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First Details of Manned Mars Mission From NASA
OriginalArlen writes "The BBC has a first look at NASA's initial concepts for a manned Mars mission, currently penciled in for 2031. The main vehicle would be assembled on orbit over three or four launches of the planned Ares V heavy lift rocket. New abilities to repair, replace, and even produce replacement parts will be needed to provide enough self-sufficiency for a 30 months mission, including 16 months on the surface. The presentation was apparently delivered at a meeting of the Lunar Exploration Management Group, although there's nothing on their site yet."
Just think, when Kim Stanley Robinson released Red Mars he settled the first Mars mission in the late teens and colonization in 2024, intending to be on the safe side in his future chronology compared to much science-fiction. And now our lack of vision as a nation and bureaucratical hassles have pushed the date even beyond that. It's a sad time to be an American. If only we had the drive of the Apollo era.
That's right! Put some mag chrome nozzles at those old babies and nothing beats the classics!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
The main vehicle would be assembled on orbit over three or four launches of the planned Ares V heavy lift rocket.
One would think a craft of that form factor, named after Ares, would be referred to as a "missile"
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The common robot-versus-human debate is bound to pop up here, so I thought I should link to the last instance of such rather than reinvent the wheel:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=370701&cid=21480395
Gentlemen, start your mod engines...
Table-ized A.I.
Nothing to see here; move along.
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
But hey - as long as someone makes it there and back sometime before I die, cool.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Fry: Back in the 20th century we had no idea there was a university on Mars.
Professor Farnsworth: Well, in those days Mars was a dreary uninhabitable wasteland much like Utah; but unlike Utah, Mars was eventually made livable.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
We could have been going in 5 years instead of 25 if we as a species/world community had better priorities.
(example: 500 billion in Iraq, more than enough to fund the complete development and production of everything that would be needed)
Just in case, make sure they bring sharks with friggin' lasers mounted on their heads. You never know, eh?
Wow, talk about taking the slow & expensive boat to China. Almost seems as if NASA has been given the charge of ensuring we NEVER set foot on Mars.
to start posting irrationally about your hatred for George Bush as if this really has much of anything to do with him.
Discussion System prefs link: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
My plan is to have a kid next year. I will then force him into the Air Force and make him be a pilot and eventually an astronaut that will go on that mission. I'll have him bring me back some Mars rocks and I will sell them on eBay. Seriously, they should make sure that half their staff won't die of old age midway through the project.
I will literally ROFL if a private company finds a way to get a person on Mars (alive) before NASA does.
Given the work being performed by non-Government corporations into space travel, this isn't an entirely unlikely idea.
There are MANY ppl on this planet that would be willing to take a 1 way ticket to Mars. Seriously, I would, but I also know that I am too old for that. My belief is that the first mission will be a 1 way ticket (in spite of what NASA wants now). The reason is that it takes a LOT of work to get the ppl back. OTH, if we send supplies/equipment ahead of time, and build a small base, then a small group of ppl can go there and build out. I am also guessing that before 2025, the private world will already be heading there, with just the set-up I described.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If NASA aren't planning to get there until 2031 I can almost guarantee that they wont get there first.
The funny thing is, the longer they wait to launch a human mission to Mars, the smaller will be the advantage compared to a robotic one. Spirit and Opportunity can already do a lot of exploration on their own but, currently, humans, could do a lot better, faster, etc. I'm not so sure that this will still be true in the 2030-2035 time frame. Regardless of the state of AI then, robots will be a lot more autonomous, capable of fairly advanced decisions and exploration capabilities. And they will be immensely cheaper to deliver to Mars (and anywhere else for that matter). So, the longer they put a human mission off, the least sense it makes.
Why was I modded troll? Is any comment that says anything about a subject in a political context always assumed to be a troll? I fail to see why that is deserved.
Can someone please explain to me (and this is NOT meant to be a troll-post) why someone can't volunteer for a manned mission to Mars, raise funding from private companies/organizations and just go to Mars? Yes it would be a suicide mission, known up front and with the intent of it being for pure research and in the name of science, why the hell couldn't someone hit up a few big businesses and/or private investors for the cash to make a ship, buy or make the equipment for data analysis and the necessary supplies to get there and transmit back pictures and data? And more than just the Mars Rover, being able to survey the planet much faster and with more detail.
