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Russia Aims Towards Mars
Iddo Genuth writes "Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has announced its intentions to build a low-orbit space station which, according to the agency, will support future exploration of the moon and Mars. There's also a suggestion to extend the operational lifespan of the International Space Station by five more years, resetting its retirement date to 2020. The project proposal is already on its way for review by the Russian government. Some Russian sources also reportedly proposed the (rather ludicrous) idea of converting the ISS into some kind of an interplanetary transport vehicle, which would serve as the 'ultimate mother ship' in manned planetary missions to the moon or even Mars."
The hard part of moving it to Mars, is not the propulsion system. Rockets work well.
The issue is moving it without structural damage. You have to make sure that each module gets JUST the RIGHT amount of thrust relative to the others, so that the whole thing wants to move at the same delta. If one part's delta is off to much... crack!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Thats pretty much the same for space programs in the west.
Well, consider how much refined materials cost in space, what is wrong with sending it to the moon or to Mars? Somebody might want a bolt or some wire one day, aboard whatever ideal craft they follow up with.
AFAIK, there have been problems with the ISS where the situation could have been far more serious had it been orbiting around the Moon, or worse Mars.
So far no crew was forced to return to Earth after an emergency, and no spacecraft had to be launched up there on emergency basis. We know now what pieces of ISS are reliable and what pieces of it are not. Why building a completely new vessel and launching it first time to the Moon or Mars will be safer? Even if certain systems on that new vessel are done in triplicate, they still can fail and crew can perish - especially because these systems haven't been tested enough.
I do not dispute that a trip to Mars will be hard from survival POV. It can be only compared to sending a group of people to North or South pole; in all these cases loss of some essential supplies like food, fuel [and air] results in painful death, and if you need help it won't be coming. Some polar explorers died. I do not expect Mars to be kinder than coldest places of this planet. The only way to prevent deaths on other planets is to never go there; but it's too much like the guaranteed recipe of avoiding death at old age (die young.)
Ah, but you have to stop or slow down on approach to Mars, if you plan on staying very long. Ion engines might not cut it - and anything more powerful (as above) could be problematic.
As well, the ISS doesn't have the shielding required for interplanetary travel - so we either need to shield it, or move it as quickly as possible (unless you don't mind dead astronaughts and damaged materials)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The station is no more life-critical in lunar orbit than it is in earth orbit. The outcome of any catastrophic failure is the same - get in a vehicle and return to Earth. The only difference is the length of time the return journey takes.
And that is a problem for the vehicle, not the station.
We can resurrect the idea of extraorbital manned missions at any time...
Respectfully, this is where you are wrong.
The learned skills and experienced personnel will not wait around. If they aren't used, they will be lost and have to be entirely re-learned and replaced again with the attendant costs in wealth, time, and lives. The engineers with the necessary skills and experience will have to find other employment and careers, which they won't simply drop to return whenever it again becomes politically expedient to start up extra-orbital manned spaceflight again.
A manned spaceflight program, and especially an extra-orbital manned spaceflight program, can't simply be put on 'hold' for years and have any hope of retaining viability without almost starting completely over from scratch again. This has already been proven by our inability to build a modernized Saturn V again. Heck, we can't even *find* all the old plans anymore!
Young people choosing education and career paths won't be choosing those that provide the skills necessary if there's not a viable career waiting for them. It will require a whole new generation of people to be educated and then more years to re-gain all the experience and learned skills lost.
We will, out of pure necessity, *have to* eventually have an extra-orbital manned spaceflight program. We can choose to do it now, or we can procrastinate and raise the inevitable eventual costs in lives and treasure, and possibly cost ourselves our species' ultimate survival.
Not trying to be insulting, but don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish. For a tiny fraction of the treasure wasted in the "stimulus" package just passed (and assuming that only a fraction of the total package is "waste"), we could have *both* types of programs fully-funded and running in parallel, each benefiting and complimenting the other. The combined economic, technical, and societal benefits of which I guarantee will dwarf anything this stimulus package could ever hope to do.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Well, consider how much refined materials cost in space, what is wrong with sending it to the moon or to Mars? Somebody might want a bolt or some wire one day, aboard whatever ideal craft they follow up with.
