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How Close Are We To a Mars Mission? (thenewstack.io)
destinyland writes: NASA is developing the capabilities needed to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s," reads the official NASA web site. But National Geographic points out that "the details haven't been announced, in large part because such a massive, long-term spending project would require the unlikely support of several successive U.S. presidents." And yet on November 4th, NASA put out a call for astronaut applications "in anticipation of returning human spaceflight launches to American soil, and in preparation for the agency's journey to Mars," and they're currently experimenting with growing food in space. And this week they not only ordered the first commercial mission to the International Space Station, but also quietly announced that they've now partnered with 22 private space companies.
calls for corporate welfare?
I'm going to guess about 225 Million km. (on average)
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
We should not be in such a hurry that we are sending people in fragile tin cans reliant on chemical rockets. Instead we should be working on building an actual Ship in orbit.
What is a "Ship"? First, it is a vessel with ample power: some kind of reactor that can run all the ship's systems, plus a magnetic shield. The other systems a reactor would power is the engines...Ion or those EM drives (should they pan out. I expect the truth should be sorted out by the time they get around to building something like this). Sure...they are low thrust, but you can have a lot of them. And they have some pretty powerful ones in development.
Another thing it would have to be is big. Room for rotating sections for artificial gravity, hydroponics, a workshop (because AAA doesn't serve Space yet). Storage for fuel, water, a lander of some sort, etc.
Sure, it sounds all futuristic, but we have the essential technologies or they are on the drawing boards, or can be with just a bit of political will. It's time we took the next step in Space Travel...the step where it's actual travel and not just joy rides to lower orbit. We can put off Mars for a decade or and instead focus on building something that is safe, reliable and not a one and done soda pop can.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
How do we guarantee we don't contaminate Mars and vice versa? The risk of bringing back a deadly disease is not zero. Suppose Mars has prions or something we have no immunity for?
I agree it's a small chance, but also a potential civilization-killing chance.
Table-ized A.I.
Sad to say, that has become the U.S.'s battle cry. Unless an immediate short term profit can be had the funding should be put elsewhere. Let the next guy worry about investing in the future, I need my profits now!China, on the other hand, has a history of investing for long term gains. They are a much more patient people,
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Why is there an article as well, when the question has already been answered?
America cant even get to the ISS without begging Russia or a South African moneychanger kike for a ride, hilarious.
My guess is that absent any major change on this planet, no group or combination of groups that has enough money is willing to spend it on the trip.
So the answer is far away.
Why is Snark Required?
..dunno, ask Elon. I think he knows better than NASA does.
Humans are still more concerned with blow each other than exploring other planets.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
There must be some practical biomass~energy equivalence, something more workable than Einsteins's E=mc2, whereby a starship loaded with tons of people, other animals and plants can sustain itself for several generations, and also produce some acceleration. I envisage ships are made of Earth-built components, each loaded with a few thousands pioneers, equipment and livestock, so that it can be raised in orbit by some kind of sling lift, and assembled there. It may take several months to complete a ship, but many can be built in parallel. Once completed, the ship is relatively autonomous, so long as it gets sunlight.
Cost / safety trade-off is an important point in ship design. Travelers will probably be happy if their safety on board is just better than on Earth. Therefore, the more we take on anti-social, terrorist behavior, the more the climate grows hostile, the less the price of a starship ticket. Even people who are not going to leave may be interested in funding the project, as survival chances may make ethnic cleansing appear somewhat ethic :-/
Think of 100 ships leaving every day... Lemmings adrift in space.
What if orbital mechanics suddenly stopped working, and the reactor crashed into the Earth, because, you know, orbit and things?
The first Mars mission will be around the time fusion power and anti-gravity is made to work. Not long after AIDS, cancer and stupidity have been cured.
Compared to going to the Moon, and how much budget does NASA have for this compared to the early '60s, and mow much more complex is a Mars trip compared to the Moon trip? There's your answer: Never going to happen with the current amount of commitment.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
How do we guarantee we don't contaminate Mars and vice versa?
