Buzz Aldrin To NASA: Retire the International Space Station ASAP To Reach Mars (space.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: If NASA and its partner agencies are serious about putting boots on Mars in the near future, they should pull the plug on the International Space Station (ISS) at the earliest opportunity, Buzz Aldrin said. "We must retire the ISS as soon as possible," the former Apollo 11 moonwalker said Tuesday (May 9) during a presentation at the 2017 Humans to Mars conference in Washington, D.C. "We simply cannot afford $3.5 billion a year of that cost." Instead, Aldrin said, NASA should continue to hand over activities in low Earth orbit (LEO) to private industry partners. Indeed, the space agency has been encouraging that move by awarding contracts to companies such as SpaceX, Orbital ATK and Boeing to ferry cargo and crew to and from the ISS. Bigelow Aerospace, Axiom Space or other companies should build and operate LEO space stations that are independent of the ISS, he added. Ideally, the first of these commercial outposts would share key orbital parameters with the station that China plans to have up and running by the early 2020s, to encourage cooperation with the Chinese, Aldrin said. Establishing private outposts in LEO is just the first step in Aldrin's plan for Mars colonization, which depends heavily on "cyclers" -- spacecraft that move continuously between two cosmic destinations, efficiently delivering people and cargo back and forth.

Comments

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[sheramil]

- attach boosters to the ISS and SEND IT TO MARS.

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[sheramil]

I didn't say send humans to Mars.

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[Snotnose]

What a waste of a good space station. Attach boosters to it and send it to congress.

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[Rei]

It's also a lot heavier than an equivalent craft built today would be, which means a heavier transfer stage. Solar power systems for example are approaching an order of magnitude better power density than the ISS's solar arrays.

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[Anonymous Coward]

If you're trying to send a message, you don't need to land something as heavy as ISS at congress's doorstep. Just use a small launch vehicle (Pegasus, for example), with a small reentry vehicle (deploys parachute, jettisons fairing, needs a rather low CEP), whose payload consists of, in order from bottom to top:

  * Crush zone
  * Paper bag filled with frozen dog poop (reinforced as necessary), a small amount of accelerant, and an ampule of a hypergolic ignition fluid designed to rupture on impact (or equivalent electrical igniter).

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[PopeRatzo]

What a waste of a good space station. Attach boosters to it and send it to congress.

No member of Congress will notice unless you tape a few $100,000 bills to it.

Re: OR -

[Anonymous Coward]

Race can be narrowed down indefinitely. Those people on the other side of the road seems a bit suspicious . . .

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[MerlTurkin]

It's not designed to fly outside of Earth's atmosphere.

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[Homebuyer]

Not sure if we could supply conveyancing quotes to Homebuyers buying property on mars. But the idea of life being on mars is appealing.

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[ColdWetDog]

But it's already in orbit.... That means a lot.

Of course, it won't work - the arrays aren't specced for Martian distances. I doubt you can put much acceleration on the frame - it wasn't designed for that. But there has got to be a better way of utilizing the thing besides burning it up in in the atmosphere.

Re: OR -

[ColdWetDog]

Wait, you mean there's more to going to mars than just building big rockets and putting people in them? Going to mars is more complicated than anyone knew.

No, that's healthcare. Going to Mars is easy compared to rejiggering the American Medical Industrial Complex.

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[ColdWetDog]

"- attach boosters to ISIS and SEND THEM TO MARS."

FTFY. Two birds, one stone.

Ack no. Didn't you see Prometheus?

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

But it's already in orbit.... That means a lot.

No, it means very little. It's so heavy that just launching the fuel for TMI would involve so much mass that you could launch a more capable modern assembly AND its TMI fuel in a smaller mass budget than just the TMI fuel for the ISS.

Re: OR -

[budgenator]

Who do you think, the 1%ers are ruining this country, don't you fucking white trailer trash rednecks know anything?

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[silentcoder]

None of those meet the reason why colonizing elsewhere is a good idea: so that the next time the universe throws a giant rock at earth this isn't the only place in the universe where humans exist.

It's important to protect this planet, it will be home to the vast majority of humans for the foreseeable future. We should not destroy our home. But there are things we cannot protect against. The planet wil be fine. Life will bounce back. It probably won't include us.
The only defense around that is to live in more places than earth.

That said - I'm not sure what makes Mars more attractive than the moon for a first colony. Most of the difficulties about living on the Moon are present on Mars as well - and it's a lot easier to get to. More-over, if we do build a permanent settlement there - with launch capability, then suddenly further expansion becomes a great deal cheaper. You need a lot less fuel to launch from the moon than from earth since the gravity is way lower and there's no atmospheric drag.

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[slashdot_commentator]

> I'm not sure what makes Mars more attractive than the moon for a first colony. Most of the difficulties about living on the Moon are present on Mars as well

1) The Moon has been done already.
    Technology doesn't advance by working the same problems.
    The Moon is a big waste of time.
2) Mars has more mass & more likelihood of materials worth mining.
      Also, the Moon is basically a big grain of silica. There's nothing there worth collecting (other than He3).
3) Mars is closer to the asteroid region, for exploration/mining support
4) Mars would be more likely to sustain a permanent colony independent from Earth.
5) Kinetically, it doesn't take much more energy to go to Mars than the Moon. The difference is in transit time.

Re:OR -

[slashdot_commentator]

More-over, if we do build a permanent settlement there - with launch capability, then suddenly further expansion becomes a great deal cheaper. You need a lot less fuel to launch from the moon than from earth since the gravity is way lower and there's no atmospheric drag.

Launch capability for what? There's not a lot of H2O on the Moon. It wouldn't make Mars travel easier. We'd probably have to spend decades, if not a century, locating & developing ways to collect H2O on the Moon before it could be of some sort of benefit for space exploration. The Moon is a huge waste of time.

Right now, the only chemical propellants to get anywhere in the solar system are only accessible on Earth. Even considering nuclear fuels, until they find deposits on the Moon, they only are accessible on Earth.

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[silentcoder]

1) Living on the moon is not the same as VISITING the moon. I was talking about colonies. Colonization requires radically new technology we've not done before - but we would be able to reuse a lot of the tech we build for colonizing the moon to colonize mars later.

2) Only a factor if you think it's critical the colony trade with earth from natural resources. Not really a factor if the major point of the colony is to exist - colonists can always trade with each other, and they'll certainly develop other things to trade with us later.

3) You're wrong about how space works. There's a reason we say "low earth orbit is halfway to anywhere" - once you're in orbit the cost of changing orbit is relatively low compared to the massive cost of getting into orbit. Mars may be closer to the asteroid belt but I'm willing to bet it's actually cheaper to mine them with launches off the moon. You can't launch from Mars for anywhere close to how cheaply you can do it from the lunar surface.

4) Erm - my whole point was to ask why that would be ? There is basically nothing that the moon lacks which Mars does not also lack. You cannot answer me questioning an assumption by restating that same assumption without providing any new information.

5) And if you understand why that is true, you understand why you're wrong in number 3. But it DOES take a lot less energy to LAND on the moon than on Mars - you have a much smaller gravitational force to overcome with your slow-down actions. And it takes a GREAT deal less to get back up again (whether to mine an asteroid, ship trading goods to earth or whatever). A colony means landing a great deal of extremely heavy things - the kind of things parachutes aren't much help with (and the thin Atmosphere on Mars makes them only a little useful anyway) - it's going to be mostly rocket-braking to land anything safely. The moon is a MUCH easier target for that.

Re: OR -

[ShanghaiBill]

Race can be narrowed down indefinitely. Those people on the other side of the road seems a bit suspicious . . .

True, but it can also become more inclusive, and historically that is what has happened. A century ago, few people considered Jews to be "white people". Before that, Americans worried that the Irish and Italians were corrupting the gene pool. In the aftermath of the Rising of 1745 there were serious editorials in British newspapers expressing doubts about whether sub-human vermin like the Scots could ever be properly civilized.

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[ShanghaiBill]

I doubt you can put much acceleration on the frame

Once a craft is in orbit, you don't need much acceleration to go places. You can attach some ion thrusters, and power them with the solar arrays. Even an acceleration of 0.001g applied continuously will get you to Mars far quicker than any chemical rocket could.

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[GbrDead]

The Kremlin might need it more.

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[Areyoukiddingme]

What a waste of a good space station. Attach boosters to it and send it to congress.

No member of Congress will notice unless you tape a few $100,000 bills to it.

I think the point was to deliver it straight down at terminal velocity...

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[sinequonon]

How about boosting the ISS to geosynchronous orbit using an ion drive engine? Then you have a lower delta-V transfer orbit for a Mars mission vehicle and the ISS is still inside the Earth's magnetosphere.

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[jwhyche]

Can I do the math for this?

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[Aighearach]

That settles it then, we need another space station!!!

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[Aighearach]

I agree with the first part.

But if it doesn't have any atmosphere or soil or fuel, why land a rock and make it more expensive? It would make more sense to select an appropriate orbit for the backup pods.

The only advantage of being on a rock is psychological for the backup units. But that can be solved by putting a "helmet" on the station, so that when you look out the window it appears to be something larger with mass underneath.

But yeah, we definitely need a basic backup of critical genetic systems.

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[antdude]

Send Congress to ISS to Mars. :P

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[WrongMonkey]

Even when the universe has thrown a big rock at Earth, it was still the habitable planet in the solar system. Earth could simultaneously be hit by an asteroid, nuclear war and global warming and still be a paradise compared to Mars. There is no feasible scenario where Mars or the Moon are better a places to restart humanity.

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[silentcoder]

Habitable by life ? Sure.
By HUMAN life ? Not a fucking chance.

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[WrongMonkey]

Please explain how all major Cretaceous mammalian lineages survived the K-T extinction, but humans would have "not a fucking chance"

If humans cannot survive circumstance that other mammal species have already demonstrated to be survivable, then how do you think we're going to survive on a planet where no life exists at all?

