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NASA Releases 'Journey To Mars' Plan -- But Not a Budget (nasa.gov)
MarkWhittington writes: NASA released a document describing the steps involved in its Journey to Mars program (PDF). But, as the Wall Street Journal suggests, the "plan" has a conspicuous lack of specifics. It doesn't go into how much the program will cost or what intermediate steps have to be taken before human beings set foot on Mars in the 2030s. This is likely because of the upcoming and subsequent changes of governing administrations — the space agency's deep space exploration goals are likely to get a reevaluation. The plan serves as a public relations document more than anything else.
concept only
How much does it cost to pretend that we're going to send people to Mars, compared to how much it would cost to actually send a few rovers to Europa?
Shuttle project cost/pound to leo $118 actual $8000/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
SLS/ORION is now looking at 14 billion +/ launch
http://www.thespacereview.com/...
If NASA has a hundred billion for the mission expect to cost several trillion.
Let's ignore how cool it is to go into space. Let's ignore the benefits of aerospace technology on our daily lives. Let's teach our kids to uphold the status quo and be good little slaves to their corporate overlords. Let's let the MBAs and their accountant lackeys use their spreadsheets and declare this a waste of money.
I hope an asteroid GUTS this worthless planet. We as a species deserve to die if we're too stupid to see the value of getting off this damnable rock.
"..or what intermediate steps have to be taken.."
This is always a problem: incrementalist thinking, the idea that one can achieve the revolutionary through small intermediate steps with an evolutionary process. This is very limited (and limiting) thinking, and people who think that way will never achieve anything truly revolutionary. If you think like this, you should probably get the hell out of the way of those of us who don't. We'll come back for you. Some day. Maybe.
Let's just not do it. There is no real reason to send humans to Mars.
Now, establishing a real and long term presence on the Moon has real actual benefits.
I always think of Space 1999...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Indeed :) Don't get me wrong, one can achieve great things through small steps but only if those steps are part of a long-term process planned out in advance with the ultimate goal in mind, and full committal from all interested parties (particularly those funding your endeavor) to follow it through to the end. Otherwise, you're just building castles in the sand to be washed away when the tide comes in.
Is the goal to go to Mars just to check off an entry on our species' bucket list, or is to move toward the the eventual colonization of the planet? Then we better have the whole colonization process down, down to what will lubricate the drive axles on the truck that hauls the fluorite ore from the mine on Arsinoes Chaos to the ball mill at Terra Meridiani, or how to make the replacement bolts for the elevation mounts for a sulfuric acid pipeline at the Becquerel chemical plant. That means in no way, shape, or form that nobody should do anything with Mars until you can launch a whole self-sustaining colony. But it's important to have planned out the whole programme in advance - knowing precisely what materials we're going to need, what parts, how quickly they'll be consumed, how much labor every component's operation and maintenance will take, what raw inputs you're going to need, where you can get them, etc, and ensuring that at no point are you consuming more of something than you can produce.
If you send things to Mars without doing this, you're just going to spend your billions of dollars launching dead-ends - made out of materials that it turns out that there's no practical way to make on the planet, or with processes under which particular steps work out to be impractical or impossible on Mars. Due to the tremendous expense to engineer and launch each piece of hardware to Mars, you want each piece to serve a critical role in your long-term goals. Sent a device to freeze carbon dioxide out of Mars's atmosphere to feed a greenhouse or bioreactor? That may sound great... up until the point that you discover that you also need nitrogen or argon collected from the atmosphere for other processes, and that your whole chiller system needs to be replaced with one that can handle lower temperatures. Sent a pipeline made out of polypropylene to carry some sort of fluid? Great, until you discover that you need to multi-use that pipeline and some of the chemicals you need to send aren't compatible with polypropylene, so you're just going to have to build a new one parallel to it. Etc.
NASA of course has no interest in actually planning things out all the way in advance. And never has.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
The footprint photo at the end of the brochure is 50 years old and we haven't been back. NASA has been talking about a manned mars mission 20 years in the future for the last 50 years. OK to be honest it was 10 years in the future 50 years ago.
The space age is over.
Eventually some civilization, mayl find the Apollo landers and and wonder why we gave up with the stars withing our grasp. We won't be around for them to ask.
1. Go to Mars
2. Come back
3. ???
4. Profit!
Table-ized A.I.
Sounds wonderful! Now if they could just stop exploding.
Table-ized A.I.
This is always a problem: incrementalist thinking, the idea that one can achieve the revolutionary through small intermediate steps with an evolutionary process.
There's nothing particularly revolutionary or even evolutionary about sending humans to Mars: there's robots already there, and robots can cater for any foreseeable need for a presence on the surface of Mars. If anything, humans are an evolutionary step backward: humans are ill adapted to Mars and our time and effort on the surface of Mars will be spent catering to our own survival rather than doing anything useful.
If you think like this, you should probably get the hell out of the way of those of us who don't. We'll come back for you. Some day. Maybe.