We don't. If we are going there ourselves we are going to contaminate Mars. There is a non-zero chance we already have with some of the equipment we have sent there. If Mars already supports some form of life then you may as well assume it will happen the other way around unless we do nothing but one way trips. The only way to not contaminate Mars is to not go to Mars.
I'm a guy who stared up, glassy eyed (mostly because I was a kid in the middle of a serious sunstroke) as Armstrong stepped down that ladder, I had my plastic model of the Saturn V and scrapbook after scrapbook of the Apollo missions,so I guess you could call me a fan of exploration, science, engineering - all the things that had to come together for that moment to happen, but I honestly think those days are gone or at least disappearing. Two things end up driving exploration - a romantic ideal of the need to know, and the chance for someone to make a whack of cash. I think like after the "discovery" of North America, it's the investors that will drive the future of space. Nobody with any control over the sort of money this is going to cost believes that we are genuinely on the edge of destroying Earth - no "Interstellar scenario" is forthcoming - so what it will end up being is profit. Mining, most likely. As robotics advances the arguments are fewer and fewer for putting humans in harm's way. Maybe Mars will end up being on the list, my bet is the asteroid belt, though.
Attempting anything at scale in space with chemical rocketry is utterly foolish. Also, even if we put people on Mars, they need a dense, compact, and reliable source of power. Nothing but nuclear engines and reactors even remotely fit the demanding requirements for long-term space activites. A molten salt reactor can be made compact enough to power an airplane, and would be suitable for use in a Mars colony, providing electricity, heat, and production of chemical fuels. The endeavor was scrapped because ICBMs made it obsolete, but the only practical challenge was shielding, and that would not be an issue on mars.
In any case, we have a much greater need to develop the technology here on earth first; nuclear power is the only option capable of providing clean and reliable energy at the scale humanity requires. Until people can accept that, we will continue to waste massive resources on the fantasy of wind/solar, while our reliable power continues to be provided by fossil fuels, or worse yet, by burning trees or other "biofuels".
In the 1950s we still thought Venus was a cloudy tropical paradise. But then, reality sank in. Why won't it sink in with Mars? It's just as deadly, but we can see rocks? Is that it? We have a new religion that worships distant rocks?
because Obama wrecked the space program.
Sending people to Mars is aspirational, but ridiculous. We need to find a commercial basis for a self-sustaining colony on the moon first. Once we have a self-sustaining colony on the moon, that is somehow able to support itself commercially, sending people to Mars will be more achievable.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
The military will soon need some new toy and all the government's money (and then some) will go to it instead. This will be the pattern for many decades to come.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm pretty sure this is the Year of Mars on the Desktop.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Attempting anything at scale in space with chemical rocketry is utterly foolish.
While I generally agree, we don't have anything else at present nor does there appear to be any promising replacements in the near future outside of a few corner cases. We have NOTHING else to get us out of Earth's atmosphere. Until we come up with an alternative for getting into space that is economical and has a similar safety record we're going to be using chemical rockets. While I'm hopeful we can develop something clever one day, I'm realistic that it is going to be a while. Probably longer than my remaining lifespan.
Also, even if we put people on Mars, they need a dense, compact, and reliable source of power. Nothing but nuclear engines and reactors even remotely fit the demanding requirements for long-term space activites.
I think we need to figure out how to get there first without it being a suicide mission. Other than RTGs we don't currently have any reactor designs that are ready for space travel and none are being seriously worked on to my knowledge.
A molten salt reactor can be made compact enough to power an airplane, and would be suitable for use in a Mars colony, providing electricity, heat, and production of chemical fuels.
Did you read your link? They never got a system that powered an aircraft. Yes we could probably design a fission reactor that could power a Mars colony and we could probably get it there. Furthermore how do you know that a molten salt reactor is an appropriate design for space or for use on Mars? There could be lots of better designs. But there are a LOT of problems to solve before that that are a LOT harder, including designing a (safe) reactor for the trip there and getting to Earth orbit economically and designing the life support systems to keep people alive and healthy for the journey.
is that most people seem unable to grasp the distances involved. Even people who should know better. It's amazing to me the amount of people sitting comfortably at their desks surrounded by everything they need and describe the most fantastic fact-free unrealistic scenarios.
http://www.distancetomars.com/
http://www.centauri-dreams.org...