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[silentcoder]

They were a quarter inch long.

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[WrongMonkey]

How big are the mammals living on mars or the moon?

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[painandgreed]

None of those meet the reason why colonizing elsewhere is a good idea: so that the next time the universe throws a giant rock at earth this isn't the only place in the universe where humans exist.

If that's the reason, our money would be better spent on mapping our solar system, early warning system, and deflection methods.

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[david_thornley]

The Universe doesn't throw giant rocks at Earth all that often. There hasn't been an event wiping out all life on Earth in something like a billion years now, and humans are remarkably difficult to eradicate. I don't think one of the fifty-million-year ones would do it.

If we're wiped out on Earth, then to continue the species we'd need completely self-sustaining colonies, able to replace anything they've got with available resources and able to expand. We won't be able to build that for centuries.

So, while I'm not averse to planting colonies off Earth, it will be a long time before we can survive (as a species) a giant mutant star goat.

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[slashdot_commentator]

First off, since you concede Man has walked on the Moon, going back there is not advancing technology. The problems in sending Man to the Moon was worked out in the late 1960's. We'd be doing the same damn thing in 2020.

1) Living on the moon is not the same as VISITING the moon. I was talking about colonies. Colonization requires radically new technology we've not done before - but we would be able to reuse a lot of the tech we build for colonizing the moon to colonize mars later.

The Moon does not contain any organic compounds other than what has crashed on it by comets. Anything necessary to sustain life on the Moon would require shipping it from the Earth. And for what??? Even if it was possible to harvest H20 on the Moon (a small, glacier shelf's worth, in total), its probably not enough quantities to sustain a permanent presence, provide fuel for all future space missions, or even save money after factoring the cost to maintain a permanent observation room on the Moon!" The Moon is made up of similar sand compounds you'd find on a beach. You can't build a space program on glass structures. Until something else is found that would change the practical utility of the Moon (ore), the Moon is worthless.

The second mistake you make is thinking the US can afford to maintain a permanent presence on the Moon and a semi-permanent presence on Mars. That is a false notion. The reality is that there probably isn't the political will or discretionary funds for the US to even mount another visit on the Moon (Because a semi-permanent Moonbase would cost magnitudes more money to create and maintain). The question is whether you want to shutdown ISS, and have 10 more visits to the Moon, before the US doesn't want to fund an exclusive visitor center on the Moon, or a 2 year mission to Mars, and enough interest and technological advancement to sustain future permanent presence on Mars.

Mars may be closer to the asteroid belt but I'm willing to bet it's actually cheaper to mine them with launches off the moon. You can't launch from Mars for anywhere close to how cheaply you can do it from the lunar surface.

No, because there will have been no technological advancement in propulsion or long term space missions to get to the asteroid belt region and back. If you go to Mars, you have a reason to develop the capability to get there and back faster. If you only want to go to the Moon, its still going to be done with chemical rockets. You're not going to have a 2 year mission to Ceres before you've completed a 2 year mission to Mars (& back).

Erm - my whole point was to ask why that would be ?

Mars (probably) has an iron core center. It was formed in a process similar to Earth. The Moon was decidedly formed through a different process, although we don't know with certainty all the details. Mars used to have an atmosphere and "running water". Mars has the raw materials to sustain life (and manufacture useful items). Everything organic will have to be brought to the Moon, and that possibly even includes the H2O. Mars is a new challenging problem that would payoff with new commercial enterprises. The Moon would always be a parasite of Earth, and die without regular Earth shipments and funding.

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[sheramil]

But it's already in orbit.... That means a lot.

No, it means very little.

"Half-way to anywhere."

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[Miamicanes]

The problem is, the ISS is too big to risk deorbiting as a whole a-la-Skylab. It would cost billions just to deconstruct it for a safe (on paper, at least) deorbiting.

If we truly decided to trash it, we'd be better off giving it one last hard shove upwards (even at the risk of causing structural failure) into an orbit high enough to last another 50-100 years just to keep it around as a source of in-orbit scrap metal. If we regressed to the point where it crashed anyway sometime after 2100, potential damage from its crash will be the least of humanity's problems.

That said, I personally doubt whether Russia would even *allow* the US to deorbit the non-Russian half. If we got to the point of trying, Russia would probably refuse to ferry NASA's crew to do the job, SpaceX would find excuses to decline the job, and the Russians would take over the entire station after sending the Americans home.

Would the US *seriously* risk a shooting war with Russia over its right to deorbit & destroy our half of the ISS? I doubt it. We'd bitch, send them a letter telling them how *very* angry we are... then go off & sulk. Russia would send annual rent checks to Washington as payment that the US would refuse to cash, and that would be the end of it.

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[Miamicanes]

I believe a stable geosynchronous orbit would require substantial acceleration in the "horizontal" direction, too (possibly even MORE than the required vertical thrust). Thrusting it ONLY upwards would basically just put the ISS into a Molniya-like orbit... over time, it would fall closer to Earth at perigee, and swing further from Earth at apogee, until it eventually burned up during a perigee that grazed the atmosphere.

Re: OR -

[silentcoder]

Most scientists are quite sure that the former is the easier one of the two- because there's time. We can build that colony over a matter of years before the first humans even arrive. If we actually hit an extinction level event on earth - we're unlikely to have very much warning. 5 years at most (and more likely much less than that). A volcanic superplume would make earth unlivable for anything like us for many years. There's no TIME to develop survival technologies in.

A colony - they would already HAVE their survival technologies.

The history of earth is one of mass extinctions and life starting over with whatever scraps are left. That could be a few extremophile bacteria and life will go on. But any particular species has very little chance. You used the K/T event - but that wasn't even all that dramatic an extinction. The Permian/Triassic extinction wiped out 97% of all the species on the planet at the time. It wasn't evolutionary advantage that made the difference for the other 3% - it was dumb, random luck.

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[silentcoder]

That's only useful for extinction causing things we can actually do something about.
Just what exactly is your plan for dealing with a direct hit from a Gamma-Ray burst ? One of those would sterilise everything on earth it doesn't kill, it would pass right through the planet so you wouldn't even be safe at the bottom of a mine - and they travel at the speed of light to so the laws of physics actually declare it impossible to build a warning system for them. You can NEVER get a warning to earth faster than the thing you're warning about gets there.

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[silentcoder]

That's entirely a matter of perspective. You're thinking in human time - and that's sily here. You need to look at deep time - and you'll find that very bloody frequently life on earth has had to start over from a few scraps. Life is incredibly resilient says the fossil record, but species aren't. Sheer, dumb, random luck determines what survives the next extinction level event.
One day you're at the top of the food chain, the next day the corpses of your entire species are being nibbled on by shrew like creatures whose descendents will rule the world one day - however briefly.

By the way - the average lifespan of a species is about 10-million years. We're already at the average and depending how you define 'human' we're at ten times the average. Don't feel cheered though - the odds of a species continuing actually DECLINES the further past the average they go. It's not a promise of future success - it shows how well adapted you are to the world thus far, the whole point of an ELE is that it completely and utterly changes what counts as 'well adapted'. It's entirely possible that the next ELE will leave nothing alive but a single species of extremeophile bacteria around an undersea volcanic vent somewhere.

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[silentcoder]

Having said all that - WHY do you think humans have proven so resilient? Because we're good at adapting the environment to ourselves. That's also why we COULD survive an event like that, by having people who have adapted environments to themselves where the event did NOT occur.

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[Ihlosi]

it would pass right through the planet

No, it wouldn't. A few hundred km of rock are pretty good radiation shielding.

However, a GRB would mess up the atmosphere so thoroughly that it wouldn't be fun even for those on the far side of the planet.

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[silentcoder]

Okay, that doesn't accord with what I read - but I could just be remembering wrong, so let's assume you're right.

As you point out though - it wouldn't make much difference to our survival odds.

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[painandgreed]

That's only useful for extinction causing things we can actually do something about. Just what exactly is your plan for dealing with a direct hit from a Gamma-Ray burst ? One of those would sterilise everything on earth it doesn't kill, it would pass right through the planet so you wouldn't even be safe at the bottom of a mine - and they travel at the speed of light to so the laws of physics actually declare it impossible to build a warning system for them. You can NEVER get a warning to earth faster than the thing you're warning about gets there.

Non-sequitur. Creating a colony on Mars also wouldn't protect versus gamma-ray burst.

Re:OR -

[silentcoder]

Nothing we can do in the next few centuries (perhaps millennia) would - but that's not the point, the point is that there are threats we are unable to stop. But we can defend our species against at least some of them by spreading to more worlds.

Of course that's not the first choice - giant rock comes hurling, we let it hit and repopulate the earth from a colony a few decades later when it's possible is an absolute last resort idea. It means sacrificing billions of lives - we should definitely not take that approach if there is any way in hell of stopping that thing. But that may not be possible. There are things we can do to increase the odds. Better early warning systems are crucial - the further out we detect a problem rock the less energy you need to shift it's path enough to prevent a collision - the closer it gets the more difficult it becomes. Destroying one - while popular in movies- is perhaps the least practical of the options we may explore. It's a lot easier to redirect a giant rock than to blow it into harmless pieces.

Even then, there are things that could wipe us out we have no real way to control. A volcanic superplume could easily lead to the extinction of human life on earth - it's as bad as the biggest rocks the universe has (and some studies suggest they have a nasty habit of happening together) - and there is nothing in our technological arsenal that can stop one of those. We can't even stop an ordinary volcano that wants to blow it's top, let alone thousands of them blowing at once... And we know that can happen because it HAS happened before (not in the time we humans have been here - but more than once in the past before us).