You do realised you aren't going to Mars? and that no amount of 'thinking big' will change that?
You aren't going to Mars.
It's conceivable that we might suppress our better judgement and send some humans one day, but the chances of it being you are about 1 in a billion.
Why send humans down to the surface when you can just send expendable android avatars which can be operated from geostationary orbit by teams working in shifts to maximise the work done for the mass transported down to the surface? When you leave you don't have to retrieve anything but samples and that takes a much smaller rocket, or allows more samples than if you need to also retrieve humans off the surface. Make the androids smart enough and they will learn enough before you go to continue a lot of the work with minimal instructions from Earth. It makes no sense at all to send people until you have built a truly sustainable habitat for them to live in on the surface as colonists. Why will this not be doable by the 2030s?
Yet, it's by slow steady intermediate steps and evolutionary processes that practically every one of mankind's major breakthroughs, advances, and achievements have been accomplished. They're not visible to the narrow minded or the the clueless - but they're there none the less.
The problem isn't with "limited (and limiting) thinking", it's with idiots who have no patience and no grasp of how the world works... who think things just happen magically.
"..or what intermediate steps have to be taken.."
This is always a problem: incrementalist thinking, the idea that one can achieve the revolutionary through small intermediate steps with an evolutionary process.
But that's where revolutionary ideas come from. Progress is a long series of small intermediate steps and some of those steps turn out to be the revolutionary ones. That's why you get things like Alexander Graham Bell's "race" to the patent office, or Darwin finding out that Wallace had also discovered natural selection. Revolutionary ideas need a solid foundation of incremental discoveries.
But that's actually kind of off-topic for this story, we have all the revolutionary technology already, it's simply a matter of cost and will, and "incrementalist thinking" is a great way to make each of these easier.
This is very limited (and limiting) thinking, and people who think that way will never achieve anything truly revolutionary. If you think like this, you should probably get the hell out of the way of those of us who don't. We'll come back for you. Some day. Maybe.
I suspect you have it backwards. If you're only interested in the revolutionary you'll never get anywhere because you'll be missing all the intermediate steps. If you want to move forward start by doing all the incremental things, eventually you'll have done enough that the revolutionary is in sight.
I stole this Sig
"..or what intermediate steps have to be taken.."
This is always a problem: incrementalist thinking, the idea that one can achieve the revolutionary through small intermediate steps with an evolutionary process. This is very limited (and limiting) thinking, and people who think that way will never achieve anything truly revolutionary. If you think like this, you should probably get the hell out of the way of those of us who don't. We'll come back for you. Some day. Maybe.
Revolutionary v.s. evolutionary is a false dichotomy. Some of the most revolutionary developments have been incremental by nature, but each increment could also be seen as a minor revolution.
Think of the miniaturization of electronics, or Moores law. Each year businesses that make CPU:s, GPU:s and other chips make incremental progress, but most of those increments required some (relatively minor) revolution in the way that one thinks about chip-making.
Rockets went from tiny fireworks in the late 1800:s to the Saturn V in the 1960:s through incremental progress. Then the US tried and failed at switching to space shuttles. Now it's back to rockets again, and incremental work towards better rockets. Some of those increments could have a huge impact, like being able to re-light the first stage and land it for later re-use.
Maybe one day it'll be space elevators instead of rockets. Maybe. Keep in mind that there is no guarantee that a space elevator will be better or cheaper than rockets. That largely depends on how expensive it will be to build the elevator, how often it will need maintenance and how long it will ultimately last until you need to scrap it and build a new one.
/. proves with these comments how backwards and luddite the thinking has become. Gone are the days of science and the hope of something more. Here are the times of cowardice and fear. This whole website has become a bastion of cowards who are too frightened of the unknown. I am sure most of the /. crowd would be perfectly fine cowering away with their vacuum tubes and the threat of V2 rockets to be of any use. This whole site is a sick joke. How can news for nerds be something that mocks space travel? The majority seems to have forgotten that nerds want to progress, not regress, and are just too scared and pussy to move beyond the familiar.
No, it shows that people are finally growing up. Making rational attempts at complex problems. Attempting to balance multiple priorities.
Oh, and we're broke. There's always that.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Now, to be fair, a step/1000mi:Mars/Stars is about an order of magnitude short. But there are several key hurdles to be overcome which will be much more appropriate to work out on the lunar surface or on the trip to and from Mars.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Last time NASA came up with a human mission to Mars Congress got a sticker shock at I believe $450 Billion (a bargain compared to many defense programs). Then a group of Mars enthusiasts came up with a far cheaper and easier program that some in NASA immediately set out to sabotage because it involved a simple three launch system instead of a logistical nightmare involving stations, fuel depots and dozens of craft.
Yeah, obviously humans didn't come about that way. They must have been created whole. Despite all the physical evidence which says otherwise, because you can't get something revolutionary like a human through small intermediate steps with an evolutionary process.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
We don't need a presence on Mars to reproduce. You might not have been able to reproduce but that is not the reason.