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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...
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.)
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.