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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.
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)
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.
those astronauts will be hungry when they arrive on the "red" planet
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'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
You worship the free market. Guess what: private industry isn't God.
hey, don't shoot the messenger. You did ask.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
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.
I think allowing someone to go on a suicide mission to Mars defeats the entire purpose of going to Mars in the first place.
Mars isn't a war to be won, it's a quest for humanity.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
this is the same guy from the 'what a lie' comment. WE HAVE VERY ADVANCED PROPULSION TECHNOLOGY THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE CHEMICAL ROCKETRY. I am not referring to Ion thrusters. This kind of thing is happening in many fields, for instance, the combustion engine for civilian transportation has not changed in 50 years, and perhaps it is the most important technology we have in use today. I suspect that at the most simple level they are trying to keep advanced weaponry secret, perhaps it gets a bit more complicated than that, but that would require some (relatively) outlandish speculation.
do not believe all the 'pop science' concerning physics. Most of what the average joe recognizes as physics is a very elaborate game designed to keep the general populace OUT OF THE PHYSICS FIELD. Just look at the numbers. In America, Physicists make a pittance. Meanwhile sports stars and actors make millions. People take notice of this and they put up sham programs designed to get people 'interested' in science. Meanwhile any candidates for research in this country are typically foreigners. There is clearly an 'insider' physics group and an outsider group.
Any attempt to relate the bulk of known physics to gravity is instant anathema. Many scientists who want to publish papers on this topic are met with derision and their careers are instantly destroyed. It would appear that only the most abstruse and ridiculously complicated postulates are accepted as possible candidates for relating physical forces and gravity. For instance the recent buzz about Garret Lisi's theory, its so ridiculously complicated its almost a joke. It requires the most complicated geometric shape known to man, whose shape was JUST RECENTLY COMPUTED and involves gigs of data. Anyone who knows anything about physics wonders how the hell this paper was ever taken seriously.
believe me when I say, the story you are given with regards to physics research in this country is an elaborate theatrical performance. They have advanced knowledge of physics that is not accessible to the average person.
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.
"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.
You are completely full of bullshit.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.
* Each Saturn V would cost around $500 million today due to inflation. That is for the rocket alone.
* Comparing the payload capacity of the Saturn V to the Space Shuttle is misleading. You are comparing an empty rocket to a spacecraft. If you compared the Apollo stack, they you would realize that the Apollo stack only had a few tons of payload ability outside of the spacecraft itself while each Shuttle mission has over 20 tons of payload ability. If you are talking about total mass put into space then you would note that the orbiter weighs over 60 tons.
* The Saturn V wasn't the only spacecraft that had upgrade options that were never used. There were payload and heavier lift upgrades to the Space Shuttle that were never implemented.
* You don't double or triple the payload capacity of a vehicle the size of the Saturn V with a couple of strap on boosters. It would take a complete redesign. You might be able to add something like 50 tons to its LEO payload capacity, but you aren't going to add 250 tons to a 100 ton rocket.
I'm not a big fan of the Space Shuttle. But I am an even smaller fan of people who make shit up.
I guess the reason we stopped making such things is that they didn't really serve any purpose anymore.
I'm kinda torn on this whole thing. I love NASA and the cool stuff they do, but the reason to put men on Mars is just gone. In the good old days, we wanted to show the USSR that we could rain nuclear hell on them from the fucking moon if we wanted to, and that served a significant purpose. But guys on Mars? Why? There's no economic, scientific, or otherwise reason other than being able to say, "hell yeah, we did it!"
That might be reason enough, but why Mars then? Why not colonize the moon, which would be just as cool and probably less costly? How about exploring the ocean, which is nearly as difficult but would probably have a much greater impact?
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Want a taste of the reality your gripping there? If we don't build a space infrastructure Darwin's "survival of the fittest" will apply to our civilisation, which appears to be rotting from the inside out, because the idealogical structures we had put in place would not let us adapt. We will rapidly reach the capability of this planet to sustain us and the change to our civilisation will make it unrecognisable, then the decline will begin.
If you are right future archeologist's will discover our remains and mourn the potential of what could have been, the remains of our architecture and industry. They will wonder why we didn't choose to go into space whilst we had the opportunity and resources, instead of crawling on our knees. Humanity will be reduced to a shadow of what it is today, and perhaps when there is a only a few hundred million of us left and we forget who we were - they eventually will go to the moon themselves, set themselves up and they will find us there to, and maybe on mars and they will expend a great deal of energy trying to understand WHY didn't we choose to advance beyond what were are today, why we chose to suffer.
How interested do you think people will be in creating a Space infrastructure when our survival depends on it? Yes, I mean WHEN. The key issue at hand is whether we still have the capabilities and resources to make those choices when the realisation becomes reality.
They are the very frightening facts that you overlook - we either get of this rock or we die.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
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".