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The Case For Going To Phobos Before Going To Mars
MarkWhittington writes: The current NASA thinking concerning the Journey to Mars program envisions a visit to the Martian moon Phobos in the early 2030s before attempting a landing on the Martian surface in the late 2030s, as Popular Mechanics noted. The idea of a practice run that takes astronauts almost but not quite to Mars is similar to what the space agency did during the 1960s Apollo program. Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 each orbited the moon but did not land on it before the Apollo 11 mission went all the way to the lunar surface, fulfilling President John. F. Kennedy's challenge.
than Phobos would be 'just the tip'
So why would we send people?
Because it'd be cool as fuck. Mind you, I ain't going.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I think that it's an interesting option, and establishing a base on Phobos could be used as a starting point for other expeditions as well.
Of course the surface of Mars is the primary goal, but a nearby base could provide advantages.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
If we were inclined to go to Mars (which we don't appear to be) Phobos would be a natural choice because it's a ready-made space station. Probably mostly hollow, built-in radiation protection. You could probably pressurise some natural caverns in there.
But we won't do any of that, because we prefer aircraft carriers and strategic nukes.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Makes sense. It doesn't take nearly as much fuel getting off a mun as it does a planet.
Phobos is for cows.Cows say MOOOOOOOO.MOOOOOOOOO.MOOOOOOO.MOOOO says the cows.You Deimos cows.
We called it Doom.
unrelated? they even answer their phones/emails? https://www.eff.org/
I don't think it's wise to try to visit Phobos because the aliens have already disabled two Soviet probes en route to it. Can't we stick with less dangerous space exploration missions?
We aren't going to Mars with humans. There is no point. The radiation and lack of atmosphere and differences in gravity are all insolvable problems and prevent humans from living there for any appreciable amount of time. In fact, no other reachable planet can support human life. Any conjecture on how this can be done is just pure sci-fi.
I think we need to send robotic machines to Mars to build canals to bring the water to the more habitable regions. Hey, if the Martians won't do it, why not us?
Also, a budget padding enthusiasts wet dream.
It suggests 3 (three) separate trips for what can be achieved by 1 (one). Namely, getting astronauts to Mars surface for a prolonged stay and an extensive scientific mission.
First, send astronauts to hop around on Phobos in 2033.
Then, send astronauts to land on Mars in 2039 - and fuck off back to Earth almost immediately.
Then, in 2043, send astronauts for a year-long stay on Mars.
Supposedly, (paper is paywalled) "each mission campaign would build on previous campaigns, leaving a legacy and new capabilities for those that follow."
Except the cost of all three missions is in getting to Mars orbit and back.
And if the last mission is supposed to last a whole year on Mars, a full DECADE after the first mission, and 4 years after the second one - they are NOT carrying ANY supplies or building ANY infrastructure on or near Mars surface.
For a simple reason that you can't rely on anything still being there in working order 10 years in the future.
Or 6. Or 4.
You can't even use the SAME FUCKING PEOPLE as they will be a decade older and maybe dead or maybe doing another job.
Astronauts have to eat too, you know.
Further, anything done on Phobos has fuck all to do with any following mission. They are not gonna build a base there or store supplies - it's a hop-around mission.
And should a second mission happen, only reason why not to stay there for a whole year is - SUPPLIES! Or the lack there of.
Which won't be there because... "Meh... not this time. We'll bring it the next time. Not right now. Later."
This is NOTHING like an Apollo missions to the Moon.
This is like swimming to America from Scotland, getting to Liberty Island, eating a sandwich brought with you, then swimming back home.
Then, 6 years later, do the same thing - only climbing out of the water in New York Harbor, sleeping over night in Central Park, eating another sandwich in the morning (again brought from back home) and swimming back to Europe.
THEN, 4 more years later, you take another swim across the ocean, only instead of taking a sandwich, this time you take a credit card and you spend a year living in USA.