Spreading out is a key part of human survival - we spread over the entire planet because that's in our genes, it's how we ensured our survival. There's archeological evidence that at least three settlements in modern day yemen died out before the one which succeeded and ultimately spread out to Europe and Asia and the Americas. It's HARD to spread beyond where you have been comfortable, leaving Africa was a painful process that cost great effort and many lives - but ultimately, we as a species were more resilient for it. That's how I see planetary colonization - it's the next step in what has been a driving force of human evolution for as long as there has been something you could call human.
The earliest known proper human fossils are about a hundred thousand years old - in Ethiopia. There are fossils and artifacts from proper human settlement in caves of Cape Point that date from 95-thousand years ago.
In just five-thousand years we spread across the entire continent of Africa - Africa is HUGE, you could fit all of North America (So USA, Canada and half of Mexico) into it four times over ! It's who we are. And it's the best chance we have of there being an us to be who we are.

Re: OR -

[WrongMonkey]

Most scientists are quite sure that the former is the easier one of the two- because there's time.

[citation needed] We have plenty of time to build a bunker. We could start right now if anyone was concerned. No need to wait for Elon Musk to build a rocket.

We can build that colony over a matter of years before the first humans even arrive.

We could build an underground bunker over a matter of years using the same technology and without launch costs. Give me one good reason why building a bunker (or multiple bunkers) would be more difficult than building a colony, using the same technology.

The Permian/Triassic extinction wiped out 97% of all the species on the planet at the time.

No, it did not. From wikipedia: up to 96% of all marine species[6][7] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species become extinct. Speaking as terrestrial vertebrate myself, a 30% chance is pretty good odds compared to a planet with NO LIFE EVER. Even in your worst case scenario, Earth is still infinitely more habitable than Mars or the Moon have ever been.

Re: OR -

[silentcoder]

No bunker would even slightly work.

Re: OR -

[WrongMonkey]

You're not even going to try to give a reason? If a self-sufficient bunker wouldn't work on earth, your colony on Mars doesn't stand a chance. QED.

Re: OR -

[silentcoder]

Fine, let's analyze your 'bunker'.

Okay -first lets consider the conditions we want it to survive. It needs to be proof against storms that make the worst typhoons we've ever seen look like sprightly breeze. It needs to be proof against volcanoes far beyond anything we've ever seen. Proof against earthquakes a hundred times as big as the highest point on the Richter scale. Actually just take conditions on Venus and make it proof against that. Venus was once as habitable as Earth by the way - so it's a good model for what a post ELE earth may look like. In case you were wondering- the technology to build this bunker doesn't exist - and it's not certain it's even possible to develop it. On Mars - you don't have to worry about any of those things.

Next point: survival - your bunker cannot rely on ANY outside resources, it needs to be an entirely self-sustaining environment. You don't know that there will BE drinkable water afterwards. In fact, you cannot even assume SUNLIGHT is available - the vast majority of ELE's involve decades or even centuries without the sun. We tried to build a self-sustaining environment in the 1990s - it was called Biosphere 2, it was a complete disaster. And that was EASY - because it was allowed to replace broken equipment from outside and it had sunlight. Now you have none, and any parts that break - if you can't manufacture a replacement INSIDE the bunker - you don't have it anymore. So you need a whole lot of manufacturing capacity, and a whole lot of raw materials kept spare, and you need to feed the people - that means growing crops. With no sunlight - so that means you need electric lighting, and you have no outside energy sources. Your only real options is to build it on the shoreline for tidal power (problem for making it Tsunami proof) or somewhere there's geothermal (the LAST place you want to be is anywhere geologically active enough to power it). You can't even do nuclear - you have no way to dispose of the waste, no source of new nuclear fuel - and you can't spare the water to cool it, in fact any system that relies on boiling water to generate power is right out - and you'll need a LOT of power, because you have no other options for heating it in there and trust me, it's going to get very, very cold. If your soil gets overplanted - you're screwed because you can't know the soil outside isn't toxic or radioactive.

Basically - you want to build something that is probably completely impossible.

Now of course, a colony will have some of the same challenges - but it does NOT have to be completely sealed off from the outside world, it does not have to function without even SUNLIGHT, it has access to external resources for raw materials and soil. It will be difficult, extremely so - nobody doubts that. But unlike your bunker - it's actually within the realm of conceivable possibility.

Re: OR -

[WrongMonkey]

Typhoons and earthquakes are a matter of picking a stable locaction. In fact, we can pick multiple redundant locations all over the world to cover all the possibilities. We can build a hundred bunkers for the fraction of the cost of one colony.

. It needs to be proof against volcanoes far beyond anything we've ever seen

Tell me again, what is the largest volcano in the solar system? https://www.universetoday.com/... Better make sure your colony can handle that.

your bunker cannot rely on ANY outside resources

Neither can your colony.

You don't know that there will BE drinkable water afterwards.

There is no drinkable water on Mars. Period. Full stop.

We tried to build a self-sustaining environment in the 1990s - it was called Biosphere 2, it was a complete disaster.

Which sounds like a non-starter for your colony.

that means growing crops. With no sunlight - so that means you need electric lighting, and you have no outside energy sources.

Solar intensity on Mars is about half of what is on Earth. A completely cloudy day on Earth gets more sunlight than Mars at noon.

You can't even do nuclear - you have no way to dispose of the waste, no source of new nuclear fuel

After an ELE, we're not particularly worried about environmental impact. So we can just toss the waste out a hatch.

you can't spare the water to cool it,

You don't need potable water to cool a reactor. And the water is reusable. How are you planning to cool a reactor on Mars again? You don't even have liquid water to start with.

it's going to get very, very cold.

Not as cold as Mars. Which is sub-antarctic temperatures every single day.

If your soil gets overplanted - you're screwed because you can't know the soil outside isn't toxic or radioactive.

I guess you're screwed on Mars. Because the soil on Mars already is already toxic. And you have to deal with radiation every day because there is no magnetosphere.

Basically - you want to build something that is probably completely impossible.

Basically, you want to build something that is probably completely impossible BUT ON MARS. Can't you see the idiocy? You have to do every thing the bunker does, but ON ANOTHER PLANET.

but it does NOT have to be completely sealed off from the outside world,

The colony has to be at MORE sealed off than a bunker. My vault dwellers can put on a parkas and breathing tanks to go outside. Your colonists need full spacesuits.

it does not have to function without even SUNLIGHT

You have less sunlight that Earth would have.

it has access to external resources for raw materials and soil

My vault dwellers can go out and collect far more resources than your colonies. High quality processed materials would be piled up. Literally cities full of scrap metal and spare parts. What have you got on Mars that is even comparable to that?

But unlike your bunker - it's actually within the realm of conceivable possibility.

Every single objection to a bunker applies to your colony. If we are betting on the survival of the human race, then on a dollar for dollar basis, which plan makes more sense? A single manned mission to Mars is estimated to cost a trillion dollars. That is not even close to the cost of full colonization. How many bunkers can we build with that much money?

Re: OR -

[silentcoder]

>Typhoons and earthquakes are a matter of picking a stable locaction.
In this scenario - there is no such thing, and even if there was - you can't know WHERE it would be. Hint: it won't be anywhere that's stable NOW. We're talking about events that can move CONTINENTS around, Hell there are events on the list that can CREATE new continents !

>Tell me again, what is the largest volcano in the solar system?
You don't need to build near that - on earth you can't AVOID it. A volcanic superplume could turn cover ANYWHERE in magma.

>There is no drinkable water on Mars. Period. Full stop.
There's plenty of evidence of water on Mars, it may not be drinkable but it can be MADE drinkable. You can't be sure there will be any water on earth in an ELE scenario - full stop. Or whats there could be irradiated and frozen solid. At best this one is a tie.

>Which sounds like a non-starter for your colony.
The colony doesn't HAVE to be self sustainable - it has to be MARS sustainable, that's a much easier target. Not easy - but easier.

>Neither can your colony.
I can still rely on ore and other local resources. You can't GET to the ones on earth.

>After an ELE, we're not particularly worried about environmental impact. So we can just toss the waste out a hatch.
You're assuming you can survive opening a hatch. Not an assumption that is safe, or even likely. Besides - I wasn't worried about environmental impact - I was worried about your bunker dwellers dying from radiation sickness.

>You don't need potable water to cool a reactor
In this scenario water is too scarce for ANY to be deemed non-potable. You have recycle every drop - and the best systems we have for that leaves nothing to spare for non-essentials. You sure can't go making the stuff radioactive.

>How are you planning to cool a reactor on Mars again?
On Mars - you can use solar power. As the man-made tools on Mars ALREADY DO. Sure they don't work as well as on earth - but they DO work. After an ELE they won't work on Earth.

>You have less sunlight that Earth would have.
No - in a nuclear winter scenario - you have maybe 5% of the sunlight you're used to - if that much. Last I checked 50% is more than 5%.

Oh -and I was the one who suggested we do the Moon over Mars - because it makes sense to start where it's a bit easier.

>My vault dwellers can go out and collect far more resources than your colonies
Can they do that on Venus ? No ? Then no.

>Not as cold as Mars. Which is sub-antarctic temperatures every single day.
No - colder than that - continuously for decades, perhaps centuries, at least one Mars it's not PERMANENTLY sub-zero.

>I guess you're screwed on Mars. Because the soil on Mars already is already toxic.
A Mars colony would need a way to extract and add to the water supply - in an ELE there are potentially ZERO options for this on earth, but it's one of the first things we'd figure out before attempting Mars, in fact we'd have automated systems already having done so for some time before we land humans. At best- another tie.

>And you have to deal with radiation every day because there is no magnetosphere.
We're already pretty good at this - we deal with it in space travel all the time.

>Every single objection to a bunker applies to your colony
Nope - quite a few are harder. But there's no risk of an earthbound asteroid scoring a direct hit on a colony. More critically - colonizing is a PROVEN way for mankind to increase it's resilience, we've been using it for a hundred thousand years. Bunkering down is a proven way to destroy societies -every one that's tried THAT is extinct.

> If we are betting on the survival of the human race, then on a dollar for dollar basis, which plan makes more sense?
If ever there was a question where money should not be a consideration - this is that question. The COST is not a factor you should care about. But even if you do - and even if Mars will cost more (ho

Re: OR -

[WrongMonkey]

In this scenario - there is no such thing, and even if there was - you can't know WHERE it would be.