Is NASA a governing body in the sense that they can mandate who can go into space and moreover, where in space? It is my understanding that when Columbus wanted to find a route to the far East, he submitted his plans to various people and it took two or three tries before they finally granted him the money and ships he needed and I read that some of the terms of the agreement were such that they (King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella) didn't expect him back... why not something similar for Mars? Setting aside things like training, time to build a ship, and most importantly cost, can it be done? Privately? And no, not the Astronaut Farmer-type thing. I'm talking about a legitimate, scientific exploration, in the name of pure science and discovery, privately funded, privately built and controlled, government and nationally independent.
those astronauts will be hungry when they arrive on the "red" planet
Well, I see in 2030 NASA is planning on using basically the same lift technology that Von Braun developed in the 1930s. Shouldn't they be working on hybrid aircraft/spacecraft platform technology? Good grief, even if it takes them 20 times as many missions to get the parts into orbit, it would have to be cheaper. Not to mention the fact that there would likely be some technology benefits more applicable to mass transportation into space.
I guess that's why the private sector finally had to get involved to develop something that might lead to affordable space flight. Nobody can burn money like NASA. (I used to work at Goddard- you _wouldn't_believe_it.)
If I've done my math right.. NASA would have to have exactly 71 507 bake sales in order to pay for this mission. I can see why they put the launch date so far off.
I have nothing compelling to say
I read in a book about curious annecdotes (supposed to be true) that, in the Middle Age, an astronomer told the Pope that the Antichrist was born in Sicilia. The Pope asked what age he might have at that moment, and was told that about three or four years. Then the Pope thougt about it, and said: "Then it will be my successor's trouble!" and it was the last time it was heard about that problem
:-) )
A program that completes in 25 years gives all of the top staff at NASA time enough to retire and leave the details to the people to come (who will blame his predecessors
It would be more credible if there was a middle step (what about a long -3, 4 months- to the Moon, to check that the technology is improving and see what is still lacking?)
Why can't
I think we have to face facts that once the Shuttle program shuts down and the Russians lose interest in losing money and the ISS reaches the end of its service life that apart from the Chinese and Indians sending a few Nauts into orbit that manned spaceflight is going to take a VERY long break. Perhaps a century or more. Countries and societies seem to have almost no interest in it. Coupled with the enormous ignorance and misinformation about it e.g. a quarter of all Americans think NASA's budget is greater than the Pentagon, coupled with the increasing weaponization of space there just doesn't seem to be any future in it.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Don't worry, the local oil revenue will pay for the whole thing.
dude you mean we get to asiante hillary too. space and a Hillary assinated by a CIA cover up. too cool.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I'm a huge space proponent...
But it is not like the U.S. Government won't have all sorts of other debts to pay when the Afghan/Iraq wars end.
Let's try Social Security and Medicare to start.
These two programs are all slated to start running in the red decades before any Mars mission.
- dj
They never had Mormons migrate to Mars?
*ducks*
"In January 2004, President George W Bush launched a programme for returning humans to the Moon by 2020 and - at an undetermined date - to Mars." It only took us 10 years the first time we went to the moon. What the hell ? The U.S. was the leader in space exploration and space technology. This makes me sad as an American. Am I the only one that thinks that NASA is one of the most wasteful government agencies that we have ?
Are you refering to EHD thrusters? These operate by accelerating ions away from the vehicle. Yes, such thrusters have been used, but they are only useful for very small acceleration.
In other words, it's useless for getting out of the atmosphere.
On the topic of contemporary physics, just because we don't understand it doesn't mean its not correct or useful. There's a lot of mathematics out there that I don't even begin to understand that has made huge impacts on the current state of science.
Significant weight of food to be carried on the mission could be solved by having FAT astronauts. Then by placing them on a low cal diet, they would burn off their own fat stores (much more efficient than eating), and lose weight. Keep them supplied with water, small amounts of real food for mental health, and you've now seriously reduced the weight needed for a mission. A hundred pounds of fat could supply the totl caloric needs for a regular sedentary person for around 200 days.
Just an idea
..........FULL STOP.
NASA? You mean the guys that have been putting a flying bathtub into space for 20 years? I don't expect much out of that tired old outdated organization. If anyone will do it, it'll be private industry.
How about let's concentrate on going back to the MOON first. It's a lot closer, and there might actually be some natural resources there for energy.... you know.. that stuff that we use so much of here on Earth ?
As long as they piddle about with chemical rockets, they won't be doing much more than a very expensive, long and dangerous flag-planting exercise.
Von Braun et. al. were working on a nuclear rocket back in the day for such a mission. Just look up NERVA.