Oh and yeah... Each trip there is a team of thousands of people and dozens of boats sailing right next to you and keeping you safe from the sharks and tigers (You don't know... maybe there are tigers along the way... better safe than sorry.), tweetering your progress online and whatnot.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
landing on the Martian surface in the late 2030s
The US being the Hare, who is the tortoise? Hint: they all live in China.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
rescue.. leave us to madison ave.... is not new.. forget life itself here & focus on lifeless (never see anybody smiling & waving) rocks spirit of creation (incl. us) remains undefeated since/until forever.... see you (t)here? all things made by man fail is undisputed same as truth+mercy=justice are universal spiritual axioms.. never a better time to consider ourselves in relation to one another & our creators, the moms...
This is what they seek: Leather Goddesses of Phobos
Its all about the sex.
the crown royal connection... cooking much more than the books....
Mod it to -1 if you like, people will never *be* on Mars. The closest they'll get is to see it through a visor or a monitor.
And if that's the case, a monitor on a different planet is more convenient.
Probes can survive better, longer, carry more instruments, use less fuel, we can send more of them to more places on the planet, and in space.
So the only purpose for even discussing sending a man to Mars is for a bit of show, and its only a hot topic now, not because of NASA, but because of a movie promotion.
This is not science, this is movie PR.
We've been to Mars already, we've sent probes and robots.
WE haven't been to Mars. We've sent tools there. Huge difference.
So why would we send people?
Lots of reasons. We'd learn a ton by doing it. We'd develop a lot of amazing technology. The economic benefits would be enormous. It would advance our knowledge faster than almost anything else we could do including sending more probes. It would be the greatest exploration in human history. It would inspire generations of scientists and engineers.
Need I go on?
The real question is why wouldn't we go there? The only answer to that is because we lack vision or courage or political will. The likely benefits of going greatly outweigh the likely benefits of staying on Earth.
How will we send people anywhere useful if we can't even get them to Mars? Furthermore, as good as probes are, they still can't match the situational awareness of being there physically.
Even Vannevar Bush understood this, and he figured this out in the 1940s! It's hard to imagine why people have a difficult time with this.
But he wasn't smart enough I guess, he totally didn't understand that computers will get better therefore anything is possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
This space propaganda is just so much rhetoric.
https://books.google.ca/books?...
I know they're trying to talk up Mars, but at this point its debatable whether its even worth sending more probes.
It's a waste of money and we've found out its just another rock in space with no special chemistry and nothing we can't study here on earth.
Can't or won't? I would have thought that it would be possible to create a habitat in either that would require nothing incoming.
So far we cannot. We've tried several times and haven't cracked the problem yet. That's not to say we won't figure it out or that the problem is intractable but so far we haven't even figured it out on Earth much less in zero-G. I have some confidence that with enough resources applied we can solve the problem but to date that hasn't happened.
What a labored and weak analogy.
So you accept sending people to Mars is not useful? Where is this "useful place" you think we should be going instead and why would we not be solving those problems instead of this useless one!
"situational awareness" is not science, and if you want to *feel* like your there, capture a 360 view and view it in a VR headset.
In NASA's head, they think it will be a re-run of the moon landings, but by the time their astronaut lands, Mars will have been visited by probes from lots of third world countries. even India has a probe around Mars now.
Fess up... it's for all the leather goddesses, right?
>lewd
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
It is incredible what NASA what do and suggest just so they can look busy while not actually going to Mars.
We need to learn how to leave this planet and live elsewhere if the only life that we know of is going to continue to survive in this cold dead universe.
... there is a reason the moon ha that name
have they not hard what happened there with the last research installation?!
Or did you think Doom was just a computer game?!?!
Not if the Mars trip is delayed for 10 years or more.
Mod it to -1 if you like, people will never *be* on Mars. The closest they'll get is to see it through a visor or a monitor.
And if that's the case, a monitor on a different planet is more convenient.
You are obviously not a geologist. A person, even in a suit, and wielding a rock hammer, and equipped with a rather small lab can do more geology in one day than all of the Mars probes ever sent have done, combined.
