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NASA, European Space Agency Want To Go To Mars

Posted by Soulskill on from the merging-to-beat-their-competitors dept.

coondoggie writes "NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are aiming to cooperate on all manner of robotic orbiters, landers and exploration devices for a future trip to Mars. Specifically, NASA and ESA recently agreed to consider the establishment of a new joint initiative to define and implement their scientific, programmatic, and technological goals for the exploration of Mars. The program would focus on several launch opportunities with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical, climatological, and other high-priority investigations and aiming at returning samples from Mars in the mid-2020s."

11 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Cooperation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    As long as they agree on one set of units it should be fine.

    1. Re:Cooperation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      I doubt it. ESA will defenitely work with SI units. And I assume NASA wants to use their old units for their old stuff. However, if they cooperate on a component level, this should not be a big problem as long as the systems are not integrated. For example rocket from NASA and rover from ESA.

      NASA has used Metric for a long, long time now. It was a subcontractor who used Imperial that screwed up the Mars lander.

    2. Re:Cooperation by socrplayr813 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Aye, and any scientist/engineer with a degree from the last 20-30 years should be perfectly comfortable working with SI units. There are still hold outs, but they're just a few old fossils and managers. The people that do the actual science and engineering have no problem with SI.

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    3. Re:Cooperation by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Funny

      (Mars lander smacks into planet at ballistic speeds)

      "I don't understand. By my calculations 1000 foot-pounds was enough thrust to bring the lander to soft landing." - NASA engineer

      "Je ne vous comprends pas, culturelement appauvri impérialiste chien de porc." - ESA engineer

      Fixed that for you.

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    4. Re:Cooperation by RiotingPacifist · · Score: 3, Funny

      AFAIK Australia doesn't have a space agency!

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  2. Re:First things first. by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Pfft! If they give enough money to Nasa on difficult enough project, they'll solve all of those. Well, maybe not the deficit, unless you consider the possibility of martian gold.

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  3. Re:First things first. by nuclearpenguins · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Perhaps investing in developing the new technologies we would need to get our asses to Mars would create all sorts of new jobs.

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  4. Re:First things first. by FlyingSquidStudios · · Score: 4, Insightful

    NASA's budget is such a small fraction of the overall budget ($17.318 billion out of $2.9 trillion in 2008) that it really has very little effect on the economy. If you want to worry about the U.S. economy, fighting two different expensive wars is a much bigger problem. Less than half a penny out of every tax dollar goes to NASA. 5 cents goes to the 'global war on Terror.' [see: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Fy2008spendingbycategory.png%5D

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  5. Re:Euro Agency == unconstitutional? by RiotingPacifist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Euro agency is nothing to do with EU, but hey don't let that stop you!

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  6. China/Japan/russia by RiotingPacifist · · Score: 4, Interesting

    China seam to have more money to throw about, I hear Japan are pretty good at technology and russia seam to be the goto guys if you want something launched. If getting to Mars is a serious scientific venture and not a cock swinging contest, why not work with them as well?

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  7. Re:Why? by RiotingPacifist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why not do both. if you look at somewhere like France they invest in "practical" research such as fusion reactors, blue-sky research such as CERN (15%) and the ESA (23%) which is somewhere between the two. The value of blue-sky research is hard to predict but taking a Thatcherite view and dismissing it altogether is naive and apart from slowing progress, it's not economically sound (I'm not saying spending too much on blue-sky is a good idea either). If you look at biological research I'd argue that much less progress has been done recently (compared to what could have been achieved) because too much funding is attached to direct studies like cancer research and not enough is being spread around to just see what happens (mapping the human genome style).

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