And before anyone jumps on the "danger radiation" bandwagon, I'm not advocating a nuclear rocket for getting from the earth's surface into earth orbit. It would be quite safe to build a reactor, launch it into orbit and to install it on the spacecraft there. It would be quite harmless having never have been taken critical for the first time.
The crew could easily be shielded. Think nuclear submarine. The craft could be much bigger than one chemically-powered. There could be additional shielding for protecting the crew from solar radiation. There would be extra living space, more scientific payload and it would be easier to insert into Mars orbit at the other end.
Fission reactors have been about for 60 years now. We know how to make them safe and efficient. It would be absolutely stupid not to use a nuclear reactor to go to Mars. They could have one designed, built and tested in under 5 years if they put their minds to it.
But they won't. They'll leave that to our grandchildren...
Stick Men
it's foolproof & completely newclear powered. the bug free kode is freely available. it will be manned, & womaned as well.
unprecedented evile has been having its way with us for far too long now. time to get real. the lights are coming up all over now. get a little more oxygen on yOUR brain. take the chance of making eye contact with the folks you pass by during the day. look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the morning, to see what's going on up there. consult with/trust in your creators, who provide more than enough of everything for everyone since/until forever. see you there?
I'm scheduled to be alive for this, Awesome !
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Your are sadly mistaken. This is your cue to express your love for the thugs who are spending OUR federal tax dollars for personal profit.
Besides, you are a little late. See above post.
Protestingly forever yours,
Kilgore Trout
P.S. Doesn't the F.B.I. have better things to do ( ie. investigate a corrupt U.S. Congress)?
If you thought that female astronaut who drove across country in a diaper was crazy, just wait untill you see what happens when you send a fat man into space with no food.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Does anyone remember Biosphere and how difficult it was to keep an ecosystem that can generate all those essential vitamins and amino acids that fragile humans need? Does anyone realize how much shielding will be needed to prevent death via radiation?
Back in the sixties when robots were ever so limited, fragile and primitive, a compelling argument for the much greater abilities of a human could be made. 40 years later, we have robots to vacuum our floors, police departments have robots (UAVs) to help chase criminals, and kids use computing power undreamed of for the Apollo program for playing Solitaire.
Then again, we have the and the worst president in about 80 years.
It would have been an interesting article if it had gotten into how this "cryogenic" propulsion system will actually work. The biggest problems are (1) fuel for the outbound and return trip (2) how to land the craft that has humans in it and (3) how to get off the planet again. Mars' atmosphere is too thin for parachutes, and the gravity is too heavy to use conventional chemical thrusters to brake the landing all the way down (which isn't possible anyways due to the mass of the fuel you would have to haul all the way from Earth with those "cryogenic" thrusters).
No one has an answer to this question yet. There may not be one. It's not just engineering, there are basic scientific barriers. This is why SF always invents Warp Drive or some other back door - the constraints imposed by Newton's Third Law and the limitations of chemical propulsion make this whole thing a big pain in the ass. Funny how all these articles never bother to review the basics before launching into all the speculation.
Don't be an idiot. If this thing only costs $450 billion over a quarter century, that's cheap. The Iraq War has cost $1 TRILLION over just a few years, and hasn't produced anything of value, whereas the space program has produced all kinds of spin-off technologies and economic benefits. NASA's budget has always been a tiny fraction of the DoD's budget.
I suppose smoking will not be allowed on board, but fortunately there are many different alternatives
According to TFA the proposed mission craft will weigh 400,000kg ... which sounds like a lot until you realize it's about the same as a 747 jumbo, and less than 80% of the weight of an A380 superjumbo.
I guess that gives a pretty good idea what the maximum possible pressurized volume will be.
Are looking forward to doing just this. But it is not intended to be a suicide mission. But the idea IS to send ppl on 1 way missions. In addition, I believe that they are looking at this before 2025. Bigelow's first goal is to get to the moon before 2020 and he has talked about 2015. Likewise, Musk has said over and over, that he wants to provide the cheap launch to get there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Does anyone know the long term (or even medium-term) effects of leaving the protective bubble of Earth's magnetic field and being bombarded with all the subatomic particles spewed by the sun? The only humans so far who have done this were only out there for a week or so. From what I understand, high-orbit satellites suffer greatly from this problem and they have to use special electronics designed to deal with it. Normal silicon chips die pretty quickly out there.
The western world is not in ascendency, it is in decline. The fact that Orion, a project with the same capabilities on paper as Apollo had, is set to take longer than it did in the 1960s is proof of this. Given the escalating costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon Iran, I can't see how NASA can maintain enough of a budget for 25 years.
