It's not just gone from the front page, it's completely inaccessible.
All of the comments made are gone, too, yet they remain in people's profiles. Slashdot used to claim (and the FAQ still does) that they won't delete comments unless facing legal action. Well, there was no legal action here and Zonk just deleted several dozen comments.
Is our current level of technology the end state for space probes? It seems we hear about a new mission every week built with the same old technology. I mean, SMART-1 was a different story, it was new technology and the mission was simply to test fly it. That's what we should be doing isn't it? Flying new technology so we can get to Mars in two weeks instead of two years.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Well, we're pretty sure that they know how to hit Mars!
Dialectician. Archology.
Well, at least us Europeans won't have trouble with the metric system...
They proved that with the beagle 2 they are pretty good at digging in on Mars too.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
First you'll have to get different countries to agree on exactly what to send to collect what, won't you? As well as who to hire - what staff, from which countries. As well as the budget, who's responsible for what parts, where the parts are being purchased/made, what data's being collected, who this data will be shared with, and on and on and on.
yes, yes, indeed, why would we need search for meaning of life on mars when you can find that answer right here on earth, we just need to read the bible!!
Its you.
Space exploration is a drop in the bucket compared to other components of a nations budget.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
The "ESA Aiming for Martian Probe" makes it look like the ESA is sighting targets on a probe from Mars....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
So remember children, what should you do if a supernova happens in your solar system? Yes, that's right. Duck and cover.
It's about time we probed them back.
If the mars rovers were to discover proof that there is still life on Mars it would be in the interest of every pharmaceutical company on earth to get that sample into their lab before their competitor. One alien microbe would be worth more than a zillion times its weight in gold. The ability to study a new form of life would give us so much insight into the life sciences that we could help many more "folks" than if we shut our eyes and turn our back on the universe.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The problem, QuantamG, is that beauracracy is typically unwilling to explore new methods when old, proven methods are available.
Compounding this problem is the fact that American politicians/higher-ups seem to lack the ability to say, "I'm sorry, I screwed up. Everyone makes mistakes," so possibly funding a program that fails in the public eye is a non-option.
It is true that the government has programs that fail all the time [computerworld.com]; it's just that something like space travel is more suitable for general public news consumption so it's more widely reported and therefore a touchy subject for most politicians.
I agree, we should be putting money into exploring better technology now, so space endeavors will be more efficient later. All the more reason to do things like voting and calling your congresspersons
P.S.- The above statement isn't an invitation to talk about how fucked up American politics are. Sorry if anyone views it that way.
The next logical step for Mars is sample return. According to this page NASA expects to do a sample return in 2013. I wonder if an earlier European mission will change that plan any?
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Is it me, or are just wasting money and time looking for the meaning of life when we could better spend the time and money helping folks on this planet?
What a boring world it would be if we did not explore!
As for the time and money - do you realise that the amount spent on space exploration is a tiny fraction of defense spending?
At last we're probing the Martians for a change. I say they had it coming.
Competition between the US and USSR is what started space exploration and put man on the moon, not to mention uncountable other scientific achievements. Even though there isn't nearly as much money being put in to it now as there was forty years ago, competition will, as always, lead to innovation.
My guess is that the ESA doesn't trust NASA.
We Americans have a pretty interesting history regarding disclosing facts about basic science, research and non-terrestrial activities (at least when such science, research and non-terrestrial activities occur within the event horizon of the US blcack budget).
A more interesting question than the ESA doesn't work with NASA may be, if the ESA finds anything interesting how will NASA respond? Will it be, "Wow, why didn't we ever notice that?
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
It probably wouldn't be any less boring or more interesting than it is now. Your hypothetical reality presupposes knowledge of our current reality.
NJ Local Music Scene
There is a weight[1] limit on all current rockets, which depends on the destination, how fast you want to get there, other such factors. Thus if the ESA and US consider a mission that needs and entire rocket launch itself, there is no point in coperating because in the end much will need to be duplicated.
Another reason to not coperate is it makes for fault tolerance. Most missions are one offs that will never be run again (sometimes two are three offs). It takes to long to get a mission going and so long between missions that technology has advanced enough between each one that you need to design from scratch each time. When the US and ESA work separately, failures by one are worked around. Thus there are two working rovers on Mars now, even though the ESA's failed. If they had worked together there might be no rover should the one mission have failed. (and never mind the US funded two itself)
That said, NASA and ESA do work together where it makes sense. That Saturn probe (I can't spell the moon's name) was a joint project. A good way to make use of two limited budgets. Which is often a factor.
[1]Yes, weight, not mass. Mass is completely unlimited, you just trade mass for velocity according to newton's law: f=ma, etc. Weight is limited because you need to get the weight out of a gravity well.
It probably wouldn't be any less boring or more interesting than it is now. Your hypothetical reality presupposes knowledge of our current reality.
Of course a future in which space exploration was banned due to expense would be more boring!
On the propulsion question, it seems like their plan is to get enough fuel to achieve Mars escape velocity up to Earth escape velocity to get it to the surface of Mars in the first place. It sounds like this is heading towards being just an enormous amount of rocket fuel moving back and forth. I don't see any real advancement in science in us trucking around gargantuan loads of the same old fuels. Sure, it's very expensive and takes a lot of resources, but it's still just rocket science, something we've been doing for decades.