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the...
It's over, folks, the Space Age's corpse will be on display for all worshipers, and it aint' going anywhere.
It always is about 20 years away.
No matter how much cash is expended.
Kind of like fusion, cure for Cancer, etc.
You need your head examined. If the US was so typical, why has nobody else matched the feat in 40+ years even after the development of such improved tech?
You seem to imply that the fault lies in the US having gone it alone instead of chaining itself to the anti-progress boat anchors of other presumably equal or better nations, none of whom have come close to such an achievement. Call me back when some nation that's always bragging about its superiority and its enlightened use of the metric system puts men on the moon.
Cast-off the Luddite mental disorder of the modern eco-movement. The Earth was NEVER pristine, and neither is Mars. Dead places like Mars are gritty and dirty. Living places like Earth are gooey and sticky and messy too.
The operative phrase is "survival of the fittest"
If we go to Mars and we contaminate and kill something that's already there, then it deserved to die.
If we go to Mars and we get contaminated and we get killed, then we deserve to die.
If we cower in fear and decide not to go, because we are afraid of the "what ifs", then we don't deserve to live.
We're still in the science fiction stage of a Mars mission. Nothing that I've seen indicates a serious effort is being made to go to Mars. I'm not sure humans should so so anyway as we're already using robotics to analyze the surface and scan from orbit.
It's a light in the sky, not a real place we can visit. Search YouTube for "Flat Earth Clues".
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
We need to go back to the Moon first, set up a colony there, and build infrastructure there to support further exploration of the solar system! Why? Number One, because we can make all our inevitable mistakes a few days from Earth, where we'll have an opportunity to handle them without everyone dying, and Number Two, if there are launch facilities on the Moon, it'll be that much easier in the long run to get to places like Mars and the asteroid belt, than having to use up all the delta-v necessary to boost out of Earth's gravity well, that's why.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Other than the "getting there" stage, Mars will be much easier to colonize than the moon.
Taking what you claim as a given (the Moon being more challenging) then wouldn't that be a good argument for colonizing the Moon first? If it is actually more challenging in most ways but easier to reach then we can test bed all the technology 3 travel days away and get much of it figured out before taking the long trip to Mars. Not so much from a safety standpoint but from a logistics and cost standpoint. Testbed as much as possible in harsh conditions close to home and then you "only" have to figure out the transit. A lot of the problems will be very similar either place so start close and work your way out.
Space is big, there is loads of it, it's all dead apart from Earth as far as we know, who gives a fuck if we 'contaminate' things with life?
Because we have no idea if it is "all dead". The only thing we know for certain is that we haven't found life elsewhere yet. It doesn't follow that because we haven't found it yet that it cannot exist.
As for whether we should "give a fuck" I guess that's a matter of perspective but it seems rather foolish to contaminate places we have no intention of going ourselves in person. You lose the ability to study what is there if you screw it up carelessly. If we go ourselves then we WILL contaminate wherever we go. No way to avoid that. Humans carry a biological payload whether we like it or not. But that doesn't mean we have to do more damage than necessary.
Mars is not some pristine paradise environment. It's a dead rock.
And you've confirmed this beyond any reasonable doubt how exactly?
Sending people to Mars is aspirational, but ridiculous.
Why is it ridiculous? The idea is fine though some of the notions for how to get there are a little absurd and/or optimistic.
We need to find a commercial basis for a self-sustaining colony on the moon first.
Any colony on the moon will be funded at first by governments and tax dollars. You cannot make a credible business case for going there until it has already been explored and the resources and risks have been quantified. The costs are huge, the returns unknown, and the risks are mostly unquantifiable. That is the the basis for the worst business plan ever. No profit seeking institution can or would fund such a venture. No, governments will have to get us there first and figure out the technology and the risks and only then will businesses consider it. Pure exploration on a large scale like this is ALWAYS funded by governments first because they are the only institution which can take the risks.
Except going to Mars is propaganda and not science. No scientific value in sending man to Mars.
