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Launch Manifest For NASA's "Road To Mars" Takes Shape But Questions Remain

Posted by samzenpus on from the this-is-how-we'll-do-it dept.

MarkWhittington writes: NASASpaceFlight.com reported that NASA's so-called "Road to Mars" is starting to take shape. The deep space program that would conclude with human astronauts departing for the Red Planet in 2039 would require just over 40 launches of the heavy-lift Space Launch System, including an uncrewed flight in 2018 and one flight a year to cis-lunar space starting in 2021 lasting until 2027. A flight in 2028 would launch something called the Pathfinder Entry Descent Landing Craft to Mars as a precursor for a human landing. Then the Mars program begins in earnest with a mission to Phobos in 2033 and missions to the Martian surface in 2039 and 2043.

2 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Something doesn't add up here - afaik the outer-space radiation problem hasn't been solved yet. The Apollo moon landings were all short-duration flights, and the MIR and ISS operations take place inside the somewhat protective Van-Allen belts. What is going to protect the astronauts on the long-duration flights to Mars and back again from solar bursts and other deep-space radiation hazards?

    Am I missing something here?

  2. Re:Better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just look at the Hubble telescope. It has far exceeded it's expected life and is still sending images back. Not possible without people in orbit and putting hands on.

    And at some point - and that point is "relatively quickly after leaving earth orbit", it becomes cheaper to launch a replacement machine then it is to launch a bunch of humans off into space to catch and repair the broken machine, while keeping all those humans alive, and returning them back to earth.

    We need to stop with this "manned space travel" inanity. It's MULTIPLE orders of magnitude cheaper to send robots and machines to do the work, because machines don't breathe, eat, sleep, poop, piss, get cancer, and die. Humans do all of those things, which means you have to plan for their occurrence, and ship food material, medical material, atmosphere, and a whole lot of other shit along with the humans - this adds stupid amounts of weight, which means stupid amounts of cost, all so we can say "hurr durr some dude stood on a barren rocky surface, for no fucking purpose whatsoever, except for us to be able to dick-measure and say 'we've done that.'"