It also doesn't get us any closer to manned missions. It seems like to do a manned Mars mission you need to get enough fuel to the surface of Mars to a) support all the surface activities there and b) lift the astronauts back off the Mars surface and c) lift the astronauts back off the Mars surface. Yes, b) and c) are the same; I don't think anyone would propose sending astronauts over there without a backup lift-off plan. But anyway, when you add up all the fuel in a, b, and c, plus crew habitations and science gear, you end up needing many tons of stuff on the surface of Mars, and it costs something like $10,000/pound to get stuff off of Earth so just the fuel costs alone are going to be mind boggling, and in the end we haven't developed anything new. Just more big rockets.
It seems to me that the whole thing is a pointless waste unless we develop methods of producing fuel on Mars itself, so round-trips can become a more routine thing and we can start thinking about larger probes even further afield.
NB, I am not a rocket scientist.
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Educational software
The equipment required to extract fuel from the Martian atmosphere will necessarily be pretty hefty. You'd need a nuclear reactor or a really large array of solar panels.
It would cost a fair amount to develop, manufacture, and transport this equipment.
If you are only planning a small sample return mission, it would be a waste to heft all that stuff there.
BEFORE we can plan a Mars mission, especially one that will depend on locally extracted fuel, we're going to have to know a lot more about Mars' surface conditions. I think it is entirely justified to send a whole bunch of relatively low-tech probes first.
As for the general idea of propulsion research, sure. But there is no real reason to wait until we have plasmonic hyperdrives to check out the territory
Am I the only one that accidently read that as ESA Aiming for Martian Pope in 2011....
Zubrin is president of The Mars Society where you can find all the details about his plan, called Mars Direct.
fsh
Competing missions to Mars may not be such a
very bad thing. NASA has has spectacularly
disasterous luck with its contractors (mixing
up ISO & Imperial measurements cost a Mars probe),
while the ESA nearly lost all data for their piggy-back
probe to Ios (due to uncalculated doppler effects
on data baud rates).
Seems to me that combining efforts may more likely
combine the worst failures of their perspective
contractors, rather than cancelling them out.
I'm sure someone will solve this problem. Hell, it might even be some radical that takes a modified ICBM and equips it with warpdrive abilities.
...naa....it could never happen. Just ignore me.
Who know...we might even make friends with some pointy eared human like creatures.
Life is not for the lazy.
One rover called the ExoMars, and a few years after that, the sample return mission. Two separate missions, as the article says.
How is researching for new weapons a way of helping people on this planet? Or funding the armies, navies and air forces that use them, how does this help anyone? Here's another question: If we stopped doing what some people think unnecessary, would we then begion to help the poor and the sick and the homeless? Of course not, because less money for peaceful science and colonisation means more money for military actions and other bad things.
Why do we do it? Why do we wish to explore beyond our horizon, why do we wish to find new worlds to colonise? Maybe it widens our horizons. It gives us answers to ancient questions, it tickles our imaginations, it gives us hope. Should we rather stay here, to stagnate?
I'm certainly not saying that we shouldn't solve our problems here too. We should. And I believe that to do so we need to stop living in fear of each other and ourselves, we need to stop fighting each other and start to cooperate for the good of everyone. Sadly not enough people in power want this to happen.
Mars Attacks!
Species
Species 2
X-Files episode Tunguska, where the black oil comes from Mars
How many times have we seen things from Mars attack us?
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I think it's ridicules to tease other space agencies about their past failures. I didn't giggle when Mars polar lander crashed. It was a sad loss - not something to poke fun at. Secondly; when will the slashdot-crowd finally get it? Beagle 2 was an all-British probe - not a ESA-project.
Doom?
link
The author, Dwayne Day, is a highly recpected historian of space exploration. He concludes that Beagle 2 was a excellent example of how not to manage a space project. He appears to think that Professor Colin Pillinger should never again be put in charge of large amounts of tax-payers money.
In Europe, they work as a team and are credited as members of a team. In the USA people get credit for outstanding work individually, not a team. So it is interesting to see how this plays out.
A sweeping and absurd generalization. Consider the wildly successful Spirit and Opportunity missions. Are you suggesting that anything other than excellent engineering teamwork and program management have made these missions what they are?
an ill wind that blows no good
According to the BBC, the ESA is set to send a robotic probe to Mars around 2011. They apparently want to return samples of Martian soil with the probe...
You'd think the poster would RTA. The 2011 mission is a rover mission.
In addition to the rover project, they also reiterated their support for an existing proposal - a "Mars return" mission, sketched for 2016, in which various space powers would pool their resources to send an unmanned probe to Mars, take soil samples, and bring them back to Earth.NASA is already considering a sample return mission prior to the 2016 timeframe. I am not sure what plans there are for international collaboration. I would like to see the US work more closely with Japan.
an ill wind that blows no good
the ESA is planning an new mars mission because of the new heineken H.E.L.L.O. mission
Spirit and Opportunity will still be there, they might put up a fight.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Awww, somebody needs a hug. Quick, somebody hug him.
You must have not been around here when NASA fucked up that standard to metric shit. We laughted then. Remember when China launched their first astro dude? Remember the spam in the can jokes?
Nobody died. Yes it is funny, pull the stick out of your ass and laugh with us.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
I thought Beagle II was a sample return mission... I just didn't impact hard enough. Thank you. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your server.
Whoops, was that the sound of a greybeard detector springing to life?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing