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NASA Pulling Out of ESA-led ExoMars Mission?
astroengine writes "It's a strange irony that to afford the expense of space exploration, international collaboration is often sought after — spreading the cost across several international partners means the biggest space missions may be accomplished. And yet in times of austerity, national budgets balk at the prospect of investing in international projects like ExoMars. Sadly, that's exactly what could be facing the ambitious ESA-led Mars rover/satellite mission if NASA's Science Mission Directorate budget is slashed in the next financial year. NASA may pull out of the project, leaving ExoMars with no rockets or a means to actually land on Mars. Could Russia help out? Possibly, but it will still lead to ESA taking on more cost than it has budgeted for."
Russian tech and systems seem to have a hard time achieving a safe Martian landing, so the program may really be screwed.
Space X has some ideas on how to land a rocket on Mars, and is already testing some design principles, like the SuperDrago rockets for landing its Dragon capsules.
If I were the Europeans, I would be contacting them. The cheapest and best original thinking in the space race is currently at Space/X.
I think it's disingenuous to say to ESA "hey, we can't cover this, hope you can find another partner" this far in. Maybe one can look at the overruns for MSL and JSWT and say that this is the responsible thing to do, to allow those two programs to finish, but in the middle and long term, this is going to prevent any further NASA-ESA collaboration. Where is the big dividend from having shut down the shuttle program?
Practical issues like the availability of rockets are in the end just a matter of finances, both Russia and Europe have rockets large enough to support a Mars mission, because the US has more expertise they have a better chance of success.
The biggest problem for all participants is public interest, without it politicians take the easy road and cancel science missions.
With the present status of education in many EU countries and the US there is little chance to get the population interested, science loses from real time trash TV.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Hey, I'm from Romania you insensitive prick.
P.S. Since Romania IS part of ESA it will participate in ExoMars and we have no legal concept of illegal download, so maybe US turning into a balkanic country isn't such a bad idea
right...
Why does every discussion of a space program devolve rapidly into people calling every space program that isn't their favorite a bunch of incompetent jerks. Guys. Space travel is fucking HARD. There is no agency with any kind of pedigree that doesn't also have a lot of embarrassing screwups. SpaceX is just as bad as any of them: if it has fewer failures, it's because it has fewer successes.
Everyone working in any kind of aerospace program is very intelligent. They are doing something very difficult, with very little room for error, in a room with a lot of different people. I think it's safe to say that space travel has a fairly consistent success rate across agencies, at least up to a reasonable error.
Sad that this got modded troll. For the cost of just one of the military's insanely expensive, never used "next generation" airplanes that get crashed by trainees more often than they see battle, entire NASA projects could be funded for a decade...