Mars Mission Back In the Cards After Budget Cuts

ananyo writes "NASA has said it will re-design its Mars exploration program, and that the new architecture would include input — and money — from the human program as well as the space technology division. Orlando Figueroa, the former deputy director for space and technology at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is to head up a seven or eight person committee, and to start developing mission concepts in the next month. One of those concepts would be a possible $700 million mission launching in 2018. The news offers a grain of comfort to a community still reeling from massive cuts to the Mars program."

Comments

700 million?

[elrous0]

A single shuttle launch costs that much, in today's dollars.

Seriously, guys?

Give it a rest

[scorp1us]

Until we have an established moon base, we shouldn't even attempt Mars.
Consider:

• Gravity is similar.
• Atmosphere is similar (0 vs 0.006bar)
• Radiation exposure is similar

So just shine an orange light on the moon and call it Mars.
The moon is better anyway

• Closer, safer, cheaper
• We could actually mine the moon for trace elements

Re:Give it a rest

[Hartree]

The big problem with learning how to run a planetary base at Mars is the minimum 6 month trip if something goes wrong.

The moon is two days away and doesn't have a return window only at certain parts of the planetary orbits.

So either abandoning it for safety reasons, medivac, or sending up emergency supplies/repair parts, etc is much quicker on the moon.

But, this argument has been gone through many times. Most often with needlessly heated rhetoric on both sides.

Though I'm more for a return to the moon, the answer that I'd be delighted with is: Do either of them, but actually DO IT.

Don't make grand political statements, and then stretch out the program with anemic funding and mismanagement until it gets shut down. We've all seen that way too many times.

One way Mars mission

[Oswald McWeany]

One way I've read several times to cut the cost of a human Mars mission is to make it a one-way mission.

Take away the expectation of returning- you save a bunch of costs associated with returning. Naturally- not everyone would want a one-way ticket to mars but there are lots of people who would.

Naturally, the technicality is you have to find some way to make them able to live there long term. Mars has lots of natural resources and tecnically could be self-supporting- but this could be complicated.

Those first people who go would have the mission of making the planet ready for the next wave of scientists. I think we should set our sites on a one way mission rather than bite off more than we can chew with our first mission to mars.

Finally build a Mark I plantary probe

[tp1024]

Stop building a brand new probe each time you want you carry a new instrument to Mars, Venus or some asteroid. Just make a design that fits most needs and build a dozen of them. Launch four at a time or a dozen to cut down on launch costs. Smaller probes like Hayabusa or Smart-1 are quite effective and light enough that you could easily put a dozen of them into space using a single Delta IV or Ariane 5 launch. Even the mars rovers like Spirit and Opportunity wouldn't need a dedicated Delta II launch each, four or five could be launched at a time. Sure, instrument choice will be limited, but so will be the price and effort of building it and sending it to space.

What's not here: the outer planets

[goodmanj]

What's not mentioned in the article is that the plan is to save Mars exploration by gutting outer planets research. If you wanted to know more about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Europa, Io, Titan, Enceladus, Triton, the Kuiper belt, or anything else, forget it. Because of the long travel time, scrapping the projects currently being planned may mean you won't hear anything new about those places for decades.