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Trump Has Grand Plan For Mission To Mars But Nasa Advises: Cool Your Jets (theguardian.com)
Donald Trump would like to see Americans walk on Mars during his presidency. Nasa would love to get there that quickly, too. The reality of space travel is slightly more complicated, however. From a report: On Monday, during a call with astronaut Peggy Whitson, who was aboard the International Space Station, Trump pressed her for a timeline on a crewed mission to Mars, one of Nasa's longest standing and most daunting goals. "Tell me, Mars," he asked her from the Oval Office, "what do you see a timing for actually sending humans to Mars? Is there a schedule and when would you see that happening?" Whitson answered by pointing out that Trump, by signing a Nasa funding bill last month, had already approved a timeline for a mission in the 2030s. She added that Nasa was building a new heavy-launch rocket, which would need testing. "Unfortunately space flight takes a lot of time and money," she said. "But it is so worthwhile doing." Trump replied: "Well, we want to try and do it during my first term or, at worst, during my second term, so we'll have to speed that up a little bit, OK?" It was not clear whether the president meant the remark as a quip or something more serious.
Even if there is no suitable launch window in a decade, put him in the rocket and let him test it anyway. It could make America great again!
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Living on Mars is not the same as a discussion about visiting Mars.
But, "we can't do XX. Ever." has been said a million times about a million different things and every time, when there was the will and the money to do XX the person making the statement came down as a short-sighted idiot.
That Trump will finish a first term much less get reelected to a second term is as unlikely as NASA to send astronauts to Mars in the next eight years.
You know that it's a bad time when you can get more inspiring sounding space speeches from Rob Lowe dressed in a Colonel Sanders costume than you get from the president:
http://www.adweek.com/agencysp...
Sadly, we can be pretty sure that KFC is going to get that friggin sandwich into space on time. Trump's Mars rocket? Forget about it.
He's not interested in space travel, he's interested in himself.
I have a suspicion this is Ego vs Science.
He wants to cut all sorts of science and research budgets, so he's obviously not in favor of public money being spend on science. In Trump's eyes science is a private enterprise thing, not a government thing.
So why does he want to go to Mars, and specifically why does he want to go during his presidency?
The answer is Ego.
He wants to be known as the President who got man to another planet. He wants the capital city on some long-in-the-future Mars to be called Trump Town.
He doesn't want to go to look for signs of life, he doesn't want to go to advance science, he doesn't want to go to see if there is any long-term investment strategy.
He wants to go for the ego-boost.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
"Interplanetary travel is more complicated than I thought it would be."
You are welcome on my lawn.
Argument overheard several tens of thousands of years ago:
Enough with this migrating to Asia thing. We cannot live in Asia. Ever. The difference in temperature will guarantee that. You can't fix biology and evolution. And don't say "take the skins off animals" or "build fires". Give us all a break.
I just don't understand this. Every single time he says something idiotic, there are always people who try to claim that he isn't serious. "Oh, he's not serious about the wall" "Oh, he's not serious about his vendetta against immigrants." And then he will do, or at least try to do, exactly what he said. Anyone who, at this point, honestly believes that he doesn't mean what he says, is either stupid, deluded, or both.
So yes, I think he's entirely serious that he wants to have people walking on Mars within his term. The only question is, what will he do when he finds out that it's impossible? Will he throw craptons of money at NASA, thinking that he just throw money at the problem? Will he just get pissed off and "fire" NASA?
The man is so completely divorced from reality that there's really no way to anticipate what he will do.
But will and money could get you to Mars.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"or, at worst, during my second term" ... Please... No...
Right, Obama (or Clinton) makes the same pronouncement and you're all for it, Trump makes it and it is "EVIL!!!!!"
Keep it up, and the Democrats will never get back in power. Which is fine by me. The Republicans too are proving just as inept. Which is fine by me. Perhaps we'll actually get a viable third party that doesn't whine like a bitch when they aren't in power, and actually is constructive when they are.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space."
And the rockets will coal powered. Beautiful, clean coal. That's the secret to making America great again.
it would get eroded away just as quickly as it was generated.
Citation needed. Mars had liquid oceans at one point. Clearly it once had a much denser atmosphere that lasted for geological time spans.
It's not that he's evil (at least in this context), it's that he's making everything about himself.
#DeleteFacebook
What you are really saying is that we should colonize Venus first. I agree. Floating colonies on (above) Venus sounds so much better than living in tin cans on a cold dead rusty world.
This is my island in the Stratosphere.
I got a place for sunshine and my freeze dried beer.
No need to freeze as it's warm and clear.
Don't look down now, there is nothing to fear.
Just a Venetian sunset such a lovely view.
I can't believe we thought it was something new!
So, Venus's middle cloud layer, then?
"He's a liar whose lawyer is lying about his lying lawyer's lies."
What, you want like a guarantee or something? I can't even give you that for the moon, and that is demonstrably possible. You are moving the bar.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And now it doesn't. So it's a pretty safe bet that it won't maintain one now. Even at the wildest possibly of us being able to generate an atmosphere, we're not going to be able to do so instantaneously. So the likelihood of doing so faster than it being stripped away by solar winds is small. I'd like to see humans go there as much as anyone, but you need to be realistic too.
The problem with his statement is the timeline is just not realistic. There are some parts of the puzzle that have yet to be solved such as the radiation exposure and long term physical physical effects of long term deep space travel. A suicide trip to mars is not any sort of achievement and would only add to his list of failures.
What? The difference in temperature is minimal between the two areas. You fell into the common trap: since one thing is possible, all things must be possible. Mars is nothing like the Earth. Nothing. Imagine living in the bottom of the sea, or on the North Pole. That is paradise compared to Mars. Just because you can run to the end of your block doesn't mean you can run a marathon either.
Tell you what: try that on Earth FIRST.
If that gets us a mission to Mars sooner, so what?
I was a bit surprised by some of my fellow slashdotter's negative comments on this.
I've really hated the lack of focus on science and ignoring of scientific facts in the current administration. While I'd love to sell science funding for science's own sake, it is just not working well with a lot of our population and government representatives.
As the same time, we know putting a man on the moon generated a huge amount of scientific research and learning. So if the current administration wants to characterize funding as helping "go to Mars", I'm glad to live with it given the scientific work that will be generated because of it.
I'm not a big fan of Trump, but if it takes his ego and bully power to get us back into space exploration, then that's a good thing. The thing I know he doesn't understand is how much effort and resources it takes to untertake a mission like this. I'm sure SpaceX has also been whispering in a few well-placed ears about taking over NASA's role as well -- that would definitely appeal to the conservative, small government, privatization always works crowd.
The problem I see is that no one would ever be willing to just dump the amount of money required into this. I'm a firm believer of the idea that throwing enough money and resources at a problem will solve it, but no one's willing to do that. We were willing back in the 60s when the Soviet Union beat us into space -- and we also poured uncountable sums of money into nuclear weapons and espionage technology as well with virtually zero limits. No one complained one bit back then, but they sure do now. Or, go back a few years and look at the Manhattan Project -- again, bags of money were just lit on fire and forgotten about because the goal of winning a war that was consuming huge numbers of men was possible if you paid for it. If you read about it, it was a massive project -- not just the bomb design, but the mining and refining of radioactive material that consumed vast amounts of resources.
The only way we could ever do something like this again is to have China plant a flag on Mars first...then all bets would be off.
Nonsense. We need to increase the mass of Mars. That will make trapping an atmosphere there much easier.
Already have those in the form of Blimps and hot air balloons. Also, air for humans is much less denser than Venetian air making breathable air for humans a lifting gas on Venus. No need for hydrogen or helium as a lifting gas just use a Nitrogen/Oxygen mixture that we breathe.
You don't need Will right now, you need Geordi.
Ezekiel 23:20
It's amazing that hating Trump and point out what a "dummy" he is, is more important than using this opportunity to convince him to give NASA more money and resources to implement his vision.
The deadline is irrelevant. If in 4 years NASA has made significant progress the funding increase will continue.
No wonder NASA has such a limited budget. They're too dumb to know when to shut up and take the money.
Work Safe Porn
Why do you think his wife doesn't want to live with him in DC?
Because she doesn't want to sleep in the same bed as Ivanka?
It only has an induced magnetosphere, like Mars (although about twice as powerful). But it's big defense against radiation is the thickness of its atmosphere; radiation has to pass through a lot of mass to get to habitable areas. The radiation levels within Venus's middle cloud layer are perfectly acceptable without extra shielding.
Not in the middle cloud layer. Actually it's just the opposite, the pressure / temperature relation in the middle cloud layer means somewhat low (but still acceptable) pressures at normal Earth temperatures. But it's still by far the most Earthlike place in the solar system outside of Earth.
The unfortunate thing for Venus is that people think only in terms of surfaces; if Venus's atmosphere had stopped at its middle cloud layer, nobody would be talking about Mars today. But because Venus's atmosphere is carbon dioxide, almost any common gas can be used as a lifting gas. Including nitrogen and oxygen - ordinary Earth air is a lifting gas, offering about half as much lift as helium does on Earth. Meaning you can actually live inside your lift envelope. And airship envelopes are not particularly heavy, despite their large sizes. Your entire habitat is this completely mobile, constantly exploring new ground, accessing the surface as needed with bellows and/or phase-change balloons.
Now you're talking about terraforming, which we're nowhere near doing for any planet (not Mars either - Mars's biggest problem is that isotopic ratios indicate that almost all of the planet's nitrogen has been lost to space). Carl Sagan famously, before Venus's conditions were known, proposed seeding Venus's clouds with phototrophs in order to sequester carbon and create an oxygenated atmosphere. He later changed his mind, saying that you'd end up with a huge deep layer of carbon and a dense, hot oxygen atmosphere, and the whole planetary surface would explode. Further dampers were put on the concept when it was pointed out that, depending on what assumptions you make, it'd take tens of thousands to millions of years to sequester regardless.
Many, many different proposals for terraforming Venus have been made over the years, but honestly I think Sagan had the right idea, for the wrong reason. Namely, because we've seen this situation before. Earth used to be a world with a CO2-rich atmosphere, no oxygen, ferric oxide on its surface (well, more accurately, Fe+2 ions in the oceans), etc. Did Earth explode once microbes developed photosynthesis? Of course not. As fast as they could produce oxygen, the iron oxidized to ferric oxyhydroxide to magnetite and hematite, laying down bands of iron oxides (interspersed with sequestered carbon), which we now know as the banded iron formations. There was no "thick layer of graphite" or "dense explosive oxygen atmosphere being made" on Earth, and there's all the less reason to expect it on Venus, because in Venus's hot, dense surface conditions the abundant ferric oxide (and other species) will be even more reactive. Oxygen will be consumed as fast as it's created, until you've exhausted all available surface ferric oxide, which will take quite a long time. Indeed, if you took some of the "atmospheric ejection" or "atmosphere freezing" terraforming proposals, you'd be faced with a problem when you actually started producing oxygen in Venus - you'd be fighting against the rusting of the planet.
The low levels of hydrogen are IMHO more challenging; I don't like most of the proposals for getting more
"He's a liar whose lawyer is lying about his lying lawyer's lies."
Right, Obama (or Clinton) makes the same pronouncement and you're all for it, Trump makes it and it is "EVIL!!!!!"
No, neither of them made it about themselves. At no point did you hear them say, "Well, we want to try and do it during my first term or, at worst, during my second term. Me! Me! Me!" [emphasis mine] Rather, they deferred to the experts to come up with a reasonable schedule to maximize success and safety.
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
Well, to make things as simplistic as possible, Mars at its closest is over at thousand times farther away.
Now I don't have much of a throwing arm -- you might say I'm starting with nothing -- but I'm pretty certain if you gave me a few years I could manage to throw a football twenty yards. It doesn't follow that given a few more years I could somehow throw a football twenty kilometers.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Shooting people to Mars in a tin can is a useless exercise.
It would not really advance space travel technology all that much, it's dangerous as hell, and we really wouldn't learn much more (if any more) than we know now.
In fact, I expect that the spectacle of people dying during the attempt would do more damage to the Space Program than you can imagine.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
No, no, no. How many times have we told you not to try out your code on the production server?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The migration was definitely easier. They didn't have to worry about breathing, a pressurized way to move around outside, or a 300 degree temperature swing in the course of 12 hours. We will.