Modern politicians seem aware of the dire state of things, and their attitude towards public services is to make as much money for themselves and their friends out of them, before everything implodes. Why would NASA be any different?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
I see FTA that they will use 'advanced cryogenic fuel'.
I hope they start with Paris Hilton.
Bow-ties are cool.
The real WTF is that we need the British Broadcasting Corporation to tell us what the American Space Agency is doing.
see my comments on 'Chemical Rocketry' below.
...the beowulf cluster of ISSs that could be put in orbit with a single Ares V launch.
But yeah, manned spaceflight is not a matter of rationalism, so it's just consistent that a mars mission is easier to fund than anything "cheap" in LEO.
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
Can somebody explain why the BBC uses "Nasa" instead of "NASA"? I've noticed that the NYTimes does the same thing (repeatedly), using "Nafta" instead of "NAFTA". It just seems...weird, and I've never seen a journalistic explanation.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
The danger "bandwagon" isn't about the danger to the astronauts, it's about the danger to everybody if the rocket carrying the reactor to earth orbit happens to blow up.
boldly going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse
Just wait until you send the first zombie to space, I'll be out of food in no time!
I love all the posts criticizing the priorities of the American government.
"If we REALLY had our priorities straight, we'd dump $100 billion right now and be on Mars in 2012!" Well, maybe we could. But what exactly is so damned urgent about getting some dudes on another planet RIGHT AWAY? Yeah, it'd be a better expenditure than the Iraq war, but pretty much ANYTHING would.
If we've got $100 billion to spend, how about putting some of it into running doubt the multi-trillion federal debt, or fixing the US health care system, or Social Security? How about funding some OTHER research, finding a cure for cancer or juvenile diabetes or some other tragic and widespread illness? Or hell, fund some damned energy research, get us all in plug-in hybrid cars fueled by safe nuclear plants, and maybe we can stop pumping quite so much carbon into our atmosphere.
Getting to Mars would/will be cool, and I don't doubt the scientific initiative will introduce lots of unexpected technological advances, so we can all fasten our shoes with ULTRA-Velcro in thirty years. But that doesn't make it the most urgent thing on our plate.
Good point. This is how I manage my personal finances, as well. I'm already severely in debt, and going more in debt all the time. I have an expensive car loan that's going to push me even further into debt, but it's OK because my retirement plan and health insurance will bankrupt me first.
2031 minus 2007 = 24
which means babies being born right now are possible candidates to set foot on mars
or maybe your 9 year old nephew
"NASA does not have the funding it had during the apollo era, so they are doing the best they can on low budgets"
The whole manned space program from mercury to apollo cost $25 billion.
Each Saturn 5 cost $100 million.
Contrast that with the "reusable" space shuttle that has to be pretty much rebuilt from the ground up after every mision - $500 million dollars a flight.
Add to that that the Saturn 5 has 5x the payload capacity (125,000 kg into LEO) of the shuttle (25,000 kg) and this doesn't add the posibbility of increasing the Saturn 5 payload capacity with SRBs, to between 250,000kg and 350,000 kg)... even taking into account inflation, the shuttle is what has been bleeding NASA. A modified Saturn 5 would need a lot fewer missions to assemble shit in orbit, like the ISS.
Kevin Smith on Prince
The problem with space is that it is dull. Mercury: Dust, rocks, and craters; Venus: Dust, rocks, and craters (but with a hot, poisonous atmosphere); Moon: Dust, rocks, and craters; Mars: Dust, rocks, and craters. Ganymede: Dust, rocks, and craters; Pluto: Dust, rocks, and craters. Well, If I wanted dust, rocks, and craters, I could go to Utah. If only one probe took a photo of an obelisk, or a road, or a forest... we'd be in space quicker'n you can say prime directive.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
And spend a couple of hours retracing the entire distance the rover has moved in the past three years.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
I think that you might find this intesting if you have not seen it before. It might be interesting on /. as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You can't fix Social Security; it's mathematically impossible because the population isn't growing, and there's lots of retired people who paid into the system when a Dollar was worth a lot more than it is now. It's a pyramid scheme; it's simply not possible for it to work long-term without an ever-increasing (geometrically) population as long as inflation exists.
We could go tomorrow, or at least start building the components to do so. We don't go because congress doesn't care anymore. I'm tired of all this nonsense "lets plan to go to mars in the future" from NASA and the president, as if planning is somehow contributing. We already have the *plans* we don't have the *money*. There's nothing special about the future that's going to change a lack of caring.