That's not true at all. We would learn a tremendous amount from sending a man to Mars. There would have to be great advances in medicine, agriculture, life support, power, shielding, and much more. Much of it would be technology we are unlikely to develop any other way. We would learn a tremendous amount by sending a man to Mars or even to the Moon.
Lots of scientific value sending probes and what not to explore the galaxy. Cheaper too.
Of course there is value in probes. But there are things you cannot learn by sending probes. That's like saying you can learn everything about Earth by using satellites and ROVs. It simply isn't true. You cannot learn anything about human physiology for one. You learn nothing about life (ours or alien) in these remote places. Probes have their value but the idea that they can completely replace sending people is absurd.
Our company...
We aren't attention seeking frauds. We are a legitimate space program.
NASA should plan on murdering the astronauts on liftoff rather than having them cannibalize each other when their rations run out while trapped in Lunar orbit.
By that logic it would have made more sense to try to get supersonic flight working before lighter-than air craft.
Nice reductio ad absurdem. Seriously, analogies like this almost never are relevant. And this is slashdot so please use a car analogy if you must. :-) Anyway some things about a Moon base will be harder but others will be easier, not the least of which are the logistics involved.
Much more extreme temperature swings
Which if you can handle those, the ones on Mars should be a piece of cake. Don't forget about the effects of the moon passing through the Earth's magneto-tail either. Huge charge buildups will be challenging to say the least.
- Razor-sharp abrasive dust that will quickly destroy seals, gaskets, and other soft materials (no weather to wear it smooth like on Earth and Mars)
Last I checked there is an awful lot of abrasive dust on Mars too AND the dust on Mars has an atmosphere to blow it into all kinds of inconvenient places whereas the Moon does not. Is it the same? Of course not. The moon dust has different properties. But there will likely be overlap in lessons learned.
2-week nights that make solar power nonviable without massive battery banks
Versus the occasional planet wide dust storm. If we're going to Mars with people we're probably going to have some form of nuclear power along for the ride. Solar will be important but we'll need to learn to work around the occasional bit of darkness on Mars or the Moon
much lower gravity, making adapting Earth-based nuclear reactor designs more challenging
Since we're not going to be on Earth why would we use a reactor designed for operation on Earth? We actually understand the physics of this problem rather well.
very few resources relevant to sustaining life (contrast to plenty of water and CO2 on Mars)
There is apparently water on the Moon. Furthermore it's close enough that we can deliver supplies to the moon while we figure out what works and what doesn't. With a Mars mission you pretty much have zero margin for error thanks to the distance. We already have the technology to get to and from the Moon (comparatively) safely. The same cannot be said for Mars and no matter what Elon Musk claims we're not going to go there for some time yet. Why not go where we can and learn what there is to learn?
Furthermore you are forgetting about many of the advantages of a lunar base:
1) Smaller gravity well than Earth so it can act as a forward base of operations. Comparatively cheap to get to.
2) Excellent location for astronomy given the lack of atmosphere
3) Effects of lower gravity (versus micro-gravity) on human physiology can be studied.
4) Evacuation is actually possible should the need arise.
5) Round trip communication delay is ~3 seconds versus 8-30 minutes for Mars.
There is no point in sending a crew to Mars. There was life on Mars. There also was a molten-liquid core that slowly cooled, probably from the lack of gravitational friction like our moon causes. Yes I know our core will eventually cool completely too... Olympus Mons was the last "burp" when the dynamo within came to a gaily. The magnetic shielding effects the planetary engine once held vanished and the atmosphere was stripped away. Of course life on Mars before that has died off slowly as the climate spiraled into a frenzy as moisture slowly started sapping toward the now-cool core. What was left was taken away by solar winds. Networks of ancient lava tubes could host shelter for life on the most basic level or even for our future explorers. The hope of finding evidence of life will be on the form of fossilized bacteria deep underground. The surface is ever-changing. Signs of advanced civilizations will be long-eroded away, disintegrated and forever gone. To have evidence of life... There's a lot to learn from Mars but it's a matter of time befor Disney, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, or some other bullshit company starts using Mars as an advertisement platform. Then what? We never go back to Mars again much like the moon missions? Let's try to set up a campsite on our moon before marooning a bunch of astronauts in the middle of our solar system.