Not to mention the fricking communications latency of using RPVs, or depending on the cleverness of remotely targeted semi-autonomous robots.
The place was occupied by Cabal, and now is infested with Taken. I say burn it down or leave it for the trash heap it is.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
With all this propaganda about a Human mission to Mars, I'm surprised we haven't had any communiques from K'Breel, speaker for the council. Hopefully there hasn't been some upheaval and regime change on the red planet. Meh. He probably doesn't have the gel sacs to make any protest and is hiding in the back of the spawning pods.
Can't or won't? I would have thought that it would be possible to create a habitat in either that would require nothing incoming.
So far we cannot. We've tried several times and haven't cracked the problem yet.
We can and we did. It was euphemistically called "The U.S. Government Relocation Facility", but it's code name was "Project Greek Island", and it was capable of sustaining a fairly large population and support staff for 30 years, in the event of a nuclear war.
"The Raven Rock Mountain Complex" was built as a similar "relocation facility" intended for the Pentagon.
"The Cheyenne Mountain Complex" was another facility, for SAC/NORAD.
"The Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center" was intended for use by FEMA; it's sometimes called "The High Point Special Facility".
There are a bunch of U.S. COG facilities (Continuation Of Government) besides that, and most major countries have their own equivalents.
Generally most of them have nuclear power plants, of the type used on U.S. nuclear submarines. Several of the facilities have more than one of them.
Low Specific Impulse requirements make the Martian moons a good place for permanent basing, but not so good for staging a Mars mission, and not so great an idea if we are just going to go there to go there, rather than go there to stay there.
Mostly, they are a great staging area for asteroid missions, given that the escape velocity is generally achievable with spring-loaded catapults and electric winches, rather than the more expensive and hard to construct mass drivers that you'd have to build to get mass off Earth's moon.
We've been to Mars already, we've sent probes and robots.
Yes. And I've been to Paris, because one time I saw a picture of the Eiffel Tower.
What if for half the cost of a single person, you could instead have 500 martian probes distributed across the planet?
Besides, NASA scientists have made statements contradicting what you just said. Robots are slower, but can operate nonstop indefinitely where humans need long rest periods.
We can and we did. It was euphemistically called "The U.S. Government Relocation Facility", but it's code name was "Project Greek Island", and it was capable of sustaining a fairly large population and support staff for 30 years, in the event of a nuclear war.
Project Greek Island was a fallout bunker at the Greenbriar Hotel. It was NOT a biosphere or even close to one. It was a fallout shelter, nothing more. I have personally been in that particular bunker myself now that it is open to the public. I stayed at the hotel a few years back. It certainly wasn't designed or equipped to operate for 30 years. The facility EXISTED for 30 years of operation but it was only designed to be occupied for a relatively short time. It had enough space to have congress and the senate plus a few of the white house staff and not much more. A few hundred people maximum.
The idea of a practice run that takes astronauts almost but not quite to Mars is similar to what the space agency did during the 1960s Apollo program.
That was back in the days of unlimited budget. Those days are gone forever.
Why invest in coaches and roads when we have horses? Why build electricity infrastructure when we have oil lamps? Why build research flight when we have trains? All of these started off as a silly research project/experiment. Why perform any research when we have functional tech now?
You're short sighted. Researching interplanetary travel costs a miniscule percent of our budget, and the potential rewards are well with the risk. R&D is fascinating because you never know what, if anything, it will yield. Not knowing what we might learn is utterly stupid reason not to invest in a project. I suspect you know this and are just being a dick.
A human mission to Phobos would make more sense if we placed many more robotic probes on Mars' surface first. The astronauts on Phobos could then control them in near real time, allowing parallel exploration of many locations the planet's surface, rather than a single landing spot.
Ah. Because one thing. The robutts and hu-mahns will go to war, or something?
Why build a coach and horse when you can have 100 electric robot vehicles for the same price ?
" Researching interplanetary travel costs a miniscule percent of our budget,"
We traveled there already, even India did, we know whats there.
Trying to relive the glory days of the moon landings by landing on a different rock we already went to is just sad. You resorted to insults because you don't have a counter argument.
What NASA needs is a new idea and a new direction to discover and invent new things. Not vague MBA soundbite claims.
Foget its cool. There is much technology advancement we can engineer by returning to moon and build a city there, it has the same species survival advantage as mars and it will allow us to collonize space at high population densities much sooner than a one shot deal to mars. Lets spend a four fold budget on a strategy that propels us forward in the most advantageous manner.
LMOL - yeah - tell that to the scientists collecting data via probes....moron
Ass-hole alert...
Neither are you if you think a probe can't collect more information than a human.
Foget its cool. There is much technology advancement we can engineer by returning to moon and build a city there, it has the same species survival advantage as mars (...)
Not quite. An asteroid impact on Earth would most certainly affect the Moon as well.
I tend to agree that a human visit to Mars is premature. With current technological knowledge, we could not make a self sustaining colony. We'd just visit for a little while and leave, accomplishing little. The goal absolutely has to be self sustainability. That means--first and foremost--understanding how/where to get air, water, food, and shelter. That means understanding how to manufacture--onsite--the tools we need to do this, because bringing them with us is not an affordable option. The obvious thing to do is to first learn how to do this. We know air and water is somewhat easily obtained on Mars. There's some question on the source of nitrogen for growing food. There's a huge question about building infrastructure out of local material. How do we obtain metals? Which are the best ores on Mars for mining? Where are they? What are the processes for extracting the metals? Answering these questions obviously has to happen before people are sent. And NASA's focus is not on these things. NASA is focused on the quest for life on Mars, and these other questions are secondary and not uttered openly because people think industry=bad, and runs counter to the idea that we need to keep sending probes to Mars to search for life, which justifies what little money they get. The only affordable options are to do this on the moon. Asteroids are not an option, because mining an asteroid is totally different than mining in a gravity well and you're dealing with different minerals and more limited source materials.
Three things need to happen here: 1. The moon must be the stepping stone. 2. Telling the American people that our focus is colonization, not searching for ET. 3. Politicians need to stop shifting NASA goals.
And for fucks sake, just stick with one heavy launch platform and stop trying to reinvent the wheel. The shuttle was a white elephant. The space station was a welfare program for the shuttle. Just use a normal fucking rocket. That's the most efficient way to put stuff into orbit. Stick with it.
If your goal is a colony on Mars, just go there and do that.
Which would be pretty dumb, colonization wise, because we know the same said Phobos is falling on Mars. Any civilization established there will be wiped out when it happens. Mars is not our long term Ark.
The frequency of impact events that effect both the moon and the earth are much rarer than most earth impacts.
Its true a total extinction event would probably impact the moon too but that only has happened probably half a dozen times is my guess.
Certainly delaying going to mars for 50 years does not increase the probability significantly.
remove all these damnable Mars-based articles on Slashdot?!?
The one thing that blasted film has done is pollute the forum with an article a day - sometimes two - about "Ooooo...!!!! Let's go to Mars!"
I thought SJW Fridays were bad, now it's Mars everydays ;(
P.S. It would be nice if any of these 'nerds' - you know "News for Nerds" - had enough of a skeptical mindset to see that it is still impossible to send humans to Mars, have them exist for any time on Mars, and return to Earth while being able to function once they get back here.
When you can tell me we have invented artificial gravity technology that can maintain 1G for the trip to, the stay on, and the return from Mars, then you can talk to me about "going to Mars."
The effects of microgravity on human physiology are well known; we have had astronauts in space for a long time now.
Wake up sheeple!
A probe might be able to collect more data if it knows what it is looking for.
