NASA Shows Off Mock-Up of Mars-Capable Spacecraft

N!NJA writes with this snippet of a report from Reuters: "NASA gave visitors to the National Mall in Washington a peek at a full-size mock-up of the spacecraft designed to carry US astronauts back to the moon and then on to Mars one day. The design of Orion was based on the Apollo spacecraft, which first took Americans to the moon. Although similar in shape, Orion is larger, able to carry six crew members rather than three, and builds on 1960s technology to make it safer." They're still working on the parachute.

Comments

Nuclear?

[Doches]

Is this the same 'Orion' as the old atomic bomb powered Project Orion?

Re:Nuclear?

[Ruie]

Is this the same 'Orion' as the old atomic bomb powered Project Orion?

No - this is a derivative of the 1960s Apollo capsule. But look at the bright side - all the relevant patents have expired by now.

Re:Nuclear?

[TheRaven64]

No, apparently coming up with a new name was too complicated for Nasa. I don't have much faith in the ability of an air and space agency which can't name two constellations to produce a working Earth-Mars vehicle...

Re:Nuclear?

[morgan_greywolf]

Current Unixes (Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Darwin, Solaris, etc.) are also a derivative of 1960s technology. And if we were talking about that, the Unix and most of tne Linux guys, at least, would all be saying "yeah, but it's stable because it's so mature."

what's the difference then, with a 1960s Apollo-derived capsule, then?

Re:Nuclear?

[JustOK]

They were going to name it SpaceShip Colbert, but their plans were ruined.

Re:Nuclear?

[noundi]

It would be the case if they had continued working on that model, but they didn't. So basically you would be saying that Windows is stable because Unix is old, which doesn't add up.

Re:Nuclear?

[bloodninja]

It would be the case if they had continued working on that model, but they didn't. So basically you would be saying that Windows is stable because Unix is old, which doesn't add up.

From the summary:
"...and builds on 1960s technology to make it safer."

So, apparently, they did!

Re:Nuclear?

[rbanffy]

So, the Orion/Unix analogy doesn't work.

Anyway, I was expecting something bigger ;-)

I only hope they pick up people who are claustrophiles.

Re:Nuclear?

[Antidamage]

I find it hard to believe that they haven't found a myriad ways to improve upon the Apollo capsule since the 60s. On the plus side, this is only the re-entry vehicle. Hopefully they won't be landing an archaic metal treehouse on the moon like last time.

Re:Nuclear?

[pmarini]

if I'm not mistaken, even the original blueprints for the Space Shuttle should have expired their patents by now...

Re:Nuclear?

[ColdWetDog]

I don't have much faith in the ability of an air and space agency which can't name two constellations to produce a working Earth-Mars vehicle...

OK, does "Jaunty Jackalope" fill you with wonder? Or GIMP? Or GNU? I suppose they could hire some spiffy marketing company to come up with better names.

Maybe we should start a Slashdot poll? Except then it would be 'Serenity' so probably not worth the bother.

Re:Nuclear?

[NoisySplatter]

Thank god it was patented. The copyright would still be going strong.

Re:Nuclear?

[noundi]

It implies that they abandoned the technology during (or after) the 1960s and now they pick up where they left. If it had been an evolving process the time of origin would more or less be irrelevant because that would make it todays technology. The PC has a few years on it's back, but you refer to PCs as todays technology as it has been undergoing an evolving process, no matter the time of origin.

Re:Nuclear?

[nofx_3]

Now I'm not saying they are great names, but at least GIMP and GNU have the excuse of being acronyms. I'm no FOSS nerd but I think GIMP stands for the GNU Image Manipulation Program, while GNU itself is recursive and stands for GNU's Not Unix. I guess GNU could have been name starting with any other letter, like say SNU's Not Unix.

Re:Nuclear?

[pluther]

But then the image program would be SIMP.
Nobody wants that.

Re:Nuclear?

[4D6963]

That's more as if you tried to develop a modern OS from the 1969 MULTICS.

Re:Nuclear?

[syousef]

what's the difference then, with a 1960s Apollo-derived capsule, then?

People didn't down tools and stop developing Unix in the late 1960s. They did do so with Apollo capsules. That is the difference. No one under retirement age has any experience with any of it.

Re:Nuclear?

[cbraescu1]

Is that you, Bill?

Orion?

[Norsefire]

Better watch out for Predator drones.

"builds on 1960s technology to make it safer"

[Dystopian Rebel]

Would that be the large, unmarked banks of blinking square lights, the female voice that always says "Insufficient Data" followed by a dramatic orchestral chord, or the engine that the chief engineer can only repair 10 seconds before destruction?

Re:"builds on 1960s technology to make it safer"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They call it "Orion"? The 1960s technology? I have a pretty good idea how it might turn out - like this.

Re:"builds on 1960s technology to make it safer"

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they're afraid of the Cylons hacking into their systems so nothing is networked...

I'm confused

[ChienAndalu]

"Although similar, it builds on 1960s technology"? While the old one was build on 1860 technology? I don't get it.

Re:I'm confused

[Shrike82]

NASA - Improving safety by employing designs from over 4 decades ago. You know those astronauts are in safe hands...

Re:I'm confused

[$RANDOMLUSER]

You're assuming they still have the designs from 4 decades ago - which they don't.

Re:I'm confused

[GargamelSpaceman]

1860's tech was pretty reliable. I'd feel more comfortable trusting my safety to it in most cases with a few exceptions such as:

Explosives, Medicine, Air/Space Travel.

Re:I'm confused

[omuls are tasty]

No, they're replacing the obsolete 1980s technology (shuttles) with modern, 1960s technology. It's progress.

Re:I'm confused

[Shrike82]

So what you're saying is that they're piecing it together from guesses and the original notes written on the back of cigarette packets?

Good lord, NASA need to get their act together.

Re:I'm confused

[coolmoose25]

There is an apocryphal story about how the SRB's on the Space Shuttle are directly related to the width of a horse's ass... Snopes has called the story "false" when in fact it is the case that the SRB's are limited in their size by the width of a horse's ass... The simple fact is that all technology is based on the technology that came before it. The computer industry is rife with examples... most of us are still using x86 technology is one... Why should rocketry be different?

Re:I'm confused

[vlm]

"Although similar, it builds on 1960s technology"? While the old one was build on 1860 technology? I don't get it.

You have to realize these guys are journalists. Its big, and vaguely cylindrical, therefore its "the same technology". Rest assured they aren't using discrete transistors and core memory.

Re:I'm confused

[bloodninja]

No, they're replacing the obsolete 1980s technology (shuttles) with modern, 1960s technology. It's progress.

No, no, Progress is Russian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_spacecraft

Re:I'm confused

[History's Coming To]

Indeed, good example. Although lot of the 1960's stuff wasn't exactly rocket science....for example, the Saturn V's had a problem with instabilities building up on the face of the combustion plate due to the pattern of holes that the fuel/oxidiser was sprayed through. In the end they got a bunch of blank combustion plates and drilled holes at random until they found one that worked without blowing the rocket to smithereens....or at least worked for the eight minutes or so that it took to get to orbit.

Re:I'm confused

[MightyYar]

Shuttles ain't 80's technology :)

Re:I'm confused

[rbanffy]

There is really not enough data to attest Apollo spacecraft were much safer than the shuttles. There were less than two dozen Apollo manned launches with one nearly (because the crew got really, really lucky) catastrophic accident and more than a hundred shuttle launches done by a small fleet that went to space a couple times each with two very serious mishaps.

The best one can do is to extrapolate on data from about a hundred Soyuz missions. Soyuz seems to be slightly safer than shuttle and has in common with the Orion both the 60's tech and the mostly expendable architecture (IIRC, some systems are transferred from a used Soyuz to a new one after being recertified).

Re:I'm confused

[mike1086]

No....I think you'll find it *WAS* rocket science.

Re:I'm confused

[moogsynth]

Indeed, good example. Although lot of the 1960's stuff wasn't exactly rocket science....for example, the Saturn V's had a problem with instabilities building up on the face of the combustion plate due to the pattern of holes that the fuel/oxidiser was sprayed through. In the end they got a bunch of blank combustion plates and drilled holes at random until they found one that worked without blowing the rocket to smithereens....or at least worked for the eight minutes or so that it took to get to orbit.

People forget that the Apollo project killed off the much more reasonable X-plane development, one of which by 1962 was already flying at an altitude of sixty miles. Progression to space travel was seen as the logical next step. But when JFK decided "HOLY FUCK WE GOTTA GO TO THE MOON!", and the developers told him it might be possible to do deep space stuff by the seventies, he opted to kill the project and go for Wernher von Braun's batshit insane rockets instead.

Re:I'm confused

[geckipede]

This is the closest they've got to getting their act together since the end of Apollo. Giving up all heavy lift capability was a mistake, and leaving to rot all the infrastructure that could support it was worse. Maybe for the next generation of spaceships they can do everything right, but for this time round it will be a major achievement if they ever manage to get the Ares V to fly at all.

Re:I'm confused

[Sperbels]

People forget that the Apollo project killed off the much more reasonable X-plane development, one of which by 1962 was already flying at an altitude of sixty miles. Progression to space travel was seen as the logical next step. But when JFK decided "HOLY FUCK WE GOTTA GO TO THE MOON!", and the developers told him it might be possible to do deep space stuff by the seventies, he opted to kill the project and go for Wernher von Braun's batshit insane rockets instead.

Um, reasonable in what way? It certainly wasn't useful for putting cargo in orbit. The most efficient and practical way (currently) to put anything into space is an engine strapped to gigantic gas tank strapped to a little bit of cargo. Adding additional stuff like wings, landing gears, rudder (and a frame to support it all) only detracts from the amount of cargo you can launch and seems to have negligible reuse benefits as demonstrated by the space shuttle.

Re:I'm confused

[nospam007]

"HOLY FUCK WE GOTTA GO TO THE MOON!",

Oblig.

http://store.theonion.com/holy-shit-man-walks-on-fucking-moon-1969-p-332.html

Re:I'm confused

[Fzz]

I agree that overall safety can only be assessed based on a large enough statistical sample, and we don't have that. But there are several known failure modes of the Shuttle that Apollo and Orion either don't have, or have backup safety systems that the Shuttle doesn't have:

• A launchpad (and post launch) escape system that can pull the re-entry vehicle clear of an exploding launch vehicle.
• The potential to abort a mission after launch before reaching orbit.
• Re-entry heat shield is protected from impacts from ice/foam during launch.
• Re-entry vehicle is statically stable during re-entry.
• Propellant tanks and fuel for fuel cells stored outside the re-entry vehicle.

All of these seem to argue in favor of Orion being safer than Shuttle. There are two obvious downsides:

• Parachutes have potential failure modes shuttle does not have.
• Re-use has the potential to reduce risks (most of the parts have already been test-flown). There's no way to test-fly a non-reusable vehicle.