The sulfuric acid is more of a resource than a problem, and it'd be easier to colonize Venus if the sulfuric acid was denser. It's actually pretty sparse - a couple to a couple dozen milligrams per cubic meter. Standards for breathing sulfuric acid on Earth for an 8-hour shift are between one and a couple milligrams per cubic meter, if that puts it into perspective. It's like a bad smog (or more accurately, vog) than being like a bath in sulfuric acid. There are many polymers with excellent sulfuric acid compatibility.
The reason sulfuric acid is a resource is, first off, it's not 100% sulfuric acid, so there's the water content that can first be dehydrated. After further heating, you decompose H2SO4 to SO3 + H2O. Further heating, plus catalysts, can also decompose SO3 to SO2 + O2. Alternatively you can use the SO3 as a scrubber conditioning agent to help capture more moisture from the atmosphere. There's also the sulfur-iodine cycle for the generation of hydrogen.
Not so, the sunlight in the middle cloud layer is rather earthlike (depending on your latitude). The cloud decks have absorbed only about a third of the light by the time it reaches the middle cloud layer at the equator (more toward the poles), and Venus's solar constant is higher than Earth's, so it roughly equals out. Except that light comes from all sides.
Solar power has even been shown to be possible to use at the surface, albeit with extremely low power density. But enough to run, say, a seismic or weather station.
"He's a liar whose lawyer is lying about his lying lawyer's lies."
Residual propellant (+ stored gas) inflation of a (repackable) ballute or lifting body envelope, which doubles as both the entry system and as lift balloon when in the atmosphere. Ascent stages are very light on return, so it doesn't take a huge lift envelope to keep it buoyant in the atmosphere. Ballutes are already being well investigated as reentry systems alone for Venus, as it makes for a much lighter-weight entry system than an aeroshell. One of the considerations as a successor to the Saturn V was called ROOST; a "buoyant" version of it proposed just that, an inflatable aeroshell that transitioned to become a buoyant lift envelope in the atmosphere, to allow for a gentle landing. To dock on Venus, the reentry stage would maneuver into position below the habitat, connect via an arm or tethered drone, reduce lift to make the line go taut, and then be winched in.
An alternative possibility is NTR (nuclear thermal) - particularly variants like NTTR, which have a compressor and thus can hover. The predicted payload fractions on NTTR are huge (~50% on Earth), and using it on Venus, there would be a lot less NIMBY objection. Plus it'd help break a path for use of NTR on Earth if it can be demonstrated safe there. On Venus, NTTR would be disadvantaged by using the Bosch reaction rather than H2/O2 combustion, but the delta-V requirements and gravity losses are lower.
"He's a liar whose lawyer is lying about his lying lawyer's lies."
Unless in that time you developed a catapult to throw it for you. :)
Do the math. To achieve a range of 20km, the catapult would have to launch the football at 990 miles per hour -- and that's in a vacuum.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
See, you are well on your way to get that football twenty kilometers with your catap... contraption. ^_^
If you just landed on Mars, the nearest chemist could actually be on Earth!
Ezekiel 23:20
Seems the comments have de-evolved into its normal Trump bashing. I'm going to start a new thread to debate the actual scientific merits of going to Mars.
While I'm pro space I don't see much need at this point for us to be focusing on a maned mission to Mars. I think we will eventually go to Mars but I think we should focus our time and resources on near Earth activity right now.
By near Earth, I mean Earth and Moon. We have been tossing up crap in to near Earth orbit for decades. We should return to the moon first, build a base there, maybe a colony, and focus on getting our crap together first.
We should get more actual space experience and pull the theoretical technology off the shelf and put it to use. I don't believe we will be ready for a manned mission to Mars till we have perfect space based building, artificial gravity, close to 100% recyclable life-support systems as we can get, magnetic radiation shielding, and nuclear propulsion.
I don't believe we should aim for Mars till we can make flights to the moon as routine as jet travel across the world is today. Once we have mastered these technologies and routine travel to the moon then we should be ready for Mars. An as a bonus if we are ready for Mars then we should be ready to go any where in the solar system.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Already been done :)
(But it's long since time for a followup, that was just a very simple, short-term pair of probes)
"He's a liar whose lawyer is lying about his lying lawyer's lies."