Humans are resilient and given enough arbitrary tools can often adapt and figure out how to collect data that was not originally built to do. A combination of a human and a probe will allow a mission much more resiliency. A human mission would likely place high value on the human returning to Earth, so bringing samples back home is more likely. It would also provide the opportunity to do medical research about living under conditions that would be useful for any long-term colonization.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I'll go, even if it's one way, and even though I have a family -- someone just needs to make sure my kids get into college.and I end up in the history books they'll study.
Yes. And I've been to Paris, because one time I saw a picture of the Eiffel Tower.
Well, 99.999999% of us aren't going to Mars anyway. Of all the reasons we sent Neil Armstrong and friends to the Moon, giving them the "authentic Moon experience" wasn't one of them. With the budgets for a manned mission to Mars we could do way more unmanned science than today, quite possibly more than with a manned mission. What it really boils down to, which is perhaps hard for many to swallow is whether sending humans will be pioneers exploring and settling new land or just an annoying radiation sensitive, temperature sensitive, pressure and atmosphere sensitive, resource intensive burden for a small army of robots to sustain while they're mostly cowering in their habitat to avoid the extreme climate outside.
For example, I doubt it will be possible to survive a night outside the habitat in any kind of mobile camp site so most likely the action radius is at most half a day's travel from where you landed for the entire trip. And if you want faster vehicles than we have, well they'll also need more energy. Not that there's roads suitable for driving very fast anyway, in double the Lunar Rover's gravity it's all going to take a more powerful engine and construction, more wear on the wheels and suspension and all that. The nice thing about rovers is that we can drop several, where we want them to be while a human mission is one site and that's it. And it might need to be a practical one, not an interesting one.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's a spacestation!
Why build electricity infrastructure when we have oil lamps? Because electrical lighting will be cheaper and safer, and tons of money were wasted on candles and piping lighting gas across town. Or so that there will be less many theater fires.
Researching travel to Mars?
You might have a few useful side results but what it will really enable is more travel to Mars.
Things like better solar panels, fuel cells, materials etc. are already researched because they're useful on their own.
You can land there, but bring with you a rocket launcher, a shotgun, a chainsaw etc. and thousand of ammo crates and medical supplies just to be sure.
What if for half the cost of a single person, you could instead have 500 martian probes distributed across the planet?
Besides, NASA scientists have made statements contradicting what you just said. Robots are slower, but can operate nonstop indefinitely where humans need long rest periods.
Humans advocate humans; roboticists advocate robots. Film at 11.
You'd need 1,500 people on Earth working 8 hour shifts, for a much longer period of time, analyzing visual data, and saying "Hmmm... that rock that the probe passed 4 hours of analysis, and 24 minutes ago looked interesting; let's send a command now to the probe, which it will receive in 24 minutes, to go back and look at it. The elapsed time to deciding if it was 'just a shadow' should only be another time to compose command + 24 minutes + 5 hours travel + 24 minutes of transmitting back new pictures of the rock. Then we can decide what to do next, which will only take decision time + compose message time + 24 minutes transmit time + ??? doing time + 24 minutes transmitting back the result."
Do you kind of see the problem?
Neither are you if you think a probe can't collect more information than a human.
Oh, it can collect *terabytes* of data. No one would argue that. It's just that most of it won't be *interesting* or *relevant* data.
Everything I read about the search for alien life, and the search for new places for Humanity to live seems to follow an unquestioned narrative about how do we find a Sunlike star? How do we find an Earthlike planet? When are we going to colonize Mars and Venus? Wheeee!
...thousands of colonies in Earth-Moon vicinity. Later, we'll take on Mars' moons. After that, we have the asteroids. That should keep us busy for a million years.
The only natural place Mankind can live properly is on Earth. Other places can be made survivable, if you're willing to live under domes or in tunnels like frail, albino morlocks. But gravity is one thing we can never make right. And it's a vital issue. Let's set aside the Earthlike gravity in the acid clouds of Venus or the cloud-tops of Saturn. I mean, really.