. A volcanic superplume could turn cover ANYWHERE in magma.

Both of these objections are addressed by using multiple sites.

We're talking about events that can move CONTINENTS around, Hell there are events on the list that can CREATE new continents !

[citation needed] This is a gross misunderstanding on continental theory.

There's plenty of evidence of water on Mars

You can't drink evidence. Until you can actually quantify the usable amount of water on Mars, you must as assume that you'll have to bring it all with you.

At best this one is a tie.

No such thing as tie. Any equivalent problem will always be a thousand times more expensive to Mars due to transport costs. For every water purifier, you take to Mars, I can build a thousand on Earth. For every solar panel to you take, I can build a thousand. etc.

it has to be MARS sustainable

There is no such thing as Mars sustainable because Mars sustains no life.

I can still rely on ore and other local resources. You can't GET to the ones on earth.

There is no shortage of ore on Earth.

In this scenario water is too scarce for ANY to be deemed non-potable.

Surely a spacer like you understands that water used for cooling can be recollected and reused. In fact, its a good way to distill wastewater back into drinking water. Along with the acknowledgement that environmental disposal of waste isn't a priority, you are conceding that nuclear is a viable power source.

No - in a nuclear winter scenario - you have maybe 5% of the sunlight you're used to

Nuclear winter scenarios last for a few years. A decade at the most.Food can be stored for that long.

Oh -and I was the one who suggested we do the Moon over Mars - because it makes sense to start where it's a bit easier.

OK, so how you growing plants when its completely dark for a month at a time? Also your toxic soil and water problems are now far, far worse. Look up all the problems that the Apollo missions had with lunar dust.

Can they do that on Venus ? No ? Then no.

I'm ignoring your Venus scenario, because its ridiculously implausible. At a minimum, it would require that all the oceans boil off. I'm sticking to scenarios based on real scientific evidence.

No - colder than that - continuously for decades, perhaps centuries,

What's your scenario here?

at least one Mars it's not PERMANENTLY sub-zero.

The average temperature on Mars is minus 60 degrees C. At the equator, at noon in the summer, Mars sometimes gets up to 20C. Then it drops back to minus 70 C at night. You have to deal with this every single day. Now do the math on how many solar panels you need to keep your colony warm.

A Mars colony would need a way to extract and add to the water supply

That has nothing to do with the soil. Look up Mars perchlorates and tell me how your going to grow plants in that. Or grow plants in lunar soil in the dark.

We're already pretty good at this - we deal with it in space travel all the time.

No we don't. The Apollo astronauts were the only one who have left the Van Allen belts and they only spent a few days outside their protection. You seem to know very little about space travel.

But there's no risk of an earthbound asteroid scoring a direct hit on a colony.

Do you think M

Re:OR -

[Ihlosi]

Non-sequitur. Creating a colony on Mars also wouldn't protect versus gamma-ray burst.

Yes it would, since most parts of the colony need to be shielded from radiation (e.g. underground). And the Martian atmosphere is not necessary for the colony's survival, so a GRB messing up the atmospheric composition would not affect life in the colony much.

Re: OR -

[silentcoder]

Anything that's not INSIDE your bunker... doesn't exist.

Re: OR -

[silentcoder]

Of course Mars is not immune to asteroids - but what IS incredibly unlikely is that a planet killer wil hit BOTH planets at the SAME TIME.

Re: OR -

[silentcoder]

I am not using species backup as THE reason for colonization - it's just one of the MANY reasons. Sure it's the most important one, but they don't have to agree with me on that, they just have to find *A* reason they like.

Its interesting that the last three presidents have insisted we fund Martian exploration - the latest one wants to put a man there, I don't remember any of them giving a speech about the need to build asteroid-survival bunkers.

By the way - you don't know that Mars does NOT have life. From what we've been seeing, there is no such thing as an environment life cannot exist in except *maybe* the actual heart of teh sun. We've found life in the places on earth that are far WORSE than the typical conditions on Mars.

And yes, Venus is your ELE model - it's a scientifically verified example of a planet that was as habitable as earth and now is NOT habitable anymore. So if an ELE makes Earth no longer habitable - you have to base your planning on the worst known example of that happening, that would be Venus today.

And you are overestimating costs by assuming we have to launch everything. That's now how I would do it. I would launch a few robots to build everything on the other side out of local materials. A second launch will only happen AFTER verification that a resources is not available, and there is no viable substitute. And in this context - "resource" just means "atoms". It could take them a few years, hell it could take them decades to scrounge up enough to build a greenhouse they can plant seeds in... but what if it takes 50 years to get to the point where humans can go. So what ? You've still done it in two or three launches, during which your rocket tech has improved.

You say I cannot use past migrations as precedent - but you can't use ANYTHING in the past OR EVEN THE PRESENT as precedent- an ELE means conditions that are unknown, unknowable and unplannable. The only thing we KNOW can work against is is offworld colonies - that can work for everything short of a solar-system-wide gamma-ray-burster. In the latter scenario - sorry but we're fucked, nothing can protect us against that - including any bunker.

Re: OR -

[Ihlosi]

It could take them a few years, hell it could take them decades to scrounge up enough to build a greenhouse they can plant seeds in... but what if it takes 50 years to get to the point where humans can go. So what ?

Problem is that the robots will also suffer from wear and breakdowns. So there is a minimum power generation, resource extraction and manufacturing rate that the robot colony starter needs to achieve - enough to make up for maintenance, repair, replacements. If this does not happen, the colony seed will break down.

It boils down to an exponential function. colony_viability=(stuff_generation_rate/stuff_breakdown_rate)^time. If the colony generates more stuff than breaks down, it will thrive and expand; if it doesn't, it will shrink and eventuall vanish.

Re:OR -

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"With 300 tonnes of useless dead mass"

Re:OR -

[david_thornley]

I'm looking at human time here. I'm a human. Moreover, I'm a technophile. If a ELE asteroid had been headed for Earth when I was born, we wouldn't know about it until it was almost upon us and we couldn't do anything about it. Today, we'd be tracking it for a long time before it hit, and we've got ideas on how to deflect one. Give us another century, and we're likely to have the capability. Therefore, whether we'll get smacked in the next ten million years appears irrelevant, while whether we'll get smacked over the next century is relevant, and the probability of that happening is very, very low.

We don't adapt by evolution like other species. If we find an ecological niche we like, we make tools for it. If things change, we make different tools. We live in a very wide range of environments without sacrificing our general fitness.

Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[m.alessandrini]

I think that, yes, in a few decades it could be theoretically possible, given the proper money, to send some people there and back. But then it's so far, so expensive and so uninhabitable, that I'm afraid it will remain a proof of concept, and Mars will be forgot for the following century, much like going to the moon.

Maybe it would be better to start sending material and structures, and only then sending actual people. It's sad in my mind, but maybe we should give up seeing men on Mars in our lifetime, if we want it to be something more than a passing experiment.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as the world can't even make a simple semi-permanent habitation on the moon, something that's only four days away with current rocket tech, there's zero chance at putting people on Mars. Space propulsion engineering has barely moved on from the 1960s, and that was based on German 1940s long distant bombs.

The whole "Mars" wankfest is a job creation scheme to empty the tax payers' pockets into a select few mega-corp pockets with a few crappy factories popping up to justify it.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[Maritz]

The whole "Mars" wankfest

Mars wankfest? Is that a thing in your head or something?

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[Applehu Akbar]

"Maybe it would be better to start sending material and structures, and only then sending actual people."

The most powerful proof-of-concept would be landing and operating a device to make fuel from Martian atmosphere, as Zubrin proposes.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the year 3000. Across the red, rocky soil of Mars, a low humming is heard in the distance.

Is it the wild buggalo?

No, it is the sound of a million 'o' faces.

Mars Wankfest has begun.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[ganjadude]

next on HBO

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Lots of things are actually easier on Mars. The atmosphere removes a large portion of propulsive braking; the Moon requires 100% propulsive braking. On Mars, return fuel is easily available in substantial regions of the planet; on the Moon, return fuel is available on the south pole, and only if your fuel is hydrolox. Gravity is more bearable, too.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[slashdot_commentator]

Seeing as the world can't even make a simple semi-permanent habitation on the moon, something that's only four days away with current rocket tech, there's zero chance at putting people on Mars.

The world can make a semi-permanent habitation on the Moon! They did it in 1969. What you are not grasping is, "Why pay billions of dollars to sustain a semi-permanent habitation on the Moon??? What are you accomplishing???"

There are metric tons of people on earth willing to risk a journey to Mars. All that needs to be done is demonstrate that a person could survive a 6-9 month journey in space, and be able to harvest materials from Mars to go back (and survive on Mars indefinitely). The only thing you do by redemonstrating this experiment first on the Moon is waste hundreds of billions of dollars. And that may take away enough available money to delay a Mars trip by a century!

Frankly, when people can't grasp that the ISS was a huge waste of money and time, they now want to cling to the Moon.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[slashdot_commentator]

We know the ISS costs billions to maintain every year. Its costs money to put people up there (less to bring them back), pay those "astronauts" salaries, and the infrastructure and salaries of ground control to effect this transit. What are we gaining from the ISS now that pays back for this infrastructural cost? (Which doesn't help one iota in sending a man to Mars, or even the Moon).

It makes way more sense to get other countries to subsidize the maintenance cost of the ISS, who will inevitably offload the work to the private sector, who may be able to make a profit on space tourism. It should be obvious that there isn't enough scientific and engineering research that can be conducted on the ISS to justify the ISS's yearly support costs.

If NASA removed itself and budget from the ISS, the billions of dollars used to maintain the ISS program now can be used on a Mars mission!

