Slashdot Mirror
NASA Safety Panel Finds Concerns With the Journey To Mars (examiner.com)
MarkWhittington writes: NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel issued its annual report on various space agency programs. The panel found a number of areas of concern surrounding the Journey to Mars program, virtually all of them stemming from inadequate funding. It suggested that NASA's plan to launch the first crewed mission on the Orion, which would use the heavy lift Space Launch System to go around the moon, in 2021 was unrealistic given current, anticipated funding. The panel also suggested that lack of a clear plan for the Mars program is compromising its viability. It also suggested that the decision not to return to the moon should be revisited in view of the desire of international partners to do so and the need of low gravity surface experience in advance of going to Mars
Paper rockets for a has-been nation. Obama killed NASA heavy launch and gave us fake, unfunded programs. Go talk to China or India if you want progress.
Are you sure this was Obamas's doing? I thought these sort of funding decisions was down to congress?
The president can have great visions, but in the end depends on congress to allow them to happen.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
We first went to Mars in 1964, and we've never stopped. We've done all kinds of amazing science there, on an ongoing basis, and we continue to do so..
Seriously, sending humans is silly. Humans are frail, highly expensive to maintain due to all the extra mass that must be taken along to keep them going, and increase the price of missions by two orders of magnitude. Let's get the most science for the dollar, which is not done by "flags and footprints". It's done by continuing to push the envelope of robotic exploration. We're so far from a sustainable Mars-colony that we don't even have to think about that. Maybe in a thousand years we can revisit. For now, it's a waste.
no, and sticking nano on the front of it doesn't make much difference.
You know how barometric pressure used to be given in inches of mercury? well that was the number of inches you could suck a pool of mercury up a straw (don't do that!) before you end up with a vacuum at the top of your straw and you are sucking away and nothing is rising any further because the pressure of the atmosphere won't push it up any more. Turns out you can't suck it up that far before it would rather not go any further. If you use other fluids the same kind of thing happens, but more so, because mercury is heavy. For water I think it is about 13 meters For the atmosphere itself the distance you can suck it up a straw is exactly the height of the atmosphere!