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Launch Manifest For NASA's "Road To Mars" Takes Shape But Questions Remain
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.
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?
you forgot the most serious challenge. 2015 - 2039 is 24 years. That is 6 Administrations, 4 Congressional Terms and 12 terms for the House of representatives.
I do not see any NASA Program survive 24 years of dividing up the Pork. The only way this is going to happen is when it becomes a matter of national security or a new space race takes place. Both of these are external circumstances and fully out of NASA's control.
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.
It would be much less expensive to construct ten telescopes and send one up every year or two on the cheapest possible launcher. Human repair only makes sense because you've already spent so much on the Space Shuttle.
You don't need someone to traipse across Mars, but having someone being able to change the tire on a rover enables it to continue its mission.
Rovers are cheap and patient. Humans are super-expensive and the costs for their consumables rack up very fast. We returned 12 humans from the Moon, which costs quite a lot of money. We have left dozens of landers on the Moon and Mars - although parts of Surveyor 3 came back with the Apollo 12 astronauts.
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.'"