It's with an ironic eye that I notice all of the technology being talked about, to build habitats on the Moon and Mars are even more suited for building in orbit. And without the great risk and expense of dropping it, along with it's population, onto a planet's surface intact. After you've dropped all these things down on Mars, you have to exploit Mars for the tremendous resources to launch anything back up again. And for what? Are we selling Martian cookware to Earthlings at $10,000,000.00/ea? Anything we toss down a gravity well is basically staying there. It's lost. And it cost a lot.
So, let's simply stay in orbit and use 3D printing technology to build rotating colonies out of crushed, sintered rock. You can't just spin a natural body; it's going to be too fragile, too flawed. But we're going to be mining these things, pulverizing them for minerals and chemicals. We can just build home out of the tailings. And the insides of these colonies will be tailored perfectly for us - no compromises, no need for genetic experimentation. Probably all built by robots, or at least by telepresence, after the first couple of generations.
We don't need a certain kind of planet, and we don't even need a certain kind of star. All we need is a power source that we can adapt our machines to, and raw material floating free to assemble into these rocky tubes.
We'll start by establishing a robotic factory on the Moon to toss up refined aluminum, iron and packages of powdered rock. We'll use that to build
I'm not saying we won't, or shouldn't visit the planets, but they simply won't be worth more than scientific outposts, or tourist resorts, even after we someday have cheap, safe means to land on and launch off of planets (probably orbital skyhooks).
A Mars probe - or a space probe to any other place - has to be designed with sensors to detect what you're looking for. That means that you can ONLY find the stuff you EXPECTED to find - or not find it at all, which the first Mars lander did. A person on the scene can try other things and build new sensors in near-real-time. In order to discover the truly unknown, we have to GO THERE for ourselves, or at least be close enough to learn from our mistakes.
A Phobos base makes perfect sense; minimal gravity, someplace to park material until we're ready for it. An actual space station would be better, because we could spin it for artificial "gravity", but perhaps we can cannibalize Phobos for that later on.
Shamelessly stolen joke... I thought it was funny enough to steal, and this discussion needs to lighten up anyway. Wish I could credit the original source.
Intercepted text conversation:
Mars: Come over
NASA: But you're 33.9 million miles away
Mars: I'm wet
NASA: I'm coming over
And the dipshits continue.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why invest in coaches and roads when we have horses? Why build electricity infrastructure when we have oil lamps? Why build research flight when we have trains? All of these started off as a silly research project/experiment. Why perform any research when we have functional tech now?
They resulted in quantifiable benefits.
Researching interplanetary travel costs a miniscule percent of our budget
If this was true, there wouldn't be a problem.
R&D is fascinating because you never know what, if anything, it will yield. Not knowing what we might learn is utterly stupid reason not to invest in a project.
R&D is not the same thing as the massive engineering project needed to land people on Mars, which seems (like the Moon landings last century) to be primarily a dick-waving exercise with no obvious long term benefits. (Yeah, I know, Teflon, because we'd never have come up with that otherwise).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'll go, even if it's one way, and even though I have a family -- someone just needs to make sure my kids get into college.and I end up in the history books they'll study.
Yeah, your imaginary kids will be able to read about how their father was a psychotic asshole.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You can land there, but bring with you a rocket launcher, a shotgun, a chainsaw etc. and thousand of ammo crates and medical supplies just to be sure.
Duh, they're already there just lying around waiting to be found.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The primary technology is nuclear rockets. To further your analogy not to use nuclear rockets is the equivalent of refusing modern jets and trying to cross the Atlantic with a 1930's biplane.
Radiation is the primary problem in space.
Nuclear rockets have increased power and this reduces journey times plus allows (requires) better shielding, and so reduces total cumulative radiation exposure.
Pulse nuclear propulsion theoretically does even better and allows a ship to carry heavy radiation shields, and so should have an even lower cumulative radiation exposure.
Nuclear pulse propulsion. One of the few cases where being next to multiple nuclear explosions actually reduces your radiation exposure.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..