Well, if you let "The Holy and Unfallible Austrian School of Economics" run their funding, that's what's going to happen to NASA. Underfunded, and with equipment barely even capable to do the job.
Some things require a "Manhattan Project" approach to get off the ground, when the market solution would take generations to even get something off the ground and be made with no attention to quality or assurance that anything living would survive.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Indeed we are getting soft, it is due to prostituting this nation's sovereignty with globalization(in its current form).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
...within my lifetime. Nah, that would be too good to be true, Wishful thinking.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I just hope that this iteration of refunding, that the old SDI/"Star Wars" initative can be awakened .
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That's not how it works. You can't just throw a whole bunch of money at a project and make it happen overnight. Developing new technology takes time, not just money. NASA currently employs almost all of the rocket scientists in the country, and spending more money isn't going to make more of them overnight. Moreover, you can't put too many engineers on one project before it becomes an unsuccessful bureaucratic nightmare (just look at MS office), and spreading work over many engineers won't necessarily reduce the total time of completion, just as adding 100 processors to your computer won't make it 100X faster.
Don't be angry at nasa.. there obviously trying their hardest Besides, thereal reason its going to take so long is the war of "terror"
But it is not like the U.S. Government won't have all sorts of other debts to pay when the Afghan/Iraq wars end.
Indeed. The next war's starting soon. Iran, isn't it?
If you haven't learned by now, the US is pretty much geared toward continuous war against various foes who are picked one after the other. It's a bit academic whether this is more to keep the local population busy thinking about war rather than the decline in conditions on the home front (a la Orwell's 'Nineteen Eightyfour') or whether it's just sheer profiteering by big business. But, it's a rare year when the US isn't dropping bombs on or attacking somebody...
War has cost $1 TRILLION over just a few years, and hasn't produced anything of value, whereas the space program has produced all kinds of spin-off technologies and economic benefits.
Rose-colored glasses: military R&D technology is "waste", NASA R&D technology has "economic benefits".
Take a look at the proposed Mars craft. All of it! It is junk! Check out the BBC website that shows a picture of it. The whole thing is a fuel tank for chemical fuel. Of course the Bush oil gang will like that immensely. A real Mars craft, like the Russians propose, would be a true space ship. The Russians envision a solar electric craft of genuinely huge dimensions supporting a ship at the center of it about the size of a navy destroyer. It comes replete with artificial gravity in its crew areas, and shielded zones for that crew in times of bad space weather. It does this by constructing the crew areas similar to a large torus like that on the space needle restaurant in Seattle. Nuclear systems would also find their way onto that ship. Launching the parts of it to be assembled in space would take large boosters as well, like the Chinese Long March 5 or the large Proton rockets that they have. Point of fact, its crew would not be confined to one unshielded chair for a year in zero gravity....shitting and pissing in their pants like the United States NASA agency has in its plans for its 'kakanaughts' That American artillery shell could be tracked on its way by following the diaper trail, then the body trail as the survivors throw out their dead about halfway through the voyage. Likely its last transmission will be as they land when they report all the survivors are being crushed by Martian gravity since they have no bones of muscles left to resist even THAT!..I doubt it will get that far. When it fails, our government will have an answer for that too...'Gawd did'nt mean for us to invade his realm! ' or some similar crackpot logic. We have a rocket that will do it...an upgraded Dawn craft. You know, the one that our fearless leader tried to quash out of fear that it would show up the oil companies. Well right now Dawn is showing them all up. Check out its website! Also we could revive the NERVA or Timberwind projects for nuclear rockets. Or wo could build a huge
Shawson drive flying saucer and just drive there in a week! At over several million miles per hour! if we use Podkletnov/Li electro-gravity/inertia resistance devices to dampen the acceleration. This is not science fiction. All this stuff is real and on drawing boards somewhere in the world!
and while you're at it check the difference in the percentages of US budget NASA gets now compared to then versus the military
Imagine what all that money could have done for the space race.
OT (a bit) i know, but imagine if a trillion dollars had been spent on fusion tech, then we wouldnt have to even give a shite about iraq's oil and might have to worry about actual terrorists.
Back on topic, with that unlimited fusion power, a mission to mars would become much cheaper-energy wise...
Your not... suggesting that Lockheed Martin finally realized that they would get a far better return on existing shuttle maintenance contracts versus allowing the VentureStar or X-33 robust replacements to be developed for quick, cheap turnaround and low maintenance?! Why they'd have had to lean on politicians to shut the programs down despite successes! You're mad -- MAD I tell you!
