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NASA Wants To Bring Back Hunks of Mars In Future Unmanned Mission
coondoggie writes "The space missions to Mars have so far been one way — satellites and robotic rovers have all gone there to stay. NASA, as part a of a new, ambitious Mars visit, wants to change that by sending a rover to the surface of the Red Planet which can dig up chunks of the surface and send them back to Earth for highly detailed examination. These plans were laid out in a lengthy report outlining mission plans for Mars that will be acted upon over the next decade. It says a retrieval mission 'could occur as early as the mid-2020s or wait until the 2030s.'"
Whaka Whaka
You can have your god back when you are old enough to handle the responsibility.
An instructional video.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
By that time, Mars One is scheduled to have people on Mars, so NASA can simply send a retrieval rocket and ask those people to collect some samples - for a reasonable fee, of course :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Bringing back material from Mars's moons may be an easier first step.
The Mars rocks will be brought back, at astronomical speeds, straight to the NASA budgeting subcommittee.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It's a shame, however, that the load of rocks on board will have to be removed so that Val Kilmer can make it safely off Mars so he can get some sweet, sweet Trinity action. And remember, never send any military surplus drones to Mars!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
That sounds like a satisfying project...
crazy dynamite monkey
There is still risk of Martian microbes that Earth life has no immunity too. Sure, it's a very small chance, but one that has potentially apocalyptic consequences if it happens.
Perhaps the samples should be baked at an intermediate station.
Table-ized A.I.
Are they going to call the rover "Red"? I can hear all the school children singing "Red Rover, Red Rover, send Mars right over."
I will pay for a piece of Mars. Git'r Done.
in a future unmartianed mission.
Yes, Hollywood should underwrite the venture. The payback dividends will be enormous!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I prefer a mission to Europa that includes a submarine to go into the water below the ice to take pics of the little fishies (if any). Yes, Europa is ****far more difficult**** than Mars. But a Mars sample would be cool, will provide excellent comparison to Martian meteoroids from Antartica. Now if we can also send somebody beyond LEO, then we can say (in the words of one of controllers at Houston MOCR after Apollo 8 TLI), "Finally we get to go someplace!"
mfwright@batnet.com
We'll just kidnap Dejah Thoris and demand his surrender... mwwahhhahahahahaha
... they should bring back the Amazon Women on the Moon.
No, women are from Venus.
Is it just me or does this sound like the pitch for a really bad horror or end-of-days B movie? Who would be the key cast members? Sounds like a really, really bad idea. LOL.
I wonder if there'd be a profitable market for chunks of Mars. Perhaps it could help fund further exploration.
... they should bring back the Amazon Women on the Moon.
No, women are from Venus.
That's what they want you to think...
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Comparatively, Mars is much smaller than earth. A mere 40% of the gravity (or so). Admittedly, that's more than double the moons gravity, but certainly a lot easier to do than escaping earths gravity twice....
Technically, this type of return trip has been worked out for years, but not been implemented yet: The majority of a spaceship is the booster rocket. By using a lander (some sort of VTOL device, similar to the moon lander) module, no (or only a small) booster would be required for the take off from mars. However, if we're to slingshot using gravity only, then the return trip would likely take a decade or more. which means a powered trip would be advisable, if we want results. But space exploration doesn' t have to be fast, so we COULD percievably just let gravity do most of the work. However, if we wanted to do a manned mission, time would be of the essence. This means that the lander module would have to pick up fuel along the way, or that the primary ship would have to. Sending a rocket in advance with the technology to proces fuel on the surface of mars would be one way to go, but certainly not the only one..... It just sounds easy ;)
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
From what I understand the issue with Mars isn't so much the gravity, as it is only 2.2 times that of the Moon. Its the combination of the lower gravity with just enough atmosphere to make landing and takeoff a pain. The advantage with the moon is that there is really no atmosphere, so a craft doesn't experience drag and doesn't require atmospheric considerations in its design (and the added weight of those considerations). There is at least some possibility that disadvantage could be turned into an advantage, fuel could conceivably be manufactured from the atmosphere itself using a few relatively minor components brought from earth.
After a lunar rover in the late 2010s.
China has had five manned space mission now. Even though they are doing things the US & Russia did in the mid 1970s, the are making about four years of progress for every two years of work. Their next space station circa 2015 will be larger than the largest Mir, but still smaller than the ISS. China has the advantage of current technology, $money$, and learning from the past.
How many people watched their two week, three [wo]man space station mission lat month?
No, women are from Venus.
You mean like these gals (actually I enjoyed watch Zsa Zsa), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052104/?ref_=sr_1
mfwright@batnet.com