On balance, I tent to like the KISS approach, so favor the capsule. But you're correct; actual safety comes down to how well all the systems are actually designed and implemented. A simpler approach, poorly implemented, is no safer than a complicated approach implemented well.

Re:I'm confused

[goodEvans]

"with one nearly (because the crew got really, really lucky) catastrophic accident"

Actually, Apollo 1 went on fire on the launch pad, killing all three astronauts on board, so that makes one-and-a-half catastrophic accidents

Re:I'm confused

[moogsynth]

Um, reasonable in what way? It certainly wasn't useful for putting cargo in orbit. The most efficient and practical way (currently) to put anything into space is an engine strapped to gigantic gas tank strapped to a little bit of cargo. Adding additional stuff like wings, landing gears, rudder (and a frame to support it all) only detracts from the amount of cargo you can launch and seems to have negligible reuse benefits as demonstrated by the space shuttle.

For the X-15 series, you might just be right. But the proposed X-20 was the plane that eventually got the chop. This one had a rocket too, which essentially made it a prototype space shuttle. Reusable. What's more, the Titan rockets they wanted for it had 2.5 million pounds of thrust (11,100,000 force newtons) compared with the Mercury-Atlas' 367,000 (1,600,000). What made them cut the project was that the Atlas rockets were already available whereas the more powerful Titan rockets were still four years away.

Re:I'm confused

[spiderbitendeath]

You forgot the very first Apollo where the crew was killed before they could ever launch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1

Re:I'm confused

[tibman]

The M113(1960's tech) was supposed to have been largely replaced by the M2/3 Bradley in the eighties. During the Iraq War the M113 came back in a big way.. it just works too well. The M3 is overdesigned and too heavy. This sort of thing sounds exactly like the Shuttle and Capsule scenario. Maybe there's a pattern to it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_Bradley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M113

Re:I'm confused

[dlgeek]

While I agree with most of your points, the claim that the shuttle lacks "[t]he potential to abort a mission after launch before reaching orbit" is false. The shuttle in fact has three separate non-orbital abort modes:

• Return To Launch Site (RTLS) - Keep going until the SRBs are detached, flip over, fire main engines and head back to Kennedy
• Transoceanic Abort Landing (TAL) - Land somewhere in Africa or Europe
• Abort Once Around (AOA) - Abort on a suborbital trajectory, circle the earth once, then land (Very small window)

More information at obligatory wiki link.

Re:I'm confused

[CrimsonAvenger]

The best one can do is to extrapolate on data from about a hundred Soyuz missions. Soyuz seems to be slightly safer than shuttle and has in common with the Orion both the 60's tech and the mostly expendable architecture (IIRC, some systems are transferred from a used Soyuz to a new one after being recertified).

No.

Soyuz has flown fewer times than the Shuttle. About 100 flights, as opposed to Shuttle's 124.

Depending on how one counts "safety", Soyuz is almost as safe as Shuttle (they've both had two catasrophic missions resulting in loss of all crews - 2% failure rate for Soyuz vs 1.6% failure rate for Shuttle), or not even in the timezone (if you consider the nine or so failed missions that Soyuz suffered with no loss of life).

Soyuz is only safer in that since it carries a smaller crew, fewer people have died on Soyuz. Which isn't really a good measure of safety.

Of course, fewer people have gone up in Soyuz too (about 300 in Soyuz, about 900 in Shuttle).

Re:I'm confused

[ThatsNotPudding]

Well, the trailer being pulled by a 1964 Impala didn't help much.

Re:I'm confused

[CrazyTalk]

never mind the manufacturing capability to build those old Apollo rockets, which no longer exists - steel mills all gone, no forges that large anymore.

Re:I'm confused

[mgabrys_sf]

re:"Keep going until the SRBs are detached, flip over, fire main engines and head back to Kennedy"

I've heard of these too but I've always been a little "foggy" on the whole "flip over" part. How the hell do you do this at those speeds without Vmax'ing the spacecraft (or for that matter the occupants *splat*) you're going to tumble the shuttle at what speed - when it's still AIRspeed?

In other news - I, for-one - would like to see it done just to see if the planners of such a maneuver (a) had it right (b) if it looks anywhere near as batshit cool as it sounds.

"Hey capcom, tell the Cape we have a crazy idea - we saw it in the contingency manual and want to try it out - woooohhhhhaaaaaaa!"

Re:I'm confused

[dlgeek]

As far as I could tell, the maneuver doesn't happen until it's mostly out of the atmosphere so there's less resistance. Doesn't the shuttle normally pitch tank-up, shuttle-down during ascents? That would probably make the maneuver easier.

Re:I'm confused

[WindBourne]

IANARE, but with that said, nearly all of our rockets use stages. It has always seemed to me that the first stage WOULD be useful as an aircraft. What is needed is to get altitude (80K feet) AND speed (mach 3-5). At that point, the 2'nd stage is pretty darn small, while the aircraft has high re-usability. With that said, our rockets are now pretty solid.

Re:I'm confused

[Fzz]

Yes, I know about the theory of these. But the reality is they're really only useful for a non-catastrophic main engine failure. An SRB failure is fatal, as we unfortunately found out. And an uncontained main engine failure is fatal. Main engine pogo is probably fatal (you can't shut down all the main engines while the SRBs are running. If you have a single main engine shut down safely, then one of these might be useful. Or if more than one main engine shuts down safely after SRB separation, then one of these might be possible. But in the first two minutes of flight, when everything is most stressed, you're really out of luck. So realistically, if you compare the failure modes, the shuttle just has so few options for in-flight abort.

Re:I'm confused

[rbanffy]

I won't count that. The Apollo 1 vehicle had a more than one atm pure Oxygen atmosphere that made everything inside it flammable and a hatch that was very hard to open (I think that was because the combustion lowered internal pressure below 1 atm exerting a force on the hatch that astronauts were not able to counter). After the accident and the design changes, the normal air atmosphere and explosives around the hatch made it a lot less unsafe to fly (nobody in his right mind would claim space travel is safe).

Re:I'm confused

[dlgeek]

With regard to SRB failure, I'm not convinced that a catastrophic failure of an Ares rocket is survivable. Certainly, if there is an engine failure, you can abort to avoid crashing into the ground. However, should a catastrophic explosion occur, I'm not sure that the LES has sufficient time to separate Orion. I could be completely wrong though.

With regard to the SSME (space shuttle main engines), there are non-recoverable (ditch) abort modes where the crew is supposed to be able to survive but with a loss-of-vehicle, using the Inflight Crew Escape System (ICES). Supposedly, a 3-out SME failure is survivable for most of the ascent profile, and porentially even for the first 90 seconds (use the SRB's limited steering ability to get a steady orientation and ICES to evacuate).

Re:I'm confused

[rbanffy]

You should not forget the Soyuz vehicles were improved since the early 60s while the shuttle had, IIRC, 20 years less time for design changes. The latest Soyuz is many generations beyond the two first-generation units that actually killed astronauts and while some mishaps do happen, nobody got killed in their latest design.

Also, the design is much simpler. When reliability is at stake, I go for the simpler design. Shuttles are impressive machines, but there is a job being done and a 737-sized fragile beast is not the best tool for sending people to orbit.

Re:I'm confused

[Fzz]

I think you're probably right that there are failure modes for Ares that are not survivable. SRBs don't tend to undergo catastrophic explosions, but I could certainly guess that a failure of the nozzle gimballing mechanism could be really bad as you can't shut it off while you're cartwheeling. If you're near to the ground, you'd have to be pretty quick on the abort to release the Orion before the cartwheeling booster caused the abort to be downwards. And a gimbal locked hard over at high supersonic speeds would certainly make for an exciting ride. These problems affect any launch vehicle though; when it comes down to it, this is rocket science. And it's never going to be 100% safe. But riding a booster you can't shut off seems to be asking for trouble.

Personally, I think the Ares SRB booster is a mistake. Probably not as big a mistake as Shuttle was though. Don't get me wrong - the shuttle is an amazing piece of technology. But it is fundamentally flawed.

Re:I'm confused

[mbkennel]

People forget that the Apollo project killed off the much more reasonable X-plane [wikipedia.org] development, one of which by 1962 was already flying at an altitude of sixty miles. Progression to space travel was seen as the logical next step.

Except for that pesky lack of oxidizer up there.

More realistically, development of the rocket programs was sublimated competition with the USSR on ICBM technology.

Given how far back the USA started in rocketry and hence ICBMs in the 50's, proving the ability to put a large mass exactly at the right point at the right moment with all the ancillary communication networks indicated that the USA also had the ability to put a large mass at the right point at the right moment 100 meters away from ground zero.

Re:I'm confused

[tmortn]

RTLS is nutz. Best thing I have ever heard to describe it is "Two Miracles Followed by and Act of God". The odds of a fully functional shuttle stack surviving an RTLS is not all that high (John Young famously described it as 'russian roulette") much less one that has suffered a failure drastic enough to push them to that particular scenario.

Re:I'm confused

[DerekLyons]

What made them cut the project was that the Atlas rockets were already available whereas the more powerful Titan rockets were still four years away.

No... The X-20 was cut for many (good) reasons. The Titan was already flying, but the variant required to launch the X-20 was basically being delayed a day a day (that is it was forever four years away) because it kept growing to support the ever growing X-20. Then there were the persistent problems with aerodynamic heating on re-entry. Then there was the inability of the project to stay anywhere even near within it's budget. Etc... Etc...
 
The X-20 program was deeply troubled with no end in sight.

Re:I'm confused

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

Yeah, man that would just be cool to see it flying around powered! ... since it lands unpowered. "We could use all this liquid hydrogen and oxygen still in our external fuel tank to continue into orbit... BUT we've decided to try flying around, woooo! VAB fly by!

Mock-up!

[Thanshin]

"Hey! I just touched it and this piece fell off!"

"Hmm... It's... a Mock-up?... Yeah! It's a Mock-up!"

Looks cosy

[Gauntt]

Not sure that I would want to be stuck in that with 5 other people for two years.

Might end up with an Event Horizon type situation.

Although perhaps without the portal to hell..

Re:Looks cosy

[Amiga Trombone]

Yeah, I'm having a little trouble believing that's going to be an adequate space-craft for going to Mars. For a several day trip to the moon, ok - but being bottled up in that thing for 2-3 years? And where are you going to store several years worth of supplies in there?

I think somebody is smoking something.

Re:Looks cosy

[furby076]

I agree - that shit is way too small. They need shuttle size at LEAST! Talk about fish in a sardine can. At least the space shuttle is more like a small aquarium - again a bit too small but doable. I would honestly pass on that trip. Space is an issue for people - and everyone needs some alone time and space to stretch out and work-out. That's a death-trap ala mazda miata style.

Re:Looks cosy

[v1]

I can see fitting three in the smaller 60's craft, and maybe packing 5-6 in that bigger orion, for a trip to the moon. But MARS? How can you possibly cram 5-6 people in THAT for such a long trip? That's insane.

Re:Looks cosy

[OolimPhon]

Perhaps in the large, cylindrical service module which will be launched by Ares 5 before the crew takes off? The crew capsule is just for earth takeoff and landing. They dock with the rest of the spacecraft in earth orbit before leaving for elsewhere.

Re:Looks cosy

[rwven]

If you recall, the lunar lander attached to the re-entry capsule on the way there and the way back and added a LOT of room that wasn't there originally. I'd imagine that for a trip to mars, they'd do the same thing, just have a bigger lander/whatever module.

Re:Looks cosy

[goodben]

I believe that the capsule will only be the command center/cockpit/bridge of the spacecraft that is planned to go to Mars. The rest of the craft will be assembled in orbit from various Ares V launches.

Re:Looks cosy

[bpsbr_ernie]

Obviously, they are going to use the technology developed in 1967 that let them freeze Austin Powers. So, they will be in cryogenic stasis, reducing the need for food and other niceties like toilets.

Re:Looks cosy

[AliasMarlowe]

Not sure that I would want to be stuck in that with 5 other people for two years.

With enough viagra, lube, and toys, a crew of 3 guys + 3 gals might just survive. Exhausted, to be sure, but in pretty good spirits.

Re:Looks cosy

[JPLemme]

Except they opened up the lander after docking, made sure it was OK, and then sealed it up again until they got to the moon...

How Apollo Flew To The Moon

Re:Looks cosy

[fataugie]

So, they'd tow it to Mars?
Like a freakin family on Vacation to the Catskills?

I hope they shape the trailer like one of those old Airstreams....that would be cool.

Re:Looks cosy

[furby076]

They called in the packaging specialists at IKEA! They'll manage to get everything in the container but still forget the screws!

Some people told me the trips is only a few months, I thought it was 2 years, but a couple of sources disagreed with that. BY couple of sources I mean people, not anything official :)

Re:Looks cosy

[v1]

regardless of the trip time, the layover stinks. I believe the article said it was going to take a very long time (2 yrs?) for earth and mars to get back to a favorable alignment for the return trip.

But still, 2 months being Canned Spam is worse than economy class

Re:Looks cosy

[rwven]

Interesting. I was unaware.

Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

I know you'll probably mod me a troll but I have a sinking felling that me and actually many of the people reading slashdot will never see a real push into space by humanity. I really want to remain optimistic about it but for me this whole orion project is like a reminder of where we *could* have been at the completion of the Apollo launchers.

Don't get me wrong I hope we get off this rock and have a *real* space program but I suspect that I am not the only person reading this that thinks they were born before their time.

Good luck NASA, I hope it all goes well, this time.

Re:Yeah well.

[Shakrai]

I know you'll probably mod me a troll but I have a sinking felling that me and actually many of the people reading slashdot will never see a real push into space by humanity

We'll see a real push into space by humanity when there is an actual economic incentive for doing so. When Earth becomes completely overpopulated and/or runs into resource shortages, that's when we'll see space flight really take off. As much as I love NASA, as a Governmentally funded agency they are always going to be held hostage to political considerations -- and you just know some Congressman needs some pork^Weconomic development back home more than NASA needs to go to Mars.

Re:Yeah well.

[rotide]

Unfortunately, starting a new civilization on another planet is prohibitively expensive.

Think about the support structure needed to really START a new civilization.

You need the basics first.
Water
Food
Electricity
Healthcare (doctors and basic equipment for emergencies)

After that you're going to need places to live and work. I mean, when you're out there, someone has to be making a profit to make it worth even going (yes, that's the world we live in). So you have to assume there is something to mine/create that makes it worthwhile to even be there.

But with all that stuff, it has to come FROM somewhere so you have a bit of a chicken and the egg issue. How do you get all the raw steel, machinery, etc, up to START to build, let alone start to create a worthwhile place to live and work?

So you either fedex (read: rocket/shuttle) all those raw materials up there, or you somehow mine/smelt/forge/create everything, but then you need the stuff TO mine/smelt/forge/create.

With the costs of "shipping" being astronomically high right now, something on the order of hundreds to thousands PER POUND? Just who do you think has the money to SERIOUSLY look into actually creating a moon base?

I'd LOVE for it to happen, but the earth is much cheaper to exploit right now, until the corporations see MORE profit on other worlds, we aren't going to be seeing a push. Even if the government funds such an initiative and subsidizes the startup costs, what company is really going to take that risk?

Re:Yeah well.

[TheRaven64]

Space flight is not going to be a solution to overpopulation for a really long time. The cost of getting something to LEO is around $20,000 per Kg, maybe as low as $4,000 / Kg if you go with something with a fairly high failure rate. The cost with a space elevator would be around $220/Kg, just for the marginal costs, assuming that the magical space pixies built the elevator for free, or closer to $2,000/Kg for the full cost.

Assume a person plus their life support equipment (no possessions) weighs around 100Kg, and you've got a cost of $200K to get someone into orbit (using wildly optimistic figures based on technology that doesn't exist yet). Getting them to somewhere where they can live, and including the cost of actually building that habitat, is likely to at least double this cost and more likely add another order of magnitude.

The people who can afford this kind of expense (probably around $2m, more for anything much above subsistence living) are going to be the ones who can already afford a very comfortable life down here. The people who will most want to leave Earth will be the ones who can't afford to.

Re:Yeah well.

[kurt555gs]

We could be a lo further if we had taken just a fraction of the war budget and let Nasa keep going to the Moon. There is no reason we couldn't have a permanent base by now.

2030 to Mars? Where does this come from. We could have 1 way manned missions to mars right now. Ill bet there would be volunteers.

No, I think Nasa has just become a cash register for the usual defense contractors with no vision.

I am truly sorry we couldn't have had just a little less war, and a little more science.

Re:Yeah well.

[Shakrai]

I didn't claim it was a solution. Only that external economic factors will drive space exploration. IANARS (I am not a rocket scientist) but my hunch would be that resource shortages will drive the initial commercialization of space. Over time as the spaceflight components become standardized and mass produced it would stand to reason that the costs will come down.

Re:Yeah well.

[DaleRimkunas]

We can't get really serious about this until we start building on 1970's technology and initiate the electric guitar/ spaceship. One for each major city, and we CAN'T wait until the earth is imploding underneath us to launch them!!

Re:Yeah well.

[rbanffy]

Not until it becomes much cheaper.

For the current prices, it's probably cheaper to extract metals from thin air than it is to mine an asteroid for it.

Re:Yeah well.

[Yvanhoe]

Well sure, but you are the one planning to live less than 500 years

Re:Yeah well.

[MBGMorden]

We could have 1 way manned missions to mars right now. Ill bet there would be volunteers.

I'm sure there would be, but in general, the public outcry would be huge. When the inevitable question of returning gets asked by a journalist and NASA admitted that "Yeah, we're not actually planning on bringing them back." there would be uproar and demands that such a barbaric organization lose funding immediately. It's not about the handful of volunteers willing to go - it's about the masses that will refuse to fund a suicide mission.

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

We can't get really serious about this until we start building on 1970's technology and initiate the electric guitar/ spaceship.

I was just playing my guitar to get over it. I bet the electric guitar spaceship would have a massive power cord :-P, and I bet the countdown will go 5..1..5..0.. lift off!!!!!!!!

Re:Yeah well.

[jschen]

Would it still be a suicide mission if you're sent with sufficient resources (possibly through intermittent resupplying) to live out the rest of your normal lifespan on Mars? And by the time round trips are realistic, you might even someday get to come back!

Re:Yeah well.

[ColdWetDog]

You know, 3/4 (or 70.1% according to a recent test) of the earth is currently uninhabited. It would be much cheaper to build underwater / on water habitats than dump people in space. But we're not doing it because it's still too expensive. An enormous amount of the human population is living at essentially, baseline survival levels or quite near it. They have no spare cash for anything, including Starbucks.

I have this sneaky suspicion that the overpopulation of humans will 'take care of itself' before we get any significant population in outer space....

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

Think about the support structure needed to really START a new civilization.

I'd be happy if we just actually made a START. I think we are going to need a major shift in the way our entire geo-political system works for us to even get that far. Otherwise everything you say is perfectly valid.

But with all that stuff, it has to come FROM somewhere so you have a bit of a chicken and the egg issue. How do you get all the raw steel, machinery, etc, up to START to build, let alone start to create a worthwhile place to live and work?

Well I'd like to think that we could have some sort of concerted effort to perfect long strand Carbon Nano Tubes and build a space elevator - but I honestly don't think it's gonna happen. We'd need that sort of material anyway to create underwater cities and increase the population density of our existing cities simply because if we go backwards in population growth (worldwide) we will not be able to maintain our existing infrastructure and humanity will slip into decline. Look at what's happening in Russia now. Sure a nation might recover, but an entire race - I'm not so sure.

With the costs of "shipping" being astronomically high right now, something on the order of hundreds to thousands PER POUND? Just who do you think has the money to SERIOUSLY look into actually creating a moon base?

No one. I expect that if we are ever going to do it, it will be an endevour the whole human race (as in all nations) carry out or it won't happen. Unfortunately I think the human race's propensity to want to kill each other will probably prevent that from happening, short of an asteroid crashing into us to make us focus on our survival.

Even if the government funds such an initiative and subsidizes the startup costs, what company is really going to take that risk?

None, they can't, they aren't big enough. It's a government exercise at the very minimum, and even the largest governments efforts to date are, at best, parodies of what a true space program *should* look like. So far, all our most potent science is devoted to how we can best destroy ourselves and until we can change that part of our nature, one day we will succeed. Our space programs everywhere have always been an afterbirth of the military - sad but true. Case in point Space Shuttle, Soyuz.

The reality is, as a race, to date, we failed our stewardship of our own planet, whose resources were all available to use at the peak of our civilisation to build a glorious future and we've failed to evolve past our own destructive nature.

We either go in this generation or we miss the chance and prove we are not fit to survive. I'm not attacking you but look around, it's not just global warming and energy production - every biological system on the face of the earth is in decline. The intelligence of our species was never meant to be contained, look at how we fight for resources. Yet we still can't overcome the structures previous generations have put in place to comfort us from the ugly harsh realities of life. I know it sounds negative, but it's not really - just pragmatic. I would actually welcome a constructive change, so if what I say next appals you - there may still be hope.

Still, a decline of the human race won't be too bad, especially as the world recovers from our constant demands the world will probably be very bountiful. Maybe in another, say, thousand years we might even get another chance to begin human history, but it will be a lot harder. An even if we fail then and become again nomadic and begin the slow trek to extinction (hard to believe now for sure) the earth will again nurture us until we are gone.

Then as all traces of us disappear and with only half a billion years left of her own life left before the sun swallows her maybe some other race will see a shimmering blue world up for grabs and overcome what we could not. If they make it here they might find what we've left on the moon, kind of like a headstone, and wonder about us.

For that, at least, we can feel that the space program has achieved something.

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

Well sure, but you are the one planning to live less than 500 years

Ah yes, life extending medicine and technology. A great hope. I guess I'm the April Fool, we're all gonna be all right after all!

Re:Yeah well.

[DaleRimkunas]

actually it was a Boston album cover reference...

Re:Yeah well.

[Thuktun]

The people who will most want to _________ will be the ones who can't afford to.

There, I've fixed that for you. Fill in the blank with something and it will probably be true.

Re:Yeah well.

[CrimsonAvenger]

It's not about the handful of volunteers willing to go - it's about the masses that will refuse to fund a suicide mission.

It's a suicide mission if they send you on a one-way trip to Mars with two years of supplies.

If they send you on a one-way trip to Mars with 50 years of supplies, it's a very tiny colony.

And if they're looking for volunteers for the latter, I'll go.

Re:Yeah well.

[camperdave]

It would be cheaper to send a return launch vehicle than to send sufficient resources for a lifelong stay.

Re:Yeah well.

[cjh79]

Why? Honestly, who in their right mind wants to live anywhere but on Earth? We are perfectly suited for life on this planet and no other. We have beautiful mountains, ocean, fresh water, we don't need "life-support" systems just to take a walk outside, and we sure as hell don't need a rocket to get here.

I could see the attraction and novety of a three day mars or moon vacation, but beyond that, I'm staying here.

Re:Yeah well.

[isomeme]

I'm as wildly supportive of space exploration and colonization as anyone, but it's quite true that both economics and logistics argue against offworld human activities as a solution for any of Earth's major problems. Beamed power from extremely large solar power satellites is one possible exception; building these would almost certainly require a human-supported infrastructure for lunar or asteroid mining and orbital construction.

As someone rather depressingly pointed out, until we're building cities in Antarctica, cities on the Moon or Mars will not make economic sense. Antarctica is orders of magnitude easier to reach and to live in.

So, if we end up with significant offworld colonies in the foreseeable future, it will be for reasons which are not purely economic. Many have speculated on what might provide the motivation to make this happen. So far, nothing in the real world has come close to providing such motivation.

Re:Yeah well.

[rbanffy]

There is one good reason to send humans to live outside Earth, but it is still very, very expensive. At these prices, we won't even consider it seriously until we are confronted with a very real threat of extinction.

Re:Yeah well.

[Dyolf Knip]

Honestly, who in their right mind wants to live _on_ a planet?

The environment is totally unpredictable and you are utterly at the mercy of forces vastly beyond your control. You have to share a single fickle and tiresomely fragile environment with everyone and everything there, including heavy industry. And the parameters of that single environment (air pressure and content, temperature, etc) can be modified locally only with great effort; some things like gravity are basically out of the question entirely. Compounding all this is the fact that you are living at the bottom of a fairly steep gravity well, which makes getting anywhere else a difficult proposition at best. The geometry of the place is largely 2-dimensional and is encumbered with all the inefficiencies thereof.

Nuts to that. Give me a habitat in space any day.

Re:Yeah well.

[Stuntmonkey]

I really want to remain optimistic about it but for me this whole orion project is like a reminder of where we *could* have been at the completion of the Apollo launchers.

What's lacking is a clear impetus for the manned program. Since the early 1970's it's been viewed by Congress as, at best, a jobs program to stimulate their local districts. (Note how NASA facilities are cleverly distributed across the country, to maximize the base of support. And note the gaping lack of any long-term objective behind initiatives like the ISS, or Orion for that matter.)

Personally I don't believe overcrowding, asteroid mining, or any other economic incentives will ever be powerful enough to drive manned spaceflight beyond low earth orbit. It's just too expensive, plain and simple. (Something like the space elevator could maybe change that, but that's a separate topic.) Scientific knowledge is a valid objective, but it tends to argue in favor of much cheaper unmanned missions. There are many things a human geologist could do on Mars that current rovers cannot, but is it worth a 100x cost multiplier? Most scientists would say no.

The only thing that can provably drive a major push into manned spaceflight is what did it the first time, namely competition from another country. I predict we won't advance beyond the Apollo level of capability until another country is knocking on that same door, and there is a perceived land grab at stake. At present I think China is the likeliest candidate.

Re:Yeah well.

[4D6963]

A real space program? Dude, we landed a robot on the moist and frozen shores of Titan, and we've got a few machines sending readings from the very fucking edge of the solar system.

Oh wait sorry, do you mean you would rather have had some guy play golf on an asteroid? Face it, space exploration is pursued for the sake of the advancement of science, not for the satisfaction of science fiction fans.

Re:Yeah well.

[4D6963]

Do you mind explaining to me what's the point of maintaining a manned Moon base for decades? Besides making it a bottomless money pit with an extremely poor ROI in terms of actual scientific advancement?

Yeah, sure, we could totally have a manned mission to Mars right now. If it wasn't for the fact that we don't have a launcher for that, nor a vehicle in which a crew could spend months in, let alone a way to return, nor probably any crew possibly prepared for such a trip.

No you're right, all you gotta do is put a couple of schmocks in a rocket and aim for the tiny red ball in the sky.

Re:Yeah well.

[4D6963]

No! I want my pitch dark sky, my month-long days, my utter lack of atmosphere, water, fauna or flora and basically just live in the middle of a rocky desert with shadows so dark you'd lose your car if you parked it on the dark side of a hill. Did I also mention I want to live far away from anyone and I love pings of 3 seconds when I play games online?

Re:Yeah well.

[4D6963]

And the parameters of that single environment (air pressure and content, temperature, etc) can be modified locally only with great effort; some things like gravity are basically out of the question entirely.

I can totally relate to that, I hate it when I can't choose the gravity I want or the chemical composition of my atmosphere. I mean some days you just need that extra pinch of Argon, you know?

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

actually it was a Boston album cover reference...

Well I think Peavey 5150 is the only electric guitar amplifier capable of lifting an entire city into space.

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

A real space program? Dude, we landed a robot on the moist and frozen shores of Titan, and we've got a few machines sending readings from the very fucking edge of the solar system.

I'm not taking anything away from the achievements of the Space science programs, I commend them. At the very minimum though I would at least expect an organisation like NASA to be able to earn royalties from the inventions that came from the space program so they are properly funded.

Oh wait sorry, do you mean you would rather have had some guy play golf on an asteroid?

No I mean an well engineered space infrastructure program to lay the foundations for the survival of our race beyond the next 1000 years.

Face it, space exploration is pursued for the sake of the advancement of science, not for the satisfaction of science fiction fans.

Oh really? Ok, let's land on the moon next month and do some science. Oh, I forgot, we can't because no nation has the capability to land on the moon, because we have actually gone backwards with what we can do.

Face it, imagination comes first and then science. It's the people with vision that make things happen in this world and if it wasn't for those science fiction fans you wouldn't have a space science program or mobile phone's, aircraft or the internet. The general populace don't give a fuck if there is a space program and are comforted with what the politicians dole out as a general balance between the apathy they feel towards space programs and what is required to demonstrate a technical superiority over rivals, nothing more.

Think about that next time you criticise the science fiction fan's who lobby the government to provide the space agencies with more budget for science and argue against those who would see what little space program we have dismantled.

Re:Yeah well.

[PhotoGuy]

I agree; and further to your point:

The most hospitable extra-planetary arrangement we can achieve, still seems *far* more hostile than the worst-case scenario on earth. Nuclear winter, high radiation, global warming, and whatever you can come up with, still result in a more hospitable environment than the Moon, Mars, and so forth. Building appropriate bunkers, protection, sheilding, underground worlds, fortresses, etc., on earth, would be far, far, far, easier than trying to launch enough equipment out of orbit, and transport it far enough, to do it in an offworld environment with little to no atmosphere, wild temperatures, incredible radiation, and so forth...

I agree space exploration is good for mankind in other ways (learning, reaching, proving what can be accomplished, furthering science); but as a salvation path for colonization of the planets by mankind, I really don't think so.

There's nothing that can't be built in space or on another planet, that can't be built *far* more easily on even the most hostile future of earth. The power of gravity alone pretty much ensures that. (Short of a super nova of the sun; and I think the human race will be long gone by factors *way* beyond our control, on that time scale.)

Re:Yeah well.

[4D6963]

Typical scifi nerd comments. The survival of our race for the next 1000 years? Alright, there's so many things that are wrong with this comment. NASA are scientists, they do science, they're not supposed to be the ones who save us from the end of times, that's not their job. Then, dude, quit reading/watching science fiction bullshit, the foreseeable future of mankind is on Earth, anything else is scifi fanboi wet pipe dreams.

Going to the Moon next month? What for? What's so special about the fucking Moon? There's a reason why we don't do much more than send a couple of probes there every decade at best, it's because it's not a very interesting place. That's the problem with people like you, you guys think that we somehow have to live up to the comic books and Star Trek episodes you watched as a kid. We don't, scifi isn't the future as it should be or will be. For all we care about we don't need to ever walk on another planet again.

Then, STFU about the imagination thing. I hate it when scifi losers act like they have the monopoly on imagination. I have a great imagination and I use that to create cool stuff, just like you said (check my sig), it doesn't take a comic book fan for that. And how does having a poor grounding in reality and being obsessed over emulating what you read as a kid helps anyways? It may provide some inspiration but when I see mislead people like you or losers like Kurzweil who are clinging hard onto their scifi dreams I cringe. What kind of shit is that anyways, you want science fiction fans to get credit for what scientists and engineers have done, before there even was modern science fiction? That's bullshit, I know that in the USA you guys love to pigeonhole together losers who play with Pokemon cards and people who like to look through telescopes, but that's really about related as the military personel and politicians. I bet you most of your fellow scifi loser friends from school became shit like accountants.

Oh and thank you soooo fucking much, science fiction fan, for lobbying the government for science to be done. Where would we be without you scifi loser type guys? We probably wouldn't get any sciencing done! Now if you'll excuse me I have to go thank the NRA for lobbying and fighting so hard for my constitutional rights.

Re:Yeah well.

[Dyolf Knip]

Ahh, Argon. Even more effective than coffee, I tell you.

But the gravity thing really is true. Manufacturing? Physical therapy? Sports? All things that could significantly benefit from being able to pick your g.

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

I am certainly glad I wore my flame proof undies today! I really think you should take a stress pill and lie down, you're getting a little to worked up over things. I'll do my best to wade through your rant and salvage some semblance of intelligent conversation, dood, but I think you should really drink less coffee.

The survival of our race for the next 1000 years?

In case you haven't noticed most of the worlds life sustaining systems are in decline. You should get out more often. I could go on but I get bored easily. Educate yourself.

NASA are scientists, they do science, they're not supposed to be the ones who save us from the end of times, that's not their job.

Where did I say it was? Really that level of aggression is bad for your blood pressure.

Going to the Moon next month? What for? What's so special about the fucking Moon?

I guess you wern't paying attention. In the late 1960's the United States landed a man on the moon, and for several years after. That capacity no longer exists. It's called regression. Don't have that capacity any more, get it? could do it, can't do it any more.

There's a reason why we don't do much more than send a couple of probes there every decade at best, it's because it's not a very interesting place.

I think that the astronauts that landed there would disagree. I'd go given an opportunity. What qualifies you to *know* that the moon isn't very interesting? Maybe you're not interested but the U.S is spending a lot of money to go back there, why do you think that is? I think the problem you are having is that you are making too many assumptions, you don't really care and you can't understand why others do. I feel sorry for you. Maybe it's just that *you* just can't conceptualise why the moon is interesting and therefore why building a space infrastructure is important (hint - craters).

We don't, scifi isn't the future as it should be or will be.

Well actually my impressions of where we *should* be came from the space program itself, of which I am also interested. But since you need some treatment with a clue-stick, sci-fi is about what the future *could* be.

For all we care about we don't need to ever walk on another planet again.

Ahh, enter the 'apathy factor'. Since you don't care if we get off this planet, perhaps you can explain what humanity is to do in the *inevitable* event of an extinction level event like a meteor hitting the earth - send Bruce Willis perhaps? It's called redundancy. Need redundancy for survival - get it?

Then, STFU about the imagination thing. I hate it when scifi losers act like they have the monopoly on imagination.

Very ill mannered aren't you. If you look at people like Sergey Korolyov and Wernher von Braun that had a vision, much of what they conceptualise *still* looks like science fiction. And yes Rodenberry first conceptualised what could be the modern mobile phone in Star Trek - what the fuck is wrong with that? Can you point to another tv program at the time that envisaged it. I could say Jules Verne first conceptualised the nuclear submarine - guess what the first US nuclear submarine was called. Every modern piece of technology looked like science fiction when it was conceptualised. Wright never said 'hey what do you think we can do with this flyer thingy? I just made'. When the "science" is conceptualised it's "fiction". Get it? "science" (that's the "sci" part) plus "fiction" (thats the "fi" part). Get it? "science fiction", "sci fi".

I have a great imagination and I use that to create cool stuff, just like you said (check my sig)

Well whoopdee fucken doo. Looks like a frequency by time sound file editor. You are hardly the first person to have done

Re:Yeah well.

[4D6963]

-The world's life sustaining systems... lol... whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean, what does it have to do with space exploration? You're not going to move billions of people into outer space anyways, ever. Not even in 1,000 years. That's just retarded.

-Big whoop, regression, that's like training hard for a pissing contest, winning it, and then whining that you've regressed cause you wouldn't be able to win that same winning contest again today.

-You missed the point, no one gives a fuck how it's like to actually go there, these guys didn't go up there to have a story to tell to their grandchildren, they went there to do some geology and astronomy. The Moon is dull from a scientific point of view. There's no compelling scientific reason to spend hundreds of billions to send people back there. Once again you're talking as a scifi nerd. You need to understand that space exploration isn't meant to be exciting, it's meant to advance science. And having people on the Moon just isn't worth it, no matter how wet it makes your bed sheets.

-STFU about redundancy already, even if we tried right now we couldn't terraform Mars. There's no redundancy, just fucking face it already. There's a reason why space agencies actually test things to deflect eventual such asteroids, thing which must I recall only happens every few hundreds of million years. But that's the problem with people like you or that loser Freeman Dyson whose solution to global warming is "let's just wait until we make genetically engineered trees that eat more carbon". You guys are too happy to throw feasibility and pragmatism out the window to give more room to your wishful thinking.

-So? I too have visions? Hence the link in my sig? Like I fucking said, you little suckers with your plastic wrapping covered comic books, Star Wars action figures and RPG card games don't have the monopoly on that shit. It's not because some fool had "the vision" to imagine a future in which phones would have no wire that cell phones exist, that's because engineers in the 1970s tried that, because they could. Nuclear submarines don't exist because it as written about by Jules Verne (Jules Verne, the _nuclear_ submarine, really?) that it exists, it's because engineers concluded that it would be a good propulsion mode, and because they could. What's next, you're going to credit the guy who wrote The Fly when a team of scientists manage to teleport a whole molecule?

-Unoriginal software? lol, you wouldn't say that if you understood the _vision_ behind it. You see, that's not original because of the technique it uses, that's original by the vision that guides, that is processing anything as images, that's how it does things other can't do.

-You've got friends? Oh snap, you got me there. By the way, that was the single most douchey thing I've read since last time I read of a Jersey guido bragging about the quality ass he gets while people on the Internet "jerk off to facebook pics".

-No, sorry, I haven't read some random NASA dude's paper about NIAC or CIAB, however I've read that other ESA dude's paper about JBKL, ICDH and most importantly, JNDMFMNIJFNJFEKBNLZEPL. Fascinating reads, you don't know what science is about until you've read those very particular papers.

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

Well I see you've strung together another ranting sililoquy, full of strawman arguments.

lol... whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean, what does it have to do with space exploration? You're not going to move billions of people into outer space anyways, ever. Not even in 1,000 years. That's just retarded.

lol, you know how the 'world keeps us alive', you see the world is made up of living biological systems, referred to sometimes as a "biosphere". Through the externalities of human activities we been polluting (or poisoning) them so that they are getting to the point of not being able to recover. Some are already beyond that point (i.e. ocean acidification). Will they last another thousand years at this rate of consumption? Unlikely

That's what it has to do with space *infrastucture* programs. Potential options for easing the damage done and a way to maintain living standards for people. Why, is that not an option worth attempting? Too science fiction for you? Here's science fiction for you, what do you think declining population will mean to civilisation?

I never said 'move' billions of people. Thats your retarded strawman not mine. You keep doing that, are you a scientologist or something?

and then whining that you've regressed cause you wouldn't be able to win that same winning contest again today.

What a stupid comparison, if we bought *your* reasoning to the computer industry we'd go from multi-core cpu's back to an abacus. We are talking about industrial capacity, like if we didn't have the ability to build jet aircraft or ships anymore.

The Moon is dull from a scientific point of view. There's no compelling scientific reason to spend hundreds of billions to send people back there.

Well, since you avoided the question again by saying I've missed the point, I'll ask you again, why is the US going back to the moon?

Once again you're talking as a scifi nerd.

Once again you *assumed* where my position comes from. I never claimed *all* the innovative ideas came from science fiction, that's your strawman argument. Did you even look up the names I supplied and who they were, or are you to mentally lazy to cut/paste/search.

You need to understand that space exploration isn't meant to be exciting, it's meant to advance science.

So all those military and communication satellites up there are advancing science are they, or are they space infrastructure?

And having people on the Moon just isn't worth it, no matter how wet it makes your bed sheets.

So I ask you again, why is the US going back to the moon? That is the capacity the Orion capsule is a part off.

-STFU about redundancy already, even if we tried right now we couldn't terraform Mars. There's no redundancy, just fucking face it already.

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH, see OP. Do actually read posts or just launch into a tirade.

There's a reason why space agencies actually test things to deflect eventual such asteroids, thing which must I recall only happens every few hundreds of million years.

I've seen 'concepts' proposed for testing, and perhaps a planned mission but an actual test mission, I don't think so.

The possibility is still very present with the odd's pegged at 1 in 45 . That's pretty close odds for an entire civilisation, I've bet on horses with longer odds than that. That's closer and a lot sooner than the millions of years since the last one especially when the actual ability to deflect an asteroid is still science fiction.

So when were these tests carried out on an asteroid?

Re:Yeah well.

[4D6963]

tl;dr lol

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

tl;dr lol

too lazy; don't read

how unfortunate for you - but it's explains a lot. This was my favourite part, notice how I used your own words to parody you with the description of your "visionary" software, get it?

you wouldn't say that if you understood the _vision_ behind it. You see,[inserts finger into own anus, withdraws it, then sniffs it] that's not original because of the technique it uses[rubs hand on penis], that's original by the vision that guides[touches own nipples], that is processing anything as images[sniffs own fart], that's how it does things other can't do[goes off to masturbate - again].

It's ok for you to pretend you're not humiliated so you can pick up the remains of your shattered dignity. I was rofl, lol.

Hint: If you don't resort to ad hominem attacks people will have an intelligent conversation with you.

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

tl;dr lol

too luminous;didn't register

oh well, just read it over and over until finally, you understand.

Hint: If you don't resort to ad hominem attacks people will have an intelligent conversation with you.

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

tl;dr lol

too little;do re-iterate

;-)

well if you insist

If you decide to reply, don't forget to actually *answer* the questions about why the U.S is spending to go back to the moon, or the asteriod deflection and the links..don't forget the links. I mean there has to be an incentive to read the rants of a self righteous asshole that just wants to go on the attack - like you did from the very beginning.

Oh, and what was the sci fi you have actually read?

But since you couldn't answer those points I think it is safe to presume that you are full of shit.

Hint: If you don't resort to ad hominem attacks people will have an intelligent conversation with you.

Re:Yeah well.

[4D6963]

lol, 3 comments? Don't worry, I didn't read any of those either ;-)

Re:Yeah well.

[MrKaos]

lol, 3 comments? Don't worry, I didn't read any of those either ;-)

Sure you didn't ;-)

How many years have they been working on this?

[elrous0]

Wow, all these years of working on the new moon/Mars project, and they hit upon the ingenious idea of making an Apollo splashdown pod slightly bigger. My tax dollars at work.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[xenolion]

it looks to me like a quick answer.. Just like how old the shuttles are, lets keep dumping very large amounts of cash into aging items and not looking form something new..Oh hold on if forgot we are talking about the U.S. Government putting large amount of cash with no real results.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[Pravetz-82]

Very small part of your tax money, I would say. The bulk of your taxes goes to Iraq and Afghanistan... yeah and for saving greedy bankers. Cheers!

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[mdwh2]

Good point, yes, obviously making a spacecraft to carry six people to Mars is as simple as just coming up with the idea "make it bigger". It's not like it's rocket science, is it. They should have just read your comment here on Slashdot, we'd be there by now.

What a waste of those tax dollars, if only we hadn't spent all that money funding NASA this past five years we could have had enough for, I don't know, almost an extra year of war in Iraq ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget ). And it's not like they did anything else with all that money, like Shuttle launches is it.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[mdwh2]

Surely part of the problem with the Shuttles is that they did try to come up with something new, even when the older ideas were better?

If it isn't broken...

(And if sending an Apollo style rocket to Mars was as trivial as that, it would've been done in the 70s. As with most things, ideas are cheap, implementation is hard - the idea of "I know, let's avoid that mad expensive shuttle design" is trivial in terms of cost compared with actually designing a new craft, and the fact that it has a passing resemblance to Apollo doesn't mean it's the same in terms of technology or capability.)

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[Lumpy]

It also screams failure to me. The ride to the moon was a sunday drive in a car, the trip to mars is quite a bit longer. Cramming 6 guys in a soupcan for that long is a BAD IDEA. why cant we build something larger? Yeah, yeah launch capacity.. who says it has to be assembled here on the planet, why cant they make the parts screw together in space? We launched skylab, and that was larger than this. use 3 launches. 1 for the engine and spacionics pack, 1 for the crew cab, and 1 for the mars lander. assemble the three pieces in space, man it with a smaller launch or even have them start from the ISS, it could be docked there for assembly. far less fuel would be needed to get to mars and they can even use the earth/moon gravity wells to use even less fuel.

I sat in Apollo 18's capsule that was at the cape. 3 guys in that was nuts (and I was a kid then) I cant see them scaling tat up enough to fit 6 comfortably for a month.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[rwven]

On the contrary, our taxes aren't supporting Iraq, Afganistan, or the bailout. The federal reserve bank is.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[beejhuff]

I (for once) RTFA, and from what I gathered, they've developed this module and updated launcher to provide an effective round trip mechanism for Moon expeditions, where they will practice the operations that will be required when a full scale Mars mission is executed (sometime around between 2020-2030). I think the important point is that NASA is realizing that the shuttle is not an effective mission system for the next generation of Moon missions, which are a pre-req for any future Mars missions.

To me, this actually sounds like a sober assessment - and one that is long overdue.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[Ihmhi]

I would submit that tax dollars spent at NASA are rarely wasted.

Imagine, for a moment, that someone proposes to drive across the desert. A company spends millions of dollars and debuts a 5 wheeled car. Why? The 4 wheeled car is proven and safe.

THAT is what is most important to NASA - proven, and safe.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[DerekLyons]

Wow, all these years of working on the new moon/Mars project, and they hit upon the ingenious idea of making an Apollo splashdown pod slightly bigger. My tax dollars at work.

I'm more worried about my tax dollars - the ones wasted on your education.
 
In real world engineering, form follows function. Just like the Airbus 380 is basically an enlarged Boeing Dash 80, the Orion is an enlarged Apollo. For both functions there's only so many forms that work, and no particular reason not to choose something proven. This isn't fad and fashion driven product design (like the latest iCoolthing), but something people's lives will depend on.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[McGruber]

Wow, all these years of working on the new moon/Mars project, and they hit upon the ingenious idea of making an Apollo splashdown pod slightly bigger. My tax dollars at work.

In all fairness to NASA, their did have to come up with something that could be understood by Dubya.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[elwinc]

What they don't bother to mention in TFA is that

* Moon-Mars is basically unfunded. NASA has to steal from other missions just to study Moon-Mars
* The moon is a lousy steppingstone to Mars. Think about it: to land on a planet with an atmosphere, you can slow down with a parachute. To overcome your delta-V for a moon landing, you need to carry enough fuel to decelerate and to re-launch! If you just skip the moon entirely, you don't have that horribly expensive deceleration phase followed by that expensive acceleration phase.

Face it, most of the actual science done in space has been done by robots and will continue to be for the forseeable future. Humans in space is not a bad idea, but Bush didn't fund Moon-Mars and it's unlikely to get funded any time in the forseeable future. Personally, I've always thought Moon-Mars was a cynical political ploy to win a slice of the nerd vote. But that's just me.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[Cheeko]

The capsule will only be for the trip to/from orbit.

Similar to the moon missions any Mars mission will have at least 1 and likely 2-3 other modules that will rendezvous in orbit and make the trip to Mars as one craft.

You'll note the heavy lift rocket portion of Constellation can carry far more weight than any US rocket to date. The whole reason for that is lifting large modules for a larger craft. (lunar lander, mars lander, mars transit habitat, whatever).

The Orion capsule is just one part of the entire Constellation series of vehicles.

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[CrimsonAvenger]

It also screams failure to me. The ride to the moon was a sunday drive in a car, the trip to mars is quite a bit longer. Cramming 6 guys in a soupcan for that long is a BAD IDEA. why cant we build something larger?

TFA is long on hype, and short on details.

But further reading in this handy manual that my wife brought back from Stennis Space Center the other day shows that Orion is used to take off from Earth, rendezvous with the REAL "Mars-capable" spacecraft, then get turned off for the three+ years of the Mars mission.

Then, when the REAL Mars-capable spacecraft gets close to Earth, they turn the Orion back on, climb in, separate from the REAL Mars-capable spacecraft, and reenter the atmosphere in Orion.

In other words, TFA is a pile of steaming horse-*....

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[Dyolf Knip]

> To overcome your delta-V for a moon landing, you need to carry enough fuel to decelerate and to re-launch

There's always a lithobraking orbit. :)

Re:How many years have they been working on this?

[largesnike]

I've always thought Moon-Mars was a cynical political ploy to win a slice of the nerd vote

There's a nerd vote? cool!

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll be at Alpha centuri in a few years, if all goes well.

Re:Yes

[Shakrai]

We'll be at Alpha centuri in a few years, if all goes well.

Nah, I prefer to win the game by global conquest. It's much more entertaining to pour all of your resources into armies, fleets and aircraft than spaceship components. Those fucking Celts will soon pay for sacking Athens back in 3400 BC, muhahahahahahahahaha.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

But humans are violent in nature

I smell bullshit. All omnivores and carnivores could be said to be "violent in nature." However, since we try not to anthropomorphize in science, we just say they act naturally. If you remove our sentience, we revert back to our animalistic selves. Would we then be violent for showing our competitive natures?

Ultimately when you think about this you will reach a point where you will see that peace and violence are man made. This is akin to good and evil, they don't truly exist in the natural world except in the hearts of men.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

*whoosh*

Re:Yes

[PHPNerd]

Nah, I prefer to win the game

Ahhh! And now I just LOST the game! Thanks alot! :(

Re:Yes

[splatter]

thanks a lot!

Another thing I had no desire to know about and now can't get out of my head.

Princess Leia :

[That_Dan_Guy]

"You came in that thing?, Youâ(TM)re braver than I thought"

Re:Princess Leia :

[Thanshin]

"You came in that thing?, Youâ(TM)re braver than I thought"

Iuâ(TM)m brave, youuâ(TM)re brave, Weuâ(TM)re all brave, brave.

Re:Princess Leia :

[Anonymous Coward]

That unwanted (TM) is strangely appropriate when referencing Star Wars (TM).

Re:Princess Leia :

[Phroggy]

How hard can it be to fix Slashdot's handling of Unicode characters? Really?

The obvious solution is to build a whitelist of allowed characters, and prevent posts containing other characters from being submitted. Obviously the whitelist should include characters like smart quotes. Then, make sure everything is using UTF-8 for both input and output.

For a brief moment I thought the problem could be that the back-end database doesn't support Unicode characters, so everything is getting mangled there. However, since the Preview feature mangles everything too, it has to be an input processing bug, and not a database bug.

1960s safety?

[geekmux]

"...and builds on 1960s technology to make it safer."

Ah, am I the only one reading this and questioning just exactly what the hell we have been paying NASA Engineers millions of dollars for over the last 45 years?

I mean, I'm all for K.I.S.S. methodology and all, but damn, 40+ years worth of advances should not be completely looked over for "tried and true". Even that is questionable, given Apollos not-so-perfect track record.

Hell, how many "safety" features are still in use today from the 60's in automobiles?

Guess I better start buying stock in vacuum tube manufacturers...

Re:1960s safety?

[mbrod]

It is just marketing to make people think they are using pre-existing tech to keep things cheap.

If they came out and said they were working on a shape shifting liquid metal clokeable craft for the Mars mission it would die in five minutes because people would know it would cost a gazillion dollars.

The current path will still cost a gazillion dollars, just not scare the public in to rejecting it before it gets off the ground.

Re:1960s safety?

[Timberwolf0122]

Well seat belts came in around the late 60's... I think what they mean is the fundamental craft was sound (in the same way that cars are still fairly car-shaped) however they are now adding ABS, Air bags and a musical horn.

Re:1960s safety?

[Shrike82]

Hell, how many "safety" features are still in use today from the 60's in automobiles?

Anti-lock brakes and head restraints are the two most prominent.

Car seat belts were invented in the 50's. Wouldn't want a car without those.

Re:1960s safety?

[Shrike82]

The current path will still cost a gazillion dollars, just not scare the public in to rejecting it before it gets off the ground.

Some would say that's an unfortunate choice of words given the past "failures to launch".

Re:1960s safety?

[MightyYar]

Hell, how many "safety" features are still in use today from the 60's in automobiles?

This is purely off the top of my head, so I might have things a bit mis-placed... but I know that these were in use during the 60s:
Dual-chamber master cylinder
Disk brakes
Seat Belts
Padded dash
Breakaway steering column
Unibody construction
Crumple zones
Halogen Headlamps
Protected passenger area

There is no doubt that cars are safer and more reliable today - but you are very wrong if you think that they aren't "built upon" 1960s technology.

Re:1960s safety?

[Shrike82]

Breakaway steering column

Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me that my car's main control instrument is based on a design that is preceeded by the verb "breakaway".

I'm off to buy a bicycle.

Re:1960s safety?

[MBGMorden]

A joke, yes, but IIRC, the breakaway steering column is meant to keep the steering column from being pushed straight up into the driver's chest in a frontal impact. A huge column a metal hitting you at high speed just isn't good. There are some things that you WANT to break in a car in certain circumstances. Imagine it as a non-electrical equivalent of a safety fuse of sorts.

Re:1960s safety?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, am I the only one reading this and questioning just exactly what the hell we have been paying NASA Engineers millions of dollars for over the last 45 years?

No there are plenty of other idiots posting in this story.

Re:1960s safety?

[mrdoogee]

Modern passenger jets are built on 1960s tech.
Modern Automobiles are built on 1960s tech.
Modern computers are built on 1960s tech.

All the article was trying to say is that this isn't a new and untested technology, but an evolution of a spacecraft design that successfully made it to the moon 9 times (Once with the guidance system turned off) and landed there 6 times.

Re:1960s safety?

[NeoSkandranon]

Dixie.

The prospect of a mars mission

[Big Hairy Ian]

Sets some interesting challenges never mind the amount of time to get there but simple landing and taking off again will be horrendous. Bear in mind that to achieve even Low earth Orbit you kneed some pretty impressive ordinance. Getting back from the moon will be a piece of piss in comparison at only 16.6% earth gravity but Mars's gravity is 38% earth gravity which means any escape mechanism is going to kneed orders of magnitude more impulse in order to achieve marsion orbit compared to to same feat on the moon. I'm not sure it could be achieved with a single stage rocket although I admit it's a possibility. But what about Launch a pad???? Will it be Liquid or Solid propellant???? Many many questions of which I'm sure even NASA hasn't even started to look for answers yet.

Wait -- what?

[noundi]

...and builds on 1960s technology to make it safer.

Does this mean that since the 1960's the safety of space travel has declined?

What? Don't you read their blog?

[H0p313ss]

Why are you all still in the '90s?

http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Constellation/

Building on 1960's tech?

[Taibhsear]

How about starting from scratch and learning from our mistakes instead of using duct tape on it. Reference 1960's material, don't build on it.

Heavily inspired by...

[Renderer of Evil]

JL421

Re:New definition of "Live TV"...

[bloodninja]

when we get to watch em die light minutes from earth in space.

Even with that risk, I'd sign up as the first to go.

Bone mineral loss

[DrYak]

Yup, really cosy for a long-distance space trip.

Specially since it's small capsule.
Not some big rotating structure.
No rotation = no "Stanley Kubrick's 2001 : Space Odyssey"-like artificial gravity. (Or like a five-years old playing with a bucket of water, whichever mental picture you prefer)

And a trip to Mars is surely going to be rather long (several months).
Several months without gravity means muscle atrophy and space osteoporosis.

Which means that once they land on mars, the astronauts will hardly be in shape to do their historic "small step for a human".

Imagine the historic phrase: "One small roll-down-the-stairs for a human, but a huge step for mankind". It sort of doesn't play out.

If only the NASA had the same budget as the war in Irak...

Re:Bone mineral loss

[pipatron]

You don't need rotation to create artificial gravity, you need constant acceleration. This is what the rotation in space odyssey does, and they might as well keep accelerating their craft at 1.0g, and then turn the craft around halfway and keep decelerate in 1.0g to get the same effect.

Re:Bone mineral loss

[stevelinton]

Except you can keep rotating for free, while constant acceleration using chemical (or even fission) power requires completely insane amounts of fuel.

Re:Bone mineral loss

[Cheeko]

That would take a LOT of fuel.

As it is the quantity of fuel required for a trip to Mars is one of the primary issues and thats just for a burst to initiate the trip, and burn to slow you into orbit, a burn to drop you into the atmosphere and then whatever fuel to get off the surface. To have constant acceleration at 1g would require immense amounts of fuel.

The only advantage besides the gravity is that with constant thrust the trip would be much shorter.... You however need some obscenely large spacecraft.

Rotation on the other hand could be imparted once and topped off with much more efficient technologies (ion engines perhaps providing slow but constant the rotational energy?).

Most likely though any early trips to mars will simply be long term zero g missions using other methods to keep the astronauts fit enough to function on the surface.

Re:Bone mineral loss

[camperdave]

One added benefit to the rotational method is that you can gradually alter the rotation so that by the time the astronauts reach Mars, they are acclimatized to its gravity. Same thing on the trip home.

Yay! 1960s tech!

[Pedrito]

... builds on 1960s technology to make it safer.

Can you imagine a car manufacturer throwing out a line like that? "Our new car builds on 1960s tech to make it safer." Boy, that inspires me with all kinds of confidence.

Re:Yay! 1960s tech!

[MightyYar]

You'd prefer they lie? The fact is that the safest configuration has been shown to be a capsule that can re-enter more or less ballistic in a pinch. It might bang the astronauts up a bit, but at least they'll live to talk about it. And if the rocket malfunctions at launch, they are way up at the top where shrapnel can't hit them.

A shuttle-like craft is great if you need to bring stuff back home, and this presumed to be a requirement in the 70s, but hasn't really been used much in practice. In the future, anything as complicated as the shuttle should probably remain unmanned - at least for takeoff and re-entry.

Re:Yay! 1960s tech!

[Chelloveck]

Because when you're selling something that looks like a used Edsel, you've gotta make up some flimsy excuse to get people to buy it.

"Sure, it's ugly and it looks like something from 40 years ago but... Safety! Yeah, that's it! Boy, they sure don't build 'em like they used to, do they? Well now they do! Yessiree, built like a tank with none of that 'computerized fuel injector' stuff to break down. God bless America."

Re:Yay! 1960s tech!

[Biggseye]

I believe that you are totally mistaken in the statement that capsules are the safest way to get people to and from orbit. History shows that the Russians alone killed more people in capsule returns by parachute then the combined total of the shuttle accidents. Much of this is not common knowledge. The concept of an uncontrolled fall through 200+ miles of space and atmosphere to land on a moving ocean, in a target area bigger then most cities, and relying on parachutes that are outdated and, at best prone to fail a lot more than the heat tile system, is beyond short sighted and in the realm of incompetence on the part of the NASA leadership.

Re:Yay! 1960s tech!

[MightyYar]

Exactly 1 person has died as a result of "outdated" parachutes, and that was in 1967. The only other Russian fatalities were the result of a bad undocking when they lost their air to a leak in the vacuum of space, which has nothing to do with capsule vs. spaceplane. In fact, the capsule successfully landed despite the dead astronauts inside. The US had zero capsule fatalities, unless you count the training fire that killed 3 Apollo astronauts.

Re:Yay! 1960s tech!

[Biggseye]

Russian falsehood all around. The Russians lost an average of 3 people per year due to their boiler plate designs. Most was not made public due to Russian government. The point is that the entire process of dropping an uncontrolled craft from 200 miles up in to the ocean is begging for fatalities. Your supporting wagon wheel tech in the age of hypersonic tech. that on it face is abhorrent. As I have said in other posts, this is SPAM IN A CAN thinking.

Re:Yay! 1960s tech!

[MightyYar]

The Russians lost an average of 3 people per year due to their boiler plate designs.

Huh? Even if you count conspiracy theories from the "space race" era (which might contribute another 15 casualties), you seem to be ignoring the fact that not a single cosmonaut has died on a Soyuz since 1971, despite hundreds of cosmonauts being delivered safely to orbit and (mostly) unharmed back to earth... and this despite major systems failures. A parachute is very simple and very effective - your distaste of it cannot possibly be based on it's safety record.

Vista Capable vs Mars Capable

[sslk]

Immediately after reading the headline containing the words "Mars Capable" the image of the Vista capable sticker flashed into my mind accompanied by the BSOD on all Command Center computers and some unfortunate astronaut's last communication transmissible to earth before his untimely death being "I told you we should have used Linux"

Not quite...

[GenP]

Sadly, it's not the Orion you may have been thinking of.

patents have expired :)

[MindKata]

"No - this is a derivative of the 1960s Apollo capsule. But look at the bright side - all the relevant patents have expired by now."

I like the idea of an open source Apollo Rocket. Although for home build, I'm guessing finding a big enough garden shed for it, is going to be the least of the technical problems, so to speak.

This seems misleading

[JerryLove]

The vehicle in question is an ascent/re-entry craft. It might be sufficient for the trip to the moon (though certainly landing and relaunching will require a second craft as it did for Apollo), but this vehicle is not up to the task of providing suitable living conditions for a trip to Mars.

For a Mars trip this is at best a way to get up to the interplanetary vessel and return to Earth from it. Given that, I can't imagine why you would bother to cart it all the way there just to cart it back.

Re:This seems misleading

[Doghouse Riley]

"Given that, I can't imagine why you would bother to cart it all the way there just to cart it back."

There was a discussion about this in one of the space-related usenet groups a couple of years ago.

As I recall it, the problem is that it takes a lot of fuel and engine power to brake a big spacecraft into Earth orbit on the return from Mars (or anywhere else outside the Earth-Moon system for that matter). And there is no particular reason why the returning crew and their Martian samples -have- to do that.

So at this point NASA expects the return from Mars to be a straight in ballistic return to Earth's atmosphere without a stop in Earth orbit. Hence the Orion CM with its heatshield has to be carried to Mars and back.

Mankind should assemble a spaceship in orbit.

[master_p]

The only realistic approach to space travel in our solar system is to build a good nuclear-driven space ship in orbit, big enough so as that people can live many years in it, with rotating sections to simulate gravity. This spaceship will never land onto planets, but it would contain pods that could land and take off.

It could take a few trillion dollars, but if all the major countries co-operate, it is feasible. All the money spent in weapons could be spent for space exploration.

So...

[ZonkerWilliam]

Being stuck in a capsule for minimum 6 months to Mars?? Fine if your a gerbil, not so fine if your a human being.

A little reading, please

[stuntpope]

Is it too much to ask for people who read a supposedly tech site actually read, and perhaps think, before pounding their keyboards with things like "how's that little thing going to get 6 astronauts to Mars?", "NASA is stoopid", and the like?

Its proposed use is to carry up to 6 astronauts to the space station, and from there, 4 to the Moon. For the Moon missions, Orion will travel along with the Altair lunar lander.

For Mars missions, "Orion could rendezvous in low Earth orbit with vehicles that will take explorers to other destinations in our solar system such as Mars." http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/306407main_orion_crew%20_expl_vehicle.pdf

These Mars-bound vehicles will be assembled in low Earth orbit. There is no reason to believe that 4 or 6 astronauts would be confined to the small Orion capsule for the duration of a Mars voyage.

On a side note, I was 5 years old when I watched the first manned landing on the Moon. It's amazing to me that a manned Mars mission may happen when I'm in my 70's. Certainly not how I imagined things when I was young.

Re:A little reading, please

[ZonkerWilliam]

I remember the moon landings well, was only 8 myself, but when an article supposedly shows the spacecraft mock up that will take us to mars, you have to question, if this wasn't it then where is the mock-up? So far NASA has not published a single design for spacecraft that would get to Mars.

Re:A little reading, please

[stuntpope]

From reading the NASA pdf's, it appears that a Mars mission isn't planned at this point, just blue-sky. A return to the Moon seems very much in the works, whereas the descriptions about Mars were couched with words like "possible", "one day", etc.