That's actually rather insightful. Make sure they put a bag of Cheetos onboard, too.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
...and every single piece built by the cheapest bidders.
Not trying to be insulting, but don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish. For a tiny fraction of the treasure wasted in the "stimulus" package just passed (and assuming that only a fraction of the total package is "waste"), we could have *both* types of programs fully-funded and running in parallel
There is no "fully funded" in unmanned space exploration. There are hundreds of targets we should be exploring and that we are technologically ready to explore, and we should be working our first interstellar probe. Every dollar that we spend on sending people into space right now is holding the space program back. Yes, it is even holding back manned space exploration, because any serious manned exploration will need the data, propulsion technologies, and robotic technologies that would be developed as part of unmanned space exploration.
The current manned space program is a colossal waste of money. We'd do well to go entirely unmanned for a few decades and then restart from scratch. If all the "skills and experienced personnel" from the programs that exist today are gone by then, that's not necessarily a bad thing; those people tend to think in old, expensive ways.
How long has the ISS gone without a resupplly mission? While there may have been no emergency missions i'm pretty sure there have been changes to the manifests of supply missions adding more single use oxygen candles and spare parts for the oxygen generators due to failures of the oxygen generators on the ISS.
IMO before we consider a trip to mars we have to get to the point where we can reliablly (how reliablly depends on what risk to the astronauts you consider acceptable) maintain humans in isolation for years either here on earth and/or in LEO with a quantity of supplies that would be considered reasonable for a mars mission.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I realize that this particular robot cannot fly without air. What I meant is that small robotized machines can research hostile places better, cheaper and faster. They can be sent to the planet by rocket 100 times smaller that needed for a human to fly. And they do not need air to breath.
In 50 years, manned space flight will be easy even if we don't invest a dime in it until then, because a lot of necessary technologies will have been developed for other uses.
What you're overlooking here is that it isn't *just* hardware & tech that's involved here. It's learning how humans themselves react to long periods in space and how best to make sure the people not only arrive at their destination, but arrive alive, healthy, and sane. There is no way to reliably model or simulate how humans may react to long interplanetary journeys or how to protect them far outside the protections of Earths' Van Allen belts and gravity well.
We have learned little that is relevant to the future of manned space flight because developments in material science, propulsion, biotech, and AI are making the technologies that our manned space program has been built on so far obsolete.
No, we have been slow in acquiring the knowledge because we haven't had the manned spaceflight occurring in the first place (outside of LEO). You can have all the materials science, propulsion, and biotech theoretical knowledge you want, but it's the practical application that proves or disproves viability and safety and improves and perfects the theoretical ideas.
(unmanned drones and satellites)..they are cheap, effective, and can do anything a human can do--and better.
They cannot think outside their programming. They cannot adapt to unforeseen problems and emergencies (see: Apollo 13). They are unable to interpret what they encounter, and change to meet new and unexpected circumstances.
The facts plainly contradict your position. You just don't see it because you are evidently ignorant of the history of science and the economics of innovation. You're apparently being driven by some kind of Star Trek fantasy.
So far, I don't see where you've backed up any of your claims. I'm quite familiar with the history and science of spaceflight, and how knowledge and skills in this area are gained. I worked in aerospace for many years. Your repeated attempts to label me as some kind of Sci-Fi crackpot only hurts your position, as it makes clear you have nothing to back up your assertions with.
It's quite apparent that you have no practical knowledge on this subject or you wouldn't be making such obvious errors. Unless, of course, you have a political/ideological agenda that has nothing to do with spaceflight. Which at this point, considering your blind belief that somehow we can learn to send men on interplanetary voyages with no practical experience in how to do this successfully, I feel is the likely reason for you to stubbornly fly in the face of all previous knowledge and experience in how a manned spaceflight program is accomplished and what it requires.
I see that there's no reasoning with you on a rational, logical basis as your beliefs are political/ideological in nature, and therefor are immune to logic and factual arguments.
I leave you to bask in the light of your own political/ideological blindness and ignorance.
Good day, sir.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.