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[Moof123]

Propulsive braking for the moon? Barely, as the way we've gotten there so far involves mostly getting close and having moon's gravity pull the craft into orbit. Most of the energy used is to get out of earth's gravity well. Returning to earth requires dissipating all the regained kinetic energy as you fall back into earth's gravity well.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[Creepy]

Even NASA thinks 6-9 months is too long and is investigating fission and fusion drives that can reduce the travel time of a larger vessel to 1-3 months. Another option is [photonic propulsion] from earth, which could propel a 100kg (220lb) vessel that carries no propulsion itself to Mars in as little as 3 days. Obviously a 100kg vessel is not manned, but could be used for probes or sending supplies.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[Creepy]

Meant to include a link and the brackets were supposed to remind me - photonic propulsion for the 100kg 3 day trip.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[hey!]

Sure. I've been saying this for years: given the fabulous cost/hour of any human labor you send to Mars, why have humans do anything that could have been done by robots prior to their arrival?

It's basic economics: accomplish things the cheapest way possible. Even assuming that there are things that could only effectively be done by humans, it still makes no sense to have humans do anything other than those things.

Following this rule could be the difference between a symbolic mission where an astronaut plants the flag and comes right back, and an extended mission where the astronauts spend a couple of years there before returning.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[DerekLyons]

Lots of things are actually easier on Mars. The atmosphere removes a large portion of propulsive braking; the Moon requires 100% propulsive braking.

No, landing is actually harder on Mars - the gravity is too high to use propulsive braking, and the atmosphere too thin for aerodynamic braking. Which means mixed mode braking, and freakin' enormous parachutes. Not long ago it was estimated that a LEM sized lander would need total parachute area larger than a baseball infield - and they'd have to go from packed to fully inflated in under .1 seconds. (Meaning that at one point in deployment, the edges of the chute and the shroudlines would be moving faster than the local speed of sound.) It's much harder to land on Mars - which is why the various rovers have had to use such Rube Goldberg methods.
 

On Mars, return fuel is easily available in substantial regions of the planet

In theory. In practice... well, we don't know. None of the hardware required has moved off the prototype bench and none has been tested with anything resembling the toxic materials that make up Martian soil.

Re: Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do an assload of research on ISS that has a lot of value for deeper space missions. Everything from plant growth to the effects of zero(low) g on the microbiome.

We dont know shit about surviving in space. Were just now starting to really answer a lot of the important questions.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Which means mixed mode braking, and freakin' enormous parachutes.

Not really. There's no reason why you couldn't do powered descent from terminal velocity. It's still going to be vastly lower than the escape velocity, which is what you'd be braking from it there were no atmosphere at all.

Not long ago it was estimated that a LEM sized lander would need total parachute area larger than a baseball infield - and they'd have to go from packed to fully inflated in under .1 seconds.

Uh? And why would it need that?

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Propulsive braking for the moon? Barely, as the way we've gotten there so far involves mostly getting close and having moon's gravity pull the craft into orbit.

...and how do you get into the orbit? And from the orbit to the surface? Using magic?

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[drinkypoo]

What you are not grasping is, "Why pay billions of dollars to sustain a semi-permanent habitation on the Moon??? What are you accomplishing???"

I think the best argument is that it's nearby. You don't have to send everything in advance, so you don't have to send things they might not need. If they have an emergency and need supplies or personnel, you can send them. None of that is possible with a Mars mission.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[slashdot_commentator]

Even NASA thinks 6-9 months is too long

Only some at NASA. Robert Zubrin thought otherwise.

and is investigating fission and fusion drives

No they aren't. Its nothing more than the speculation stage.

Photonic propulsion can't deliver the momentum energy necessary for humans (or even a robot probe) to Mars in 3 days. You don't grasp how it works. You open up your solar sail, and sit there. The photons of light transfers its momentum to the mass that's your spacecraft. It takes vast amounts of distance & waiting to get the spacecraft moving. The distance from the Earth to the Mars is considered too short to make the technology useful. It could be useful for getting past Jupiter. But electromagnetic propulsion is way more practical, because electrons delivers a lot more propulsive energy than photons. It still may not be useful for a Mars level distance.

But fret not. Instead of chemical rockets, propulsion could be implemented by propelling Xenon or some other elemental ion by electrical charge. This is called an ion engine, and there is already a technologically reachable design called VASMR. This could probably cut the travel time to Mars to a month.

Re: Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[slashdot_commentator]

We dont know shit about surviving in space. Were just now starting to really answer a lot of the important questions.

Well, if that's the case, you shouldn't have any problem securing future funding for the ISS to answer those questions, huh?

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[slashdot_commentator]

If they have an emergency and need supplies or personnel, you can send them. None of that is possible with a Mars mission.

Its a myth. NASA would never budget the money for a backup rescue launch to be ready to go if there was a problem at the Moonbase that could be survived by four days. They never have.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[DerekLyons]

There's no reason why you couldn't do powered descent from terminal velocity.

Yes there is - Mars's gravity is too high for a totally propulsive descent to be possible.
 

Not long ago it was estimated that a LEM sized lander would need total parachute area larger than a baseball infield - and they'd have to go from packed to fully inflated in under .1 seconds.

Uh? And why would it need that?

Because a LEM sized lander would run out of fuel long before it reached the surface if it didn't use parachutes to brake. (Though actually it doesn't depend on the size of the lander, the result is always the same - Martian gravity is too high for a propulsive descent.)

Did you even read what I wrote?

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[Ihlosi]

Yes there is - Mars's gravity is too high for a totally propulsive descent to be possible.

Yes, Mars kind of sucks in this regard. Gravity is too high for powered descent; atmosphere is too thin for effective parachuting.

I wonder if atmospheric entry with an ultrasonic flight/wing-borne lift phase would be an option.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[DerekLyons]

I wonder if atmospheric entry with an ultrasonic flight/wing-borne lift phase would be an option.

My guess would be "no"... I don't think that without unobtanium a wing can be built that has enough area, is strong enough, and is light enough.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Yes there is - Mars's gravity is too high for a totally propulsive descent to be possible.

Fortunately for us, it's NOT "totally propulsive" if terminal velocity (<1 km/s) is much lower than the entry velocity (>5 km/s).

Because a LEM sized lander would run out of fuel long before it reached the surface if it didn't use parachutes to brake.

No, not really. Otherwise you'd have to call the media right now about how Red Dragon is fatally flawed.

Did you even read what I wrote?

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? I'm still waiting for you to read what *I* wrote several comments above.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You don't need wings. Even a capsule-style design brings you like ~80% to zero velocity, no matter how much desperately he keeps trying to ignore what I wrote.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And in order to fix this ridiculously modded up comment...

The fiction:

and the atmosphere too thin for aerodynamic braking. Which means mixed mode braking, and freakin' enormous parachutes. Not long ago it was estimated that a LEM sized lander would need total parachute area larger than a baseball infield

The reality:

The Dragon-variant spacecraft would perform a direct entry into the atmosphere at 6.0 km/s and utilize entry guidance during both hypersonic and supersonic phases of flight. Unlike MSL, the spacecraft would not deploy a parachute decelerator but rather would transition directly from atmospheric flight to powered descent at Mach 2.24.

Re:Reach Mars or colonize Mars?

[DerekLyons]

Because a LEM sized lander would run out of fuel long before it reached the surface if it didn't use parachutes to brake.

No, not really. Otherwise you'd have to call the media right now about how Red Dragon is fatally flawed.

Red Dragon's current baseline is to use parachutes along with propulsive braking.

Private only? Really?

[getuid()]

Call me a communist if you need to, but I'd rather not see something as important in humanity's future as space exploration in *exckusively* private hands.

Just look at how well privately owned essential infrastructure works out for the masses all over the world so far, e.g. with internet, mobile phones, water, public transportation, health...

Some perspective: 3.5 billion is less than the military spending of the USA in one single day. Less than even the *increase* in budget from 2016 to 2017, by more than an order of magnitude.

Re:Private only? Really?

[slew]

Call me a communist if you need to, but I'd rather not see something as important in humanity's future as space exploration in *exckusively* private hands.

Just look at how well privately owned essential infrastructure works out for the masses all over the world so far, e.g. with internet, mobile phones, water, public transportation, health...

Some perspective: 3.5 billion is less than the military spending of the USA in one single day. Less than even the *increase* in budget from 2016 to 2017, by more than an order of magnitude.

Okay, I'll call you a communist. Historically, it's been the case with nearly all "public" infrastructure outside of communist countries that private companies, plan it, design it, organize short-term financing for it, build it, maintain it. Of course with public infrastructure, the government is there to consult, kibitz, cajole, zone, and regulate it, and inevitably foots most of the bill, but of course owns the artifact at the end of the day.

Often as an incentive to reduce public outlays, concessions are offered to the public companies to reduce the actual net present cost to the public for the infrastructure. E.g., build a dock or railroad and you get this adjacent land for development, design a spacecraft for us and you can take the technology to build rockets for private launches, etc, etc...

Eventually, these *concessions* to private companies can form the seed for whole new private enterprise that accelerate the economy of a country. Call me an evil capitalist, but that's the way it works... the even the socialist (pseudo-communist USSR and China) world...

How does this work in your theoretical communist world?

Re:Private only? Really?

[Rei]

The whole "public vs. private", socialism vs. capitalism debate is a big red herring when it comes to launch services. Because:

1) Most spacecraft are already built by private companies, either in part or nearly in whole; and
2) New private startups are offering far lower prices than the old traditional providers.

It's idealism vs. pragmatism. I don't care what ideology you have; new companies like SpaceX are vastly undercutting NASA and its traditional private partners (Boeing, Lockheed, etc).

Re:Private only? Really?

[tehcyder]

It's idealism vs. pragmatism. I don't care what ideology you have; new companies like SpaceX are vastly undercutting NASA and its traditional private partners (Boeing, Lockheed, etc).

If someone wants to rely purely on free market capitalism to fund a manned trip to Mars, good luck to them. Presumably the fact that they have costed it and realise it would just lose them money is the main stumbling block?

Re:Private only? Really?

[Solandri]

It's idealism vs. pragmatism. I don't care what ideology you have; new companies like SpaceX are vastly undercutting NASA and its traditional private partners (Boeing, Lockheed, etc).

A public space program gets funded because people think it's a good idea.

A private space program gets funded because it actually is a good idea (return exceeds investment).

The problem with manned space exploration is that it's generally a bad idea. And I don't say that from a public vs private space exploration standpoint. Just ask anyone in NASA about the manned vs. unmanned exploration budget division. We get much better bang for the buck with unmanned exploration. Just look at a typical list of NASA's greatest missions. The only manned mission on the list is the moon landing.

Re:Private only? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dutch East Indian Company...it works B!tches

Re:Private only? Really?

[gtall]

3.5 billion is even more less than the non-discretionary spending that keeps Grandma from coming to live with you. Frankly, I think you should let her move in.

Re:Private only? Really?

[Applehu Akbar]

"Just look at how well privately owned essential infrastructure works out for the masses all over the world so far"

Because Mars will not have "masses" to be exploited by any business monopoly until colonization is already underway, by which time the inhabitants will be developing their own legal system per the UN Space Treaty. NASA performs best when it deploys scientific missions, not when it runs high-risk manned missions. Let the private sector take the manned missions and the whole 'priorities' argument against exploration goes away.

Re:Private only? Really?

[angel'o'sphere]

Historically, it's been the case with nearly all "public" infrastructure outside of communist countries that private companies, plan it, design it, organize short-term financing for it, build it, maintain it.
That is completely wrong.

Historically nearly all infrastructure in Europe was state owned (Railways, Telephon, Roads, Water distribution, Gas distribution, Electric Grids, Post/Mail, Power Plants etc.)

Since the mid 1990s most European countries started to privatize parts of the infrastructure. Some countries with success, some failed misserable in certain areas, e.g. the British railway system.

E.g. the French Power Company is still 85% state owned.

Re:Private only? Really?

[dbIII]

and inevitably foots most of the bill

That's kind of the core issue on whether a project goes ahead or not mister market forces.
An invisible hand is not getting us to Mars just as it didn't get Columbus to America.

Re:Private only? Really?

[will_die]

Actually it is not 3.5 will fund the defense for a little over 2 days, using current funding levels and a year of 365 days. Even that number would be a little off because DoD pays some of the costs of the space station.

Re: Private only? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

BBN (a private company) developed the ARPAnet/Milnet under contract with the DARPA (the govt). They (and other contractors) then sold the same routers to private networks that then formed because commercial traffic wasn't allowed on the proto-internet.

Eventually peering points for private commercial network backbones using compatible but more modern private tech sprung up to handle commercial traffic banned by the proto internet (eg MAEs). Shortly afterwards commercial peering points and backbone traffic exceeded govt traffic and the private internet we have today was born.

Don't nerds know internet history?

Re:Private only? Really?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Seriously? :-p Atlas V and Delta IV were never man-rated. They were Titan III/IV replacements for the military, after all. Atlas is being modified so as to fix that.

Re:Private only? Really?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And when you work your people 60-80 hours per week and only pay them for 40.

SpaceX didn't invent your broken American salary system, though.

SpaceX derives some 90% or more of its revenue from NASA contracts

This claim is not well supported by their launch manifest which does NOT feature 90% of NASA flights. Even accounting from Dragon costs does not seem to fix this gap.

Re:Private only? Really?

[SCVonSteroids]

Is this a big enough herring for you?
http://www.hammeringtruth.com/...

Re:Private only? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Show us where the spices and slaves are on Mars. Reality is a bitch.

Re:Private only? Really?

[Dutch Gun]

The problem with manned space exploration is that it's generally a bad idea.

That depends entirely on what your actual goals of space exploration are. I support both manned and unmanned space exploration, but for two entirely different reasons. Robotic missions are best for long range exploration and scientific discovery. Naturally, you can cut many, many expenses when you don't have to support a human life, or have to worry about a return voyage.

I want humans going into space for perhaps less logical reasons: an innate desire to explore and settle the universe. One could also argue, from a purely logical point of view, that there's no immediate benefit to gathering pure scientific knowledge about other solar bodies if it's not going to have an immediate practical impact on life at home. But then, we humans aren't purely logical creatures.

As such, I think it's probably best to consider ALL space exploration as a very, very long-term investment in our species, one in which we're unlikely to see a real payoff even in our lifetimes. In the very long term, humans are going to be better off if we can leave the planet and establish permanent, independent colonies on other worlds or in space. It's the exact same argument as learning more about the larger universe and how it works. I simply feel it's worth doing for its own sake.

Re:Private only? Really?

[argStyopa]

" 3.5 billion is less than the military spending of the USA in one single day."

The number is high, but no need to be hyperbolic or exaggerate.
US Defense spending this year is $600bn.

That's $1.63 bn/day, not really even close to 3.5.

Apparently communists are bad at math, unless they're murdering genocidal numbers of people...then they can count into the millions quite well.

I will point out that PRIVATELY developed systems have basically made cell phones a thing.
PRIVATE development really took the internet from a narrow-use military/educational thing to the ubiquitous commodity it is today.
Yeah, I'm not sure those are the best examples of your case.

Re:Private only? Really?

[slashdot_commentator]

Call me a communist if you need to, but I'd rather not see something as important in humanity's future as space exploration in *exckusively* private hands.

You are absolutely right. Right now, spece exploration is exclusively in private hands. That is because public sector funds are not being spent on manned space exploration. Look at all that (zero) progress.

On the other hand, the private sector is obviously more efficient in developing ways of making a profit than government. So, why not let the government offload non-useful enterprises like the ISS to the private sector? Let the private sector develop commercial infrastructure to sustain the ISS (for space tourism). Once the private sector has built its infrastructure, then they will be more amenable to improve the economic utility of its current infrastructure by taking on more profitable ventures.

Now (US) government can take away the billions of dollars spent every year sending people to the ISS (and maintaining the ISS) on actual space exploration, like a Mars mission.

Re:Private only? Really?

[slew]

Sigh... I think people need to study history more.

Let's just take German railway history as an example. Please google the Deil Valley Railway Company (one of the first joint stock companies in Germany). It wasn't until later that railway operation like these were taken over by the Bergisch-Markisch Railway Company and only later these private enterprises were nationalized by the the Prussian State Railway.

Nearly all the other public works in Europe have a similar history, sure they belong to the government, but that's either because they contracted a company to do it, or bought out (or nationalized) that company later.

Re:Private only? Really?

[slew]

And lest we leave out the "post office", please read this wiki entry on the Thurn-und-Taxis Post. This was a private company. Nearly all german states still continued to contract with this company to handle postal service after they were finally given the right to create their own postal service. Eventually this was nationalized by Prussia as well.

In contrast, in the USA, the postal service has been a government monopoly from the get-go.

I think people's general observation about the government owning everything in Europe somehow also assumes it started that way, which is far from the historical record. In fact, historically, it has often been the case that either private enterprises make the first move and government later nationalizing these endeavors OR "royal" governments handing a lucrative contract to some "nobelmen" who enrich themselves by spending public monopoly money in the name of the state to build their own private dynasty (eventually morphing into companies and getting nationalized as post-royal European governments gained political power and money).

By the way, the latter is happen in contemporary china ("nobelmen" in communist china were military and politburo folks) and is making some people really really rich (like their european dynasty prototypes)...

But the government "technically" owns it all either way...

Re:Private only? Really?

[djinn6]

Human colonization of space is meaningful because it's redundancy. If earth ever gets wiped out somehow, we have backups.

Re:Private only? Really?

[Dorianny]

The whole "public vs. private", socialism vs. capitalism debate is a big red herring when it comes to launch services. Because:

1) Most spacecraft are already built by private companies, either in part or nearly in whole; and 2) New private startups are offering far lower prices than the old traditional providers.

It's idealism vs. pragmatism. I don't care what ideology you have; new companies like SpaceX are vastly undercutting NASA and its traditional private partners (Boeing, Lockheed, etc).

Even though they are all building rockets doesn't mean they are trying to achieve the same thing. NK builds their rockets on a shoestring budget and sometimes they even manage to complete a flight path, quite a successful program for their purposes. NASA, the Air Force, and the various Spy agencies asked Being and Lockheed to build rockets that are reliable as possible and that's what they got, at eye watering costs of course. SpaceX and the new breed see a whole new type of a business plan, one where they are launching large numbers of mass produced satellites a month, if one doesn't make it than it is not so important. Of course NASA would be insane to take even a .01% higher chance of failure with the one of a kind, decades in development James Webb Space Telescope.

Re:Private only? Really?

[david_thornley]

As far as infrastructure goes, my roads, water, and sewer service are provided by governments. My electrical and natural gas and telephone connections are to regulated monopolies (and my internet connection goes to the phone company). My garbage removal is private countries under contract to the city. Public transportation is mostly government-supported around here, because it loses money in operation while providing benefit to the general public. The US health care system is a tremendously expensive pile of stuff ranging from crap to diamonds. Other countries have different solutions, including some level of government control, and all other countries pay a lot less than we do and many have significantly better results.

I don't live in a communist country, but government control of a lot of infrastructure does just peachy, thank you.

Re:Private only? Really?

[angel'o'sphere]

Obviously we are talking about times when "socialism" was a word to recon with.

Why you bring up "private companies" especially companies run by nobility before even a democratic and socialist regime exists is beyond me.

Re: Private only? Really?

[Miamicanes]

Technically, CDMA mobile phone service was developed in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. See the 'history' section at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Afaik, it's one of the few examples of something invented in the former USSR that actually went on to become a worldwide consumer technology a few decades later (3G-GSM *is* wideband CDMA). If Leonid Kupriyanovich (its primary inventor) had been American, he would have probably died as a Silicon Valley multi-billionaire and had his name mentioned in the same sentence as Alexander Graham Bell in modern history books. He designed a working pocket-sized cell phone in the SIXTIES.

Give the money to Elon

[wisebabo]

His Interplanetary (Mars) Colonial Transport is so much more economical than the other proposed alternatives ($500,000 for a first ticket dropping to 140K later) that even if he's off by an order of magnitude it'll still be (much) cheaper.

Will he be able to pull it off? Frankly I have no idea but if you had asked me 10 years ago if he could get a 10 story booster to fly back to its launch pad and land, or build an electric car company worth more than GM or become one of the biggest solar providers in the U.S. I wouldn't have stopped laughing.

Give him a chance, it's almost assuredly better than you or I or certainly those idiots in Washington (maybe not the scientists but certainly their politician masters) could do

Re:Give the money to Elon

[Rei]

Every time you try something radical it's a toss of the dice. Musk's successes don't mean that everything he does will be successful. I generally am in agreement with the logic processes that lead him to each approach he wants to try to revolutionize new industries (it's generally just looking at them as a ruthless optimization problem, requiring as few new technologies as possible - for example, with the Boring Company: tunnel costs are roughly linearly proportional to boring cross section, while diameter is constrained by number of lanes, space per lane (which is much higher than the width of a car), shoulder/pulloff space, etc. So have cars ride on automated sleds to reduce space per lane, move them very fast to increase throughput and thus reduce the number of lanes (while simultaneously cutting travel times), cut the tunnel width in half, and you're cutting the boring cost by 75%, at the cost of having to engineer and build sleds; combine that with simultaneous casing rather than bore/stop/case, borehead improvements, etc, and push it down further if you can). But there's always a gamble with everything he does, and there can always be failure. Past success is no guarantee of future success.

ITS has an unusually large gamble involved, even by the standards of Musk's companies. Just to pick issue one of many: it's cryogenic composite tanks. Composites and cryogenics don't play well together; there have been attempts in the past, and they were failures. Musk is wanting to take us from "zero launch vehicles of any size using composite cryogenic tanks" to "by far the largest launch vehicle ever built, fully reusable up to a thousand times (for the booster), out of composites". That's a huge jump. Now, to be fair to them, there has been a lot of low level research in the past several decades, and attempts to improve the technology seem to have been going well. And it's also understandable that they'd want to move away from aluminum to composites - the strength to weight ratios are far higher, and strength to weight is everything when it comes to high payload fraction rockets. But it's a risky endeavour.

To get costs down as far as they want requires revolutionizing everything, from the pad to range services to telemetry to thermal protection to the state of the art on reentry design and so on down the line. They're also working on insanely high pressure, full flow staged combustion engines with a rarely used propellant mix, used up to a thousand times each with low maintenance (although their initial signs on that front are promising - your biggest concerns are erosion, and they're reporting that with the new alloys they're using erosion appears to be minimal). The scale of the challenge they're taking on with this one is much bigger than that they took on when founding SpaceX, or Solar City, or Tesla - and I'd argue bigger than Hyperloop and the Boring Company as well (although not as extreme as what they're taking on with Neuralink). Expect long timescales. Expect glorious, pad-destroying failures. Expect initial prices much higher than their ultimate goal, and long periods of time to get them down. And to fund it, their satellite venture is going to have to play out. Which it probably will (improving communications and satellite technology has thrown this opportunity in their laps - Blue Origin is trying for a piece of the potentially massive market as well), but it's another case of breaking-new-ground which throws another risk into the process.

But kudos to them for trying. With everything, really.

Re:Give the money to Elon

[Applehu Akbar]

And NASA's best contribution to such an effort would be to keep plugging away at the science, answering questions like 'What is the exact composition of the soil in a variety of locations?' If Elon is going to make bricks or plant anything, he needs to know this.

Re:Give the money to Elon

[Gavagai80]

Sure, one of these days he's going to use the notoriety gained from SpaceX, Tesla, etc to go found an online payments company where he'll make his real money.

Re:Give the money to Elon

[Dutch Gun]

Shooting rockets into space is "cheap advertising"? Damn. Someone should let McDonalds know about this so they can get to work building some McRockets. Surely cheaper than just buying advertising space, right?

Re:Give the money to Elon

[chispito]

His Interplanetary (Mars) Colonial Transport is so much more economical than the other proposed alternatives...

Making ITS government funded is the surest path to failure.

Government funding comes with strings. Strings that will slow down, change, and ultimately strangle ITS to death.

Re:Give the money to Elon

[k6mfw]

His Interplanetary (Mars) Colonial Transport is so much more economical than the other proposed alternatives

maybe. The real question is what will people do when they are there? I believe it was Buzz that asked Elon that question, Elon replied something "I'll have to think of that." In summary, Musk is a transportation guy not a settlement guy.

if you had asked me 10 years ago if he could get a 10 story booster to fly back to its launch pad and land...

Yes, great accomplishments. Not sure of cost savings of flyback boosters, probably biggest accomplishments is the option and experience (I think some time in the future a flyback booster will have other markets. Analogy is the Avrocar was a flop but it paved the way for hovercraft). Going to Mars is a much greater order of magnitude. First show me routine trips to the Moon (it is only three days away where Mars is always 20 years away). Right now it is still tough to get to LEO (and everyone does it at govt expense).

Re:Give the money to Elon

[Areyoukiddingme]

ITS has an unusually large gamble involved, even by the standards of Musk's companies. Just to pick issue one of many: it's cryogenic composite tanks. Composites and cryogenics don't play well together; there have been attempts in the past, and they were failures. Musk is wanting to take us from "zero launch vehicles of any size using composite cryogenic tanks" to "by far the largest launch vehicle ever built, fully reusable up to a thousand times (for the booster), out of composites". That's a huge jump. ...

They're also working on insanely high pressure, full flow staged combustion engines with a rarely used propellant mix, used up to a thousand times each with low maintenance...

Ordinarily I'd agree with you. If we were talking about the usual suspects (NASA/Boeing/LockMart), they'd have a pile of paper at this stage and not much else.

But SpaceX has (had) a giant carbon fiber tank which they successfully burst tested to 2/3rds the design pressure back in November, then blew up testing with liquid nitrogen on February 17th 2017. (Judging by the pictures, it failed at the equatorial seam.)

They've built and tested a 1/3rd scale Raptor engine (which I presume you already knew, but other readers might not). It's the first full flow methane fueled rocket engine ever to be test fired, and only the second full flow design in history. (The first was Russia's RD-270, tested back in 1967.)

Having done those things is impressive enough, but the absurdly fantastic part is how rapidly they've done it. They were in Mississippi at the Stennis Space Center in late 2013 to refurbish and modify the E2 test stand to handle methane. Slashdot covered that. They were done with that process April 21st, 2014. Slashdot didn't notice that part. They used that test stand to validate their design and conducted the scale model test firing on September 26th, 2016, just 2 years, 5 months, and 5 days later. And it worked. They were so sure it would work, they didn't even bother with the customary 'burp' test to be sure it would ignite properly. That's a ridiculously rapid development process for any rocket motor, let alone for a design that's been done only once before in history and never for the fuel they selected. For comparison, development of the F-1 used on the Saturn V started in 1955 for the Air Force and it wasn't until 1965 that it underwent a successful test firing without destroying itself, after three years of self-destructive test firings.

SpaceX have definitely set themselves some very hard tasks, but their demonstrated ability to actually get to the test article stage, and from there to the production stage, and to do so quickly, is unmatched in modern times.

Re:Give the money to Elon

[cheesybagel]

But SpaceX has (had) a giant carbon fiber tank which they successfully burst tested to 2/3rds the design pressure back in November, then blew up testing with liquid nitrogen on February 17th 2017. (Judging by the pictures, it failed at the equatorial seam.)

I do not call that a success. I call that a failure. I mean it doesn't even meet the design pressure. I hope SpaceX has a separate team working on Al-Li tanks so they can have a backup plan. I also hope they have a launcher design with the Raptor that is slower in scale than the gargantuan ITS design. It looks a couple steps too far. Still such tanks aren't that far beyond the state of the art. LOX/LCH4 can both be stored at more or less the same temperature. There is plenty of experience of successful design of spherical or cylindrical composite LOX tanks. It's LH2 composite tanks which are the real bugbear.

They've built and tested a 1/3rd scale Raptor engine (which I presume you already knew, but other readers might not). It's the first full flow methane fueled rocket engine ever to be test fired, and only the second full flow design in history. (The first was Russia's RD-270, tested back in 1967.)

IIRC they had DoD funding for a Raptor second stage for the Falcon 9 Heavy so this could be for that.

Having done those things is impressive enough, but the absurdly fantastic part is how rapidly they've done it. They were in Mississippi at the Stennis Space Center in late 2013 to refurbish and modify the E2 test stand to handle methane. Slashdot covered that. They were done with that process April 21st, 2014. Slashdot didn't notice that part. They used that test stand to validate their design and conducted the scale model test firing on September 26th, 2016, just 2 years, 5 months, and 5 days later. And it worked. They were so sure it would work, they didn't even bother with the customary 'burp' test to be sure it would ignite properly. That's a ridiculously rapid development process for any rocket motor, let alone for a design that's been done only once before in history and never for the fuel they selected. For comparison, development of the F-1 used on the Saturn V started in 1955 for the Air Force and it wasn't until 1965 that it underwent a successful test firing without destroying itself, after three years of self-destructive test firings.

I agree that it is impressive. I think a lot of people are not aware of the SpaceX software tools team. They have designed their own combustion simulation tools in-house. There are presentations from their team at GTC online. That is how they knew their engine design was going to work before they even manufactured anything. They simulated it in software with a cluster of GPUs. Compare that to the F-1 engine development where they had issues with combustion instability and had to solve them by basically testing the combustion chambers for resonance with small explosions, i.e. in practice they had to manufacture a lot of hardware prototypes in a trial and error fashion until they got a design that worked. That was slow and really expensive. Still it was an achievement. The Russians never managed to solve combustion instability in large chambers even in the late 1970s. That is why the RD-170 for the Energia was a 4 chamber engine design. Glushko himself for the RD-270 used toxic hypergolic propellant (as he called it 'burning fuel') in an attempt to minimize the combustion instability issues but it was mostly a failure. That's why the RD-270 never went anywhere. Well that and the before mentioned extreme toxicity issues. Especially after the Nedelin disaster happened, the Soviet Defense Ministry (i.e. Ustinov) would have nothing to do with it.

