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Congressional Testimony Says NASA Has No Plan For the Journey To Mars (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Testimony at a hearing before the House Science Committee's Subcommittee on Space suggested that NASA's Journey to Mars lacks a plan to achieve the first human landing on the Red Planet, almost six years after President Obama announced the goal on April 15, 2010. Moreover, two of the three witnesses argued that a more realistic near term goal for the space agency would be a return to the moon. The moon is not only a scientifically interesting and potentially commercially profitable place to go but access to lunar water, which can be refined into rocket fuel, would make the Journey to Mars easier and cheaper.
It seems like the technical ability to go to the moon has more or less been lost, and then someone wants them to leapfrog to Mars.
NASA spent a bunch of years putting stuff exclusively into low Earth orbit (which was always a criticism of the Shuttle), and then subsequently lost the ability to do that ... and to add insult to injury they need to rent lift capacity from Russia, or buy rocket engines from them.
How anybody could expect them to go to Mars when they've not demonstrated the ability to go to the moon in 43 years?
Of course they don't have a plan ... they have neither the budget for it, nor the technology at the moment.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The technical ability to go to the moon, or even low earth orbit, is at our finger tips. The practical ability to do so today does not exist in the NASA storehouses.
The mathematics required to go to the moon and return was at least half the battle. Anyone who has had to slog through Battin knows that pain. But we are, to a certain extent, beyond that now. Our ability to simulate orbital mechanics and transfers far exceeds anything imaginable back in the last 50s and early 60s. NASA didn't not land rockets back on earth like SpaceX because they didn't think it would be more convenient, they didn't do it because the entire computational infrastructure that existed couldn't handle the mechanics.
Just about everything that was done has been advanced since the Apollo era. Will we need to re-invent some things? Sure, but in many cases the materials, technologies, and capabilities we have today would make all but the lessons learned books* obsolete for new construction.
We haven't really "lost" anything but the will. And by will, I mean solid, long-term funding commitments.
*yes - they do exist. They have been written for many missions and you can browse through them at several NASA libraries.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Actually in a lot of ways Mars is much easier. Plenty of water and CO2 to support growth. Sand that has been worn smooth by millenia of dust storms so that it won't destroy your equipment and especially air seals. A day length within the range of human adaptablity.
You do need a slightly larger rocket to get stuff there, but for unmanned supply ships it really is only a small difference - the Moon is already most of the way out of the Earth's gravity well, and once you're out of the gravity well you can get anywhere in the solar system essentially for free, if you're willing to take your time. Even a relatively fast Hohmann transfer orbit isn't *that* much more energetically demanding. Yes, it needs a larger rocket, but we've got SpaceX already dedicated to having the necessary rockets within a decade. It's only the manned ships that need to cross the distance in a hurry for radiation reasons, and I'm reasonably confident that Musk isn't just blowing smoke when he says his planned rockets will be up to the job.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
My comment about the "fake" Moon landing was sarcasm. You are a typical space nutter who handwaves "well we will just solve it with technology" and "there might be wormholes and the stuff in Star Trek" because "we don't know everything about physics". We know enough about Physics to know it isn't possible to go to other systems. Ever.
We have literally ZERO evidence that humans need 1g to remain healthy. We know long-term microgravity causes problems, but we also know that the worst of those problems are related to the lack of exercise and impact stresses on the skeleton from walking, and any sizable fraction of Earth gravity will provide those. We won't know if there are problems with 40% until we actually do long-term experiments.
Radiation protection is an issue, but that's easy enough to provide with thick-roofed shelters. Not like there's any shortage of rock and sand on Mars. We won't be walking in the open air any time in the next many centuries, maybe never if we're unable to successfully terraform the planet (Venus would likely be a more appealing target for that anyway), but there's no reason to believe we can't survive in artificial habitats. Most people on Earth already spend most of their life cut off from nature in cities anyway, what difference does it make if the city is roofed over?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The perchlorates in that dust will destroy your seals, and kill you. So will the peroxides, which even fall as "snow" when it's cold enough.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
http://www.distancetomars.com/
Not just nothing on Mars, but people fail to understand the size of the Solar System.
It's only common sense to someone who doesn't understand orbital mechanics very well. Mars is many times farther in terms of distance, but in terms of Delta-V it isn't much more difficult to reach. What's more, resources on Mars are much easier to take advantage of because we can pull them right out of the atmosphere, rather than having to process regolith or solid ice.
So, stopping at the moon as a cost-saving measure is completely misguided. There's also not a lot of scientific interest there. If Mars is where we want to be, the most efficient thing to do is go straight there. Building a base on the moon to go to Mars is like building an underwater city to cross the Atlantic.
Perchlorate isn't all that toxic, it is water soluble, it's easy to counteract its effects, and the exposure would be limited (since you couldn't go outside without a suit anyway). It's also not very corrosive. http://smt.sandvik.com/en/mate... http://mykin.com/rubber-chemic...