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U.S. House Wants 'Sustained Human Presence On the Moon and the Surface of Mars'
MarkWhittington writes "Politico reports in a June 18, 2013 story that House Republicans have added a Mars base to its demands for a lunar base in the draft 2013 NASA Authorization bill. Both the Bush-era Constellation program and President Obama space plan envisioned eventual human expeditions to Mars. But if Politico is correct, the new bill will be the first time an official piece of legislation will call for permanent habitation of the Red Planet. The actual legislative language states, 'The [NASA] Administrator shall establish a program to develop a sustained human presence on the Moon and the surface of Mars.'"
The moon, Mars, deep space... just get them off this planet and out of our hair ASAP.
I don't suppose the house is planning to actually pay for the enormous expense of putting a permanent human colony on a different planet? They just want NASA to stop everything else that they're doing and start making manned Mars rockets? Is it any wonder NASA struggles with long term projects, with Congress meddling every year with crazy ideas and budget uncertainty?
I read the internet for the articles.
"Get your ass to Mars!"
Like...
Encouraging children to get into STEM Degrees. The moon landing back in the 1960's but a large boom into these careers. Although a small portion of them will be working on the space missions. The interest in these things as a kid will make them far more interested in the topics. Getting kids interested in Science Technology Engineering and Math, will help them get off their butts go to college and get in less serious trouble.
Our Environment. Sure launching a rocket into space take huge amounts of carbon. But to figure out how to get people to survive and thrive on the Moon and Mars (extremely harsh conditions, and little energy sources) will create technology that we can use here on earth. Hey that solar panel on the moon can keep a small city running with a half a month of darkness, means on earth we could at least get it to run half a small city. Plus it will need to be small and light to get there. Extracting Drinking water out of the brimy pools on mars, would help us get drinking water out of our oceans and deserts.
Agriculture, these people will need to be self sufficient, in a bubble, imagine what we could do with these ideas on earth.
Health Care. The people in colonies on the Moon and Mars can get sick, we will need to find new procedures to fix these problems. They can be transferred back to earth as a cheaper solution to many problems.
Those are just a few.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
1. insist the US Postal Service implement pension funding 75 years into the future with no known revenue source to do so, as we cannot directly defund it. pretend companies like UPS and FedEx actually want to deliver bulk mail in place of the postal service but are in fact incumbered by its existence.
2. insist NASA pursue permanent manned installations on the moon and mars despite the fact its orders of magnitude more expensive than current unmanned operations. pretend companies like SpaceX are somehow encumbered by the existence of NASA.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I want to see mankind spread out into the solar system, and ideally I'd like to see the USA at the head of it all. So I'm not unsympathetic toward the idea.
But I really want to see the space program get done correctly. So far, every trip to the moon has been via a single-use rocket, completely used up for the one trip. It made sense when we were trying to win a race, but it also meant we hadn't built out the infrastructure.
The right way to do things: build a truly reusable space vehicle, often called a "space pickup truck". Proposed heavy lift vehicles are more like a "space moving van", and they will have their uses, but what we need more than anything else is a spacecraft that can fly and fly and fly some more with minimal maintenance.
We want a craft that can fly to orbit, return, and then go again tomorrow. It might need some maintenance overnight but it should be as little as possible. The space shuttle needed man-centuries of work between flights... we can do far better than that.
Single-stage would be ideal, but two-stage might be easier to get going... just make sure both stages are reusable and don't need too much maintenance. Cargo capacity need not be huge... it would be cheaper to fly things up in multiple small loads on a truly reusable craft, than to build, launch, and use up a single heavy-lift vehicle.
Once we have the "space pickup truck" we need to build a transportation hub in Earth orbit. It would have emergency Earth return vehicles docked, would have lots of supplies (fuel, water, oxygen, food, etc.) and would have staff on board all the time.
Once you have all the above? The moon becomes trivial. Build a "moon shuttle" that could be basically a couple of fuel tanks and engines bolted to a frame, with some sort of shielded crew compartment and a lunar lander docked to it. It need not be pretty and it need not be tough because it will never land anywhere.
Ideally, also we should build a "space cannon" system that can shoot things into space. This would be the cheapest way to send up inert things like oxygen and fuel, or even dried food and tough electronics. And humans living in space will need serious radiation shielding... the cannon could possibly send up lots of shielding mass.
Imagine how expensive it would be to deliver cargo from America to Australia if we had to do it by building a single-use cargo missile. With modern aircraft the dominating factor is fuel costs. If we could get space travel costs down to chiefly the cost of fuel that would be a massive reduction in costs.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
You're currently modded flaimbait but my first thought was let's do it now. Load up all politicians, attorneys, and used car salesmen and launch em!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
By US House, they mean TEXAS. This is just PORK for Houston and its rocket-to-nowhere--The Space Launch System (SLS). SLS has no mission, but it means money to Houston and therefor they dreamed up this ridiculous objective, And Houston will do anything to get the money, including poaching from the highly-successful unmanned mission from JPL such as Opportunity and Curiosity.
Anonymous, you will NEVER solve the problems you are indirectly referring to. Poverty, war, crime, environmental pollution: those are inevitable byproducts of existence itself. Not to mention that you fail to take into account the greatest random factor of them all: human stupidity. Stopping our march to space and spending money to solve problems here at home is the most futile fallacial notion ever; because you will waste more money trying to correct for human stupidity and the inevitable results of existential chaos than you ever would in building capability to get into deep space. Those problems will never be solved--but putting permanent encampments of humans on the Moon and beyond CAN.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
and I want a pony.
a unicorn pony.
a well-hung unicorn pony.
Until these nimrods in congress actually come up with the funding for this, and given their history of cancellations, up front, this is just useless wheel-spinning that might fund a few shoestring studies that go nowhere. We'd get to Mars sooner if we put the project on Kickstarter than waiting for congress to fund it.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Since the planet does not have a strong magnetic field, the surface is lethal.
Sure, if you're naked. But that's true anyway since it doesn't have an atmosphere worth mentioning, unless you're mentioning dust storms.
As has been discussed elsewhere, at the time of arrival on Mars a person would already have received a lifetime's radiation dose.
As has been discussed elsewhere, that assumes using an existing space vehicle design, with jack for shielding. But since you'll need to take water with you in order to bootstrap the mission, you can use it for shielding.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"