I'm shocked at the mere suggestion!
(BTW, I hope the lives of those astronauts was worth the pieces of silver you f'ing traitors.)
The schedule will slip several years, and they will end up dealing with the Unix time problem half way through the mission.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Well, from 2 weeks ago:
NASA Inspector General: NASA's Most Serious Management and Performance Challenges [PDF]
Stop being so sexist and refer to it as a STAFFED mission.
That is all.
I agree. But there are other differences in play today, too. It makes it hard to see for sure how it plays out. For example, now that the fully-committed competitor turns out to be countries to whom the US outsources the lion's share of its work, what is the significance of a "competitive program" with those countries? Who will have the resulting bragging rights?
One perceives some sort of variant of Gerald Holton's remark about Giants is called for here. Something vaguely like: "In the modern world, our greatest achievement would be to pull the rug out from under the giants upon whose shoulders we have elected to stand."
My personal sense is that the space program was not a way to show off that we were technologically good, but rather was a path to becoming technologically good. That is, it was the investment in US infrastructure that mattered, and all the better that it was for a peaceful purpose and gave mankind hope that people could use technology for something other than weapons. The open question is not whether the passport carried by the person going to Mars is a U.S. one, but where the dollars spent on R&D will flow to. If a by-product of the program is not a ramping up of interest in and investment in US math and science programs, then the whole notion that we are competing is a sham. The space program was never about space.
And besides, if we want to go somewhere that has air that's hard to breathe and a temperature that isn't so good and not very much drinkable water, we can do that easier than building a spacecraft for just a couple of people: By sooner than 2031, with very little effort on our part, we can make the Earth itself into such a place and not even have to get off the couch to do it. We can just go on ignoring global environmental and climate issues and we'll be in "out o' space" in no time...
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
It took humanity more than 10,000 years to go from primitive societies to crossing the oceans...24 years to cross a vast space area to go to another planet, is, very very very little.
I know, we all would like (I put myself in) to see the space era, where spaceships zoom to and from Mars and other planets.
It doesn't going to happen for our generation, but it will in future ones. We are just not the lucky ones...but 24 years is an extremely small time period for such a big job.
A good time to read Orbiter, a graphic novel by Warren Ellis. It depicts a near-future scenario where NASA has shut down its manned space program, and what ensues.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
People can't stand the fucking procrastination that occurs by the likes of NASA; for the billions spent, what is the accomplishment? nothing!
People want big fucking huge things, something to point at and say, "hey, this is where our money went - look at the size of that bloody thing! its huge!", "this is where our billions went, and we got our money's worth - its HUGE!"
Where is the huge space ship, the moon base etc. All of this can be accomplished today - too bad we have screw balls on earth who are worried about the effect of 'zero g on tiny screws' than actually pushing forward with adventurous projects.
please mod him up.... wish I had points today
Huh?
This is a solved problem. The cryo fluids are unspecified, but there are several choices on the trip to Mars and one can design an engine to burn different propellants. I think methane/LOX or LH2/LOX is most likely. The return is surely going to be methane/LOX because that's what you can get in situ. Landing on Mars probably will use both aerobraking and retrorockets. Aerobraking makes sense to slow the vehicle down to orbit Mars. Then it makes a lot of sense to aerobrake to slow down during reentry. A drogue chute can do that just fine. Then employ retrorockets to land. And how to get off the planet? Use the methane/LOX that you've been manufacturing on site since well before the crew even left Earth orbit. There are your answers. It's basic engineering and it's already been done.
"Going to Mars" is a project--it has a defined start and finish, and will have a definite price tag. The war in Iraq is another.
Social Security and Medicare are onging programs (processes) with no defined end points. "Problems" and "solutions" are simply matters of where the lines cross in various projections, which means that slight changes in the structure--or adjustments of assumptions--can have large aggregate effects.
If you try to wait to "solve" processes before taking on projects, you'll never get to the projects. The nature of processes/programs is that they require regular adjustment, because the future is unknowable and variable. The intersections in Social Security and Medicare can easily be put much farther into the future with only slight adjustments. This sort of thing is politically palatable and has been done before. If we think a project is important we should not wait for that.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
well, yeah, cos just because you bring the troops home doesn't mean you've paid for it, done, finished, over. You realise the USG has borrowed that trillion dollars from the bankers of the rest of the world, right? You still have to pay it back. That's the deal with debt, you see... they give you the money... then you give it back later, plus a bit more. So enjoy social security and medicare whilst you've got 'em; they're not going to last long. 15 years is my guess.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven