NASA To Team Up With Russia For Future Mars Flight

xp65 writes "NASA has invited Russia to carry out a joint manned flight to Mars, the head of NASA's Moscow office said on Tuesday. Russia is currently planning to send its own expedition to Mars some time in the future. Marc Bowman told an international aviation and space conference in Moscow that the Mars mission should take advantage of the achievements made by the International Space Station and use a multinational crew."

Comments

Understanding

[KraftDinner]

I've always thought that the only way for us as a race to become a unified nation is to simple explore space together. As soon as one nation decides to call Mars or whatever other celestial body their own, it will just be downhill from there.

Re:Understanding

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your underestimating the importance of competition.

Russia going to Mars alone could motivate a second space race. The end result is someone standing on Mars in 10 years instead of 20. NASA is more likely to get funding and motivation if they are competing.

Re:Understanding

[MrNaz]

If it ends up anything like the Apollo 11 mission, the cake *and* the launch will be a lie.

Re:Understanding

[0123456]

There's lots of things that a properly implemented world government could do that would be fantastic and in the long run would benefit everyone on the planet.

There are a lot of things that Santa Claus could do that would be fantastic and in the long run would benefit everyone on the planet too... they're about as likely to happen as a 'properly implemented world government'.

You seem to be under the impression that a 'world government' would be something other than a collection of psychopaths desperate to prey on the rest of us.

The odd thing is that I find the people who most promote 'world government' are also normally big promoters of 'diversity', and don't even see the blatant inconsistency between those position.

Re:Understanding

[Shakrai]

Because not everyone is strong enough to defeat a determined aggressor in hand to hand combat? Because aggressors will always be able to get their hands on weapons despite the numerous laws saying they can't have them? Because a gun is the most effective tool currently available for defending yourself against aggression?

Re:Understanding

[johncadengo]

In a speech to the UN, Reagan once said:

"I couldn't help but say to him, just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held, if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences we've had between our countries and we'd find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together."

It does make sense

[damburger]

The ISS as an international logistics project has been a resounding success. The European ATV, for example, can be launched and then dock with the ISS under the direction of 4 different control centres in different parts of the globe. The station itself is the most massive spacecraft ever assembled and has been constructed from components built by different agencies in different countries, and they work together pretty well. Most of the valid criticisms of the ISS are of the utility of having a LEO space station, not as the ability of the ISS to perform that function.

I approve

[oldhack]

Cynical NASA ploy to pull in the Russian babes. Can't blame them - it's a long-ass flight. Actually, good idea for short flights, too.

Unshackle Russian Engineers from Russian System

[reporter]

Russia has outstanding scientists and engineers. Consider their achievements: Sputnik, the Mig 29, contributions to physics, etc.

However, the Russian system -- with its corruption and massive budget cuts (afte 1991) in government-funded research and development -- has hampered Russians scientists and engineers in their effort to produce breakthrough technology. NASA's collaboration with the Russian scientific community (and possible NASA funding for it) will help the Russians to achieve what they can not achieve in their own system.

If only President Dmitry Medvedev and Dictator Vladimir Putin created a Western society (with its intellectual freedom and clean government) in Russia and generously funded government research and development, then the Russians would likely dominate the winners of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences and of the Fields Medals in mathematics.

To hell with Mars, at least for now

[jollyreaper]

If we really want to do anything with space, we need to start doing things with economic significance. The moon trip should have been about pioneering the way towards moon habitats, moon industry. In that case it would have been money well-spent. All we really did was plant a flag and thumb our noses at the Soviets. Entertaining but of little real use. Sure, there was some spin-off technology but we threw it all away.

Planting a flag on Mars would end up being a similar waste of time, not if we weren't going to follow it up with anything else.

If we were really serious about it, we'd look into moving heavy industry offworld. Prospect our nearby apollo objects, see about mining them. Put manufacturing in Earth orbit. The only thing that comes down to Earth would be finished products in nice, simple, recyclable dropshells.

We might want to look into solar power sats while we're at it.

If nothing else, at least space exploration and living offers us an engineering challenge of figuring out how to live minimally with minimal resources. Our problem in this day and age is that resources are too cheap and there's little incentive to save. If gas were a nickel a gallon, the only selling point for fuel efficiency would be not having to stop for gas as often. Gas costs more than that, of course, but it still doesn't cost enough for us to take conservation and fuel efficiency seriously. And we don't. It's just like the buffet. If you go to one that charges by the pound, you're careful about what you take. If you go to one that doesn't charge by the pound, you take as much as you want and are casually wasteful about what you leave on the plate. Simple human nature.

Re:To hell with Mars, at least for now

[Lord Ender]

I expect that you are underestimating the costs involved traveling through Earth's gravity well. I've heard that if a rock of solid gold were orbiting Earth, it would not be economically viable to de-orbit it. Unless we discover something out there that is fantastically valuable, "industry" will not be the motivating factor for space travel.

Having self-sufficient off-world biospheres? That's a worthwhile endeavor simply because survival of the species is important; it's just not valuable to private industry (oh and suck it, libertarians).

Where will the parts come from?

[jameskojiro]

Strung out Russian Cosmonaut: American Parts, Russian Parts.... All Made in Taiwan.....

Sparse details

[FleaPlus]

Before everybody gets all crazy and excited about this, there doesn't seem to be any details about Marc Bowman's comments anywhere (not even NASA's site) except for a 5-sentence blurb from RIA Novosti (the Russian state-owned news agency). There was a cool article in IEEE Spectrum recently about Russia's Mars dreams, but they were along the lines of "here's some neat ideas, we need money."

My suspicion is that Marc Bowman said something generic like "it would be nice for Russia and NASA to work together more in the future on things like Mars missions," and RIA Novosti just decided to run with it.

Monopolies are bad

[istartedi]

We've already seen what Globalization does when "the" economy has issues. A housing crisis in the USA doesn't cause issues in China without globalization.

The Free Trade advocates always sold the advantages, which were readily calculable; but ignored the disadvantages which are harder to measure until you actually experience them.

Only now are people beginning to realize something that should have been apparent right from the start: one single, massive economic system is inherently bad. It's like a monopoly. There's no backup.

It's even worse if you take this philosophy and duplicate it outside the financial realm. We already see this with the "war on drugs". Many countries that would like to legalize may not do so, not because of internal resistance; but because they've signed a UN convention.

Now take that, and apply it to ALL the laws. Yuck.

Most people don't like war, but if the alternative is a "one size fits all" solution, there will be times when it doesn't fit, and war becomes the only alternative. They just won't be wars between nation-states anymore. They'll all be civil wars, which are oftentimes far worse.

Also, what about refugees? Tell me, where do the boat people go when everywhere is Cuba?