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Russia Planning Double Mission to Mars
dylanduck writes "Apparently Russia has revived a previous plan to send a spacecraft to Phobos, a tiny Martian moon. Turns out it's a cool place to land - much easier than the surface as far less deceleration is needed, it should have plenty of Mars rocks spattered on the surface and it's just 9000km above the surface. Some think it the perfect place for a Mars moonbase." From the article: "A mission devoted to the moons could explain how the satellites are held together - whether they are piles of rubble loosely held together by gravity or solid chunks. Most scientists assume the heavily cratered moons are captured asteroids, Christensen told New Scientist. But it is actually quite hard for a planet to capture an object into its orbit - most things just skim by. 'So how it got there is a bit of an enigma,' Christensen says."
I think we should go.
I know money could be spent elsewhere, but hey, isn't it the exploratory nature of humans to venture into the unknown?
Some think it the perfect place for a Mars moonbase.
;)
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, besides the "shock and awe" of getting to the moon, why isn't there a drive for the practicality of a base on our own moon?
I think it's time that more of our space exploration gets practical, and not HR fodder. "Hey we're technologically superior! We got to mars!"
How about "Hey, we're technologically superior! We have colonized space and use those colonies as jumping points for marsian missions!"
Too hopeful?
Error 407 - No creative sig found
The two moons of Mars are not very big and although their gravitation is minimal, they don't present very big targets either. In order to land on one, you have to match the speed almost perfectly, then slightly chnage yours and then just as you get there match it again, hopefully you can then latch on.
While that may not sound like much, for a probe with no help from Earth (Mars is on average 8 light, hence radio minutes away) this is a difficult task.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
"Less deceleration" only in that Phobos' gravity well doesn't add much velocity to the probe's velocity as it approaches the moon; however, being airless, it will be impossible to use any aerobraking (unless the mission profile uses a 'skip' into Mars' atmosphere to bleed off excess velocity); having to carry fuel to perform all the deceleration by thrust makes the probe heavier, which increases the amount of fuel required (lather, rinse, and repeat).
Sending a mission to Phobos is like bypassing New York City in order to visit Newark. Phobos is of vanishingly small scientific significance compared to Mars. For some inexplicable reason the Russians are fixated on it. No harm I guess. Wouldn't it make more sense to visit an asteroid of a type not yet encountered (metallic).
an ill wind that blows no good
Mark him a foe if you don't like him. Then mod foes down by ten or so. Otherwise, get over it. Its a free message board.
Thanks.
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Phobos will indeed likely be dead, since it is far too small to hold an atmosphere of any substance, but that's not the point of the mission. Since Phobos is so small (and hence, has much lighter gravity) it is much easier to land on and take off from than the main planetary body. The escape velocity on Phobos is in the neighborhood of .01 km/s, compared to Earth's +/- 11 km/s at the equator. As such, it provides a decent staging base for missions to the planet itself. Also, much attention has been paid to Mars, and relatively little to its sattelites, so it would be a chance for some interesting science.
Additionally, as others have stated, the currently accepted theory for the formation of Earth's moon is that, while the Earth was still hot (i.e., mostly molten), a rather large object smacked the crap out of it (that's a technical term) and made it spit out a ball of really hot stuff that took up orbit around Earth and cooled (faster than the Earth, due to it's size) into Luna. However, Phobos does not seem to have been formed in this way. Phobos is a rather oblong shaped object, unlike objects that coalesce from space debris, which tend to be spherical. The prevailing theory on Phobos is that it is a captured asteroid, likely a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid, which gives us additional scientific reason to go there.
Set the bar high, then bring a tall ladder.
I used to buy into the "let's get people into space and great stuff will happen" point of view fuelled by a heavy addiction to sci-fi, but eventually I came to see manned space travel as pretty pointless. I really don't think that there is anything out there that is really worth the expense of finding , extracting and hauling it back to Earth (from a commercial point of view), and I don't think that there is any science that could not and should not eventually be done with robots.
Why robots? For one, manned space missions cost many times more than unmanned ones. Another reason is that I don't think that it's worth risking even one human life to find amoeba on Mars or any other place in the solar system.
I also don't think that we'll ever colonise space/other planets/etc. Earth is where humans evolved, and we'll never find a place as well suited for human life.
I figure that instead of spending huge sums of money creating white elephants like the Int'l Space Station where not much real science is done anyway, we should put the money into developing the technologies that do accomplish stuff: powerful freaking telescopes, smarter and more capable robots, and other things I can't think of right now.
I understand your feelings about rounding the horn of Africa, but remember that when early navigators did that stuff, it was because the knew that the markets of the Far East were out there.
That's right: I'm gumby dammit.
Back then, we had as much knowledge of earth's moon, as we do of these moons. And all the naysayers were positive that we would be landing on dust several hundred feet thick and the landers would just sink in. hence the reason for the big feet on them (snow shoes).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
When Earth takes the next dinosaur killer on the chin and everything more complicated than a paramecium gets destroyed, it would be nice to have some folks on Luna, Mars, maybe Ceres and Vesta as well, still alive to listen to that good old rock and roll music...that's why we need manned space flight, to colonize against the time that this greasy old blue marble won't support human life.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
I also don't think that we'll ever colonise space/other planets/etc. Earth is where humans evolved, and we'll never find a place as well suited for human life.
Human beings evolved in Africa.
Siberia is not nearly as well suited to human life.
It's so poorly suited to human life, in fact, that unitl relatively recently (definetly less than 20,000 years)
noone lived there. It was only with the aid of new technology (needle and
thread to make snug parkas, pants, and mittens)that human beings were able to
colonize the area.
For many generations now, Eskimos, etc. have been living on frozen, treeless, utterly
inhospitable wastelands, erecting domed shelters made of local materials (ice), and walking
around in the low-tech equivalent of space suits.
The colonization of inhospitable environments by means of advanced technology has already begun
and I see no reason to beleive that it won't or shouldn't continue.
As a proof of concept, do we care? It's like visiting Newark when nobody's ever crossed the Atlantic. Sure it's not NYC, but if the harbor's that much harder to navigate, maybe we should concentrate on the big puddle, and worry about the little one with jagged rocks later.
Don't get me wrong, I bet Ferdinand and Isabella were pissed back in the day, but do we still expect a maiden voyage to come home laden with gold and spices?
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
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