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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
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!!
So remember children, what should you do if a supernova happens in your solar system? Yes, that's right. Duck and cover.
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 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.
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
Zubrin is president of The Mars Society where you can find all the details about his plan, called Mars Direct.
fsh
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.