Re:A little reading, please

[Biggseye]

The funny thing is I was 15 at the time of the first Apollo Moon landing and have been waiting for 40 years for NASA to get its collective backside in gear and get back on track. The amazing thing is that they have the gall to call they 60's throwback a spacecraft. Back in the early days, the pilots had a name for vehicles like this; "SPAM IN A CAN". Why in the name of High Tech would NASA use capsule on a Rocket when every other space agency on earth, the Russian, the Chinese, the Japanese, the European Space agency, are all designing a winged or lifting body design for crew to orbit and back? Then Land, not on a runway or open flat lake bed, they are going back to dropping people from space, by parachute into a moving ocean, where they are lucky to hit a 30 mile wide target. Read your space history, more people have been killed in parachute returns to earth than in the shuttle losses. The Russians killed people regularly this way. This capsule is just another example of NASA small thinking.

Re:A little reading, please

[ZonkerWilliam]

This is what happens when you have an agency becomes more afraid of failure than pushing the boundaries, sad actually.

Re:A little reading, please

[zendog]

Yeah, I'm kind of surprised that this is the first this crowd is reading about Constellation. Aren't you guys tech geeks? Did Slashdot become Salon while I wasn't looking?

Re:A little reading, please

[CrimsonAvenger]

Its proposed use is to carry up to 6 astronauts to the space station, and from there, 4 to the Moon. For the Moon missions, Orion will travel along with the Altair lunar lander.

Umm, no.

It will be used to carry up to six astronauts to the ISS, OR four to the moon. A Moon mission will NOT include a stop at the ISS. At least according to this handy manual my wife brought home from Stennis Space Center.

Re:A little reading, please

[mbone]

I admire your passion, but I know of no one planning for winged / lifting body returns right now. There was the French Hermes and the Soviet Buran, but they are both long canceled. If you know of any active programs, please provide links.

Re:A little reading, please

[Weaps]

I propose that we already have such a spacecraft. It's called the ISS and it's already in LEO with a nice large habitable space for the crew. Can't we just truck up a big booster on a Titan IV (or even Shuttle) to send it out on a trip to Mars with a retro to get it into Mars orbit? Attach a couple of landers for the Mars landing thing and a couple of Orions (or even Soyuz) for the return to Earth. We could even have another Titan send another booster out to Mars orbit so it could link up and use that to return the ISS (and do the retro-burn thing; I know that Apollo came back from the moon balls-to-the-wall at the same velocity it left with so we'd need to retro back to Earth orbit) and use the Orion to bring the crew back to the surface safely.

Then we could do it again since we have this nice platform up there, already big-assed and in orbit. Even better would be a nuclear rocket for this trip but the anti-nuke crowd would get their panties in a bunch.

Re:A little reading, please

[Timoleon]

When I was a kid in the sixties we had the World Book Encyclopedia in my home. Each year a supplement would come out with lots of interesting articles. I think it was in 1966 there was a NASA article in the supplement which talked about hydroponics and how it would help the astronauts in their quest to get to Mars. In the frenzied atmosphere of The Space Race, the thinking then was that Man would step on Mars no later than 1985, according to the article!! I think we've forgotten to dream...

Conspiracy?

[2gravey]

This mock up will come in quite handy when they fake the Mars landing.

Re:That is just fucking stupid.

[rbanffy]

"I feel sorry for the crew who has to spend all that time in that shit box."

They won't. And you can really consider that capsule is more or less the escape pod from the real spaceship. Other way to think about it is the "shipping container for the crew and return samples".

I suppose most of the time the crew will have more spacious quarters, specially when en route to Mars. The capsule will also never get to the Martian surface - they will probably have a descent vehicle either with them since Earth or safely parked in Martian orbit as well as an ascent vehicle landed near their working site on Mars that's there since before they leave Earth.

Re:That is just fucking stupid.

[meringuoid]

Maybe it might make a little more sense to explore "the moon, Mars, and beyond" with an actual goddamn spaceship?!?! You know, one that isn't going to take a goddamn year just to get to another planet that's practically right next door, considering just how big "space" is.

Yeah, you retards. It's not rocket science.

Oh, wait, it is. I'd mis-identified the retards involved here.

For the record, there are ways of getting to Mars in substantially less time. However, they're not going to happen, because people don't like hearing the N-word.

spend MONTHS in THAT TINY LITTLE BOX?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

They'll arrive on Mars completely insane.

RS

Re:spend MONTHS in THAT TINY LITTLE BOX?

[Lord Ender]

I've spent my entire career in a tiny little box :-/

Re:That is just fucking stupid.

[rbanffy]

There is no reason not to attach an Apollo-like capsule to a interplanetary spacecraft that has a nuclear-thermal (or anything "N") engine strapped on it. Still, you are right - the eco-folks will make it nearly impossible to have a spacecraft with sufficient power to travel between planets unless we discover some fancy new physics.

This is the crew return vehicle. Nothing really spectacular about that.

Quick question..?

[jambox]

How is this going to be able to lift off from the surface of Mars again?

Mars Capable? Puh-Leez!

[heironymous]

This ship is no more Mars capable than my Dad's Buick. It it too much to ask that Reuters get the story straight? I guess newspapers are in so much financial trouble that they have to lie in their headlines to sell copy.

I weep for our space program.

[arkham6]

Really, is this the best they can do? Building of 1960's tech?

And this part got me too:

Trips to the moon are scheduled for 2020, while a journey to Mars is believed possible by the mid-2030s.

GUH, wtf happened to our ability to explore space, to do cool stuff, to take damn risks?

BBC Video

[krou]

For those wanting to have a brief look at it, the BBC have an interview with Alan Rhodes from Nasa, and some video of the craft.

Uh, no!

[gbutler69]

Where is the Fed getting the money?

They PRINT it!

What does that do to the value of the money you currently have in your wallet and the salary you are about to be paid?

It makes it represent a smaller portion of the wealth of the nation!

What does that mean?

You just got taxed!

Thank you for playing! Better luck next time!

Re:Uh, no!

[rwven]

You missed my point... No one will EVER pay that money back. They couldn't tax the americans enough to do so even if they wanted.

In short, the fed is printing out money that will never be repaid. Our taxes from here on out will always go to a budget that will always be in deficit. We're not PAYING for any of that crap and we never will.

Mars-"Capable"

[guydmann]

all i can think of is vista-capable.

A Gazillion taxpayers...

[geekmux]

It is just marketing to make people think they are using pre-existing tech to keep things cheap.

If they came out and said they were working on a shape shifting liquid metal clokeable craft for the Mars mission it would die in five minutes because people would know it would cost a gazillion dollars.

The current path will still cost a gazillion dollars, just not scare the public in to rejecting it before it gets off the ground.

Ha! Since when does the "public" have any say in Government spending?!? The word "bailout" comes to mind, which has scared the shit out of the "public" enough.

I know as much as the next guy that innovations that NASA brings forth will likely create some economic stimulation and jobs, but dusting off capsule drawings and dragging Engineers out of retirement isn't exactly what I had in mind. Don't even get me started as to why we need to visit the red planet...

Re:That is just fucking stupid.

[imikem]

Why are you bringing race into the discussion? Or do Africans have special skills and abilities in this area? I've heard many times about athletic ability, who knew that running in space was much faster than rocket propulsion? /satire

"Too Queasy"?

[xbytor]

"Over the summer, flight doctors will analyze the data to ensure it does not make astronauts too queasy."

They're testing a the system for it's performance during an aborted launch and they're worried about the astronauts getting too queasy? If they have to abort a real launch, you would think that a couple of astronauts chucking would be the least of their worries. Survivability I understand, but this is not a theme park ride we're talking about here.

Re:"Too Queasy"?

[dlgeek]

It's a capsule. It's designed to splashdown in the ocean on completion of a successful mission too.

OpenApollo

[itomato]

I agree - allow millions of interested, but disconnected eyeballs to scan for things like improper O-ring fitment, valid unit conversions, and validity of trajectory calculations, and you will have a vastly more involved, and better served society for all this galavanting around the solar system.

Maybe someone like Armadillo or Virgin will open up to the concept, and begin a shift.

Since no one else has

[ericrost]

Single page unbranded link:

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE52T6XH20090330?sp=true

Misleading headline much?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Orion is NOT "Mars-capable".

What Orion is is a souped up Apollo. The only thing it will do in a Mars mission is carry the crew up to the real Mars-capable spacecraft, and bring them back down to Earth when the real Mars-capable spacecraft gets close to earth at the end of the mission.

Orion isn't even "Moon-capable", in that it doesn't (yet) have a Lunar Lander analog to take the crew from Lunar orbit down to the surface and back.

builds on 1960s technology ?

[mbone]

I would also hopes that it builds on some technology from this century, as well as the last.

The real story here

[mbone]

The real story here is that all of this could have been done in the 1970's. We could have landed humans on Mars 30 years ago. We (for some set of "we") didn't want to. LBJ didn't want to. Nixon didn't want to. Is that all it takes to derail a Democracy - two leaders in a row that are opposed to something ?

It gives me a better appreciation for the travails of Admiral Zheng He and his treasure fleet.

Moon test

[Idiomatick]

I never understood the idea of the moon test. It not like if they fuck up on the moon vs on mars we have something in place. 'Oh good that irreparable part exploded on the moon, we'll just send.... FUCK'

Space vs. population

[rlseaman]

When Earth becomes completely overpopulated and/or runs into resource shortages, that's when we'll see space flight really take off.

How is that, exactly? Population is governed by compound interest. Our population today is 6.6 billion souls. The current growth rate is 1.167% per annum. (Data via CIA.) Do the math. Today there were 213,000 more souls and 6000 tons more human flesh pressing inward on Mother Earth than yesterday. Tomorrow there will be 213,000 more. The day after - another 213,000. In six months that will be 214,000 per day - six months later, 215,000 per day, and so forth and so on. Less than a year from now there will be another 1.8 million tons of human flesh literally shouldering other species into extinction. That's not 1.8 million tons total - that's just the additional growth of skin and hair and sinew and good red meat locked up in your mama's Soylent Green recipe.

For space to matter in the solution of this problem, we have to build a fleet of ships capable of offloading 213,000 people - a new space fleet every day, year after year - forever. A space shuttle carries a crew of seven - so we need 30,000 space shuttles a day or 35,000 Orions. (Of course, that only gets you to low Earth orbit.) Each year we would have to move 1.8 million tons of human cold cuts - that's the equivalent of 18 Nimitz class aircraft carriers of flesh - to some other distant, unwelcoming world.

And then, of course, you've just shifted the horizon of the always looming catastrophe to a collection of planets rather than a single planet. Since this is a doubling issue, colonizing another planet - say, a terraformed Venus - just buys you an additional 60 years. If you want to push the inevitable collapse of civilization off for 240 years (roughly the duration of the American Experiment to date) - well, you need 15 additional Earth clones.

Our population problem will be solved on Earth - one way or another.

genecavanaugh@gmail.com

[patents]

Actually, they won't have too much to do. If a solar flare hits on the way to or from Mars, they will be parachuting in dead astronauts; less of a problem than living people.