Re:Give the money to Elon

[cheesybagel]

Link:
"SpaceX Merlin (& Raptor ) Engine R&D, GPU-Powered"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Give the money to Elon

[Areyoukiddingme]

But SpaceX has (had) a giant carbon fiber tank which they successfully burst tested to 2/3rds the design pressure back in November, then blew up testing with liquid nitrogen on February 17th 2017.

I do not call that a success. I call that a failure. I mean it doesn't even meet the design pressure.

Judging by your placement of the bold face, I think you misinterpreted my comment. The tank did not fail during the November burst test. I guess the name is deceptive. It was a pressure test, not a burst test. It survived that test just fine. It didn't burst until it was tested with liquid nitrogen, and we don't know what pressure they used. They aren't talking much about either of those tests publicly. We only know about them because of nosy people with cameras and a lone tweet about 2/3rds the design pressure.

Regardless, I brought up that tank testing as an example of how hands on SpaceX is and how rapidly they are moving, especially compared to prior efforts. Lockheed Martin started work on the X-33 in 1994 and had the usual whopping government funding until 2001 ($992 million all told), when NASA was finally forced to pull the plug. The project failed because it was attempting to build a composite tank for liquid hydrogen. They never succeeded at scale. Northrup Grumman actually managed to make a composite tank that could survive multiple loading cycles, demonstrated in 2004, but it was also only 6 feet in diameter and 15 feet long. Far too small to be useful for an orbital class rocket. SpaceX, meanwhile, builds that gigantic prototype, and Elon Musk sounds vaguely disappointed when he comments in interviews that it's slightly smaller than the diameter they finally settled on for ITS. They're a whole different beast.

How about

[fabriciom]

You stop funding the NSA, CIA and reduce the military. Keep ISS, start working on mars and get affordable healthcare like the rest of the civilised world.

Re:How about

[gtall]

Yeah, because the Russians, the Chinese and Daesh will have our backs.

Re:How about

[dbIII]

Stop sending so much money in the direction of Saudi Arabia and they won't have spare cash to give to Daesh.
Even better, keep better track of weapon sales so Daesh are not buying our stuff and have to settle for poor quality knockoffs.

Re:How about

[Gavagai80]

That's why every other country in the world (all of which have drastically less spending on such things) has been conquered by the Russians, the Chinese or Daesh. If even tiny impoverished North Korea can remain stubbornly independent with most of the world against it, what are you so worried about in the world's largest economy protected by oceans and friendly neighbors?

defense budget

[thygate]

$3.5 billion, pfff. Imagine the leaps in science and space exploration we could make in no time if those silly humons just got along ..

It's useless to send humans on Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

It's way more costly, risky and frankly, rovers can do an equivalent job.

NASA to Buzz Aldrin

[Hognoxious]

NASA to Buzz Aldrin: Whatever. You won't be going on it, Mr Did-it-second.

Re:NASA to Buzz Aldrin

[geekmux]

NASA to Buzz Aldrin: Whatever. You won't be going on it, Mr Did-it-second.

Out of a population of over seven billion humans, a total of twelve of them have walked on the moon.

First, second, or last, it's one of the most exclusive clubs in the history of mankind.

Re:NASA to Buzz Aldrin

[tehcyder]

NASA to Buzz Aldrin: Whatever. You won't be going on it, Mr Did-it-second.

Out of a population of over seven billion humans, a total of twelve of them have walked on the moon.

First, second, or last, it's one of the most exclusive clubs in the history of mankind.

Clearly OP should have put a "hashtag joke" or smiley face on the end to give you a clue.

Re:NASA to Buzz Aldrin

[Shatrat]

Those cues aren't necessary if the joke is funny.

We are still lacking the technology ...

[Ihlosi]

We are still lacking the technology for establishing even a somewhat self-sufficient colony on any celestial body.

Here's the short list:

Power. Except for the moon, Venus and Mercury, where solar power may be feasible, I don't see any option other than nuclear fusion for sustainably fulfilling a colony's power needs.

Flexible, small scale chemical engineering. We need a way to synthesize almost arbitrary chemical compounds out of simple precursors. Basically, a machine that will produce a spoonful of sugar out of CO2, H2O and power. Or one does of acetaminophen out of H2O, CO2 and NH3.

Flexible, small scale manufacturing. We need to reduce the size of the smallest manufacturing unit that is capable of producing a copy of itself as well as producing other useful outputs.

Medical technology. We need better ways of easily diagnosing and treating a number of diseases, especially cancer (which will be a problem on any extraterrestrial colony).

Launch-to-orbit technologies. Especially ones that don't involve the vehicle having to contain all of the fuel and reaction mass necessary to reach orbit.

Life-support and maintenance. The colony needs to remain habitable for decades or centuries, unlike our current and past space stations that were simply de-orbited when they became too dirty.

Easy and flexible genetic engineering of microorganisms, plants and possibly animals, to adapt them to the colonys needs.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[FooAtWFU]

Power. Except for the moon, Venus and Mercury, where solar power may be feasible, I don't see any option other than nuclear fusion for sustainably fulfilling a colony's power needs.

Wilfully blind to nuclear fission, I see.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Ihlosi]

Wilfully blind to nuclear fission, I see.

No, not willfully blind. I have excluded fission after careful technical consideration. Nuclear fission requires very specific resources that may cost more energy to acquire and process on an extraterrestrial settlement that the amount that can be gained from them as fuel.

And a colony that depends on regular shipments of fuel from Earth fails one of the very basic criteria of self-sufficiency. It is an option during the ramp-up phase to self-sufficiency.

To be more precise: The technology needed is at least D-D fusion. Deuterium should be common enough on most celestial bodies (especially those farther away from the Sun than Earth) that self-sufficient energy supply is possible.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Hognoxious]

Pah! Mere implementation details.

Where's your vision?

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Ihlosi]

Where's your vision?

Design engineer here. I get paid for implementation, not for visions. I'd be really rich if it was the other way 'round.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wilfully blind to nuclear fission, I see.

No, not willfully blind. I have excluded fission after careful technical consideration. Nuclear fission requires very specific resources that may cost more energy to acquire and process on an extraterrestrial settlement that the amount that can be gained from them as fuel.

And a colony that depends on regular shipments of fuel from Earth fails one of the very basic criteria of self-sufficiency. It is an option during the ramp-up phase to self-sufficiency.

To be more precise: The technology needed is at least D-D fusion. Deuterium should be common enough on most celestial bodies (especially those farther away from the Sun than Earth) that self-sufficient energy supply is possible.

OK, so our two options are either a "fully self-sufficient, Earth-goes-pop-and-noone-notices" colony, or nothing at all? Can anyone say "false dilemma fallacy"?

Even if we had all those "missing technologies" a fully-self-sufficient colony is going to take a few centuries to develop anyway. It's more likely than not that we'll have fusion by then. Might as well start building now, and in the meantime there's nothing wrong with sending a few kilos of plutonium from Earth every now and then, along with few kilos of medicine, specialized equipment, and other things.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[drinkypoo]

Well, I read your post, and I disagree with everything you said.

Power, nuclear exists, so it's not a problem. Chemical engineering, life support, genetic engineering, etc; not necessary. Build a dome. We actually know how to do that part. Then put plants in it. We already have a sampling of plants which will grow in the martian regolith, even food plants which are edible.

Launch to orbit, that makes it expensive, but still within the realm of possibility.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[tehcyder]

a colony that depends on regular shipments of fuel from Earth fails one of the very basic criteria of self-sufficiency

Duh, all we need to do is find a small asteroid made mostly of uranium, nudge it into orbit around Mars, then Bob's (*) your uncle.

(*) Robert Heinlein described this very scenario in one of his early science fiction works. Probably.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Applehu Akbar]

Power. Except for the moon, Venus and Mercury, where solar power may be feasible, I don't see any option other than nuclear fusion for sustainably fulfilling a colony's power needs.

Wilfully blind to nuclear fission, I see.

Technically he's right, because nuclear processes are not 'sustainable', in that they use up fuel. The sun itself is not sustainable, because eventually the hydrogen will be depleted.

But since we don't know what a fusion plant will look like yet, the most likely power source for extraterrestrial use will be variations of the one we already use when space power needs exceed what sustainables can provide in a given part of the solar system.

We have recently found that 14C makes a good, long-running "nuclear battery" for applications like this. When China gets its liquid fuel reactor design going, the moderator will be solid rods of 12C. Over time, these will be irradiated into 14C and will be replaced. That's your source of space power.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[dbIII]

If it was that simple the Manhatten Project would probably have happened in 1850.
Not all Uranium is equal. Getting enough of the right isotopes for fuel out is not trivial.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[dbIII]

A "nuclear battery" supplies not a great deal of power for not a great deal of time. Wikipedia will help.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[bill_mcgonigle]

And a colony that depends on regular shipments of fuel from Earth fails one of the very basic criteria of self-sufficiency.

This design would have been built if not for regulatory restrictions.

It provides 10MW of power for 30 years without maintenance. That's plenty to get a Mars colony up and running.

Sure, D-T fusion reactors will be great on Mars eventually, but let's not wait sixty years to get started.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Ihlosi]

Power, nuclear exists, so it's not a problem.

So you can prove that Mars has an adequate supply of minable fissionable material and have a plan for extracting and processing it into reactor fuel? I'm sure NASA or some similar agency would like to hear it.

Chemical engineering, life support, genetic engineering, etc; not necessary.

So if the colonists need a certain drug, fertilizer or other chemical from Earth, they'll have to wait at least six months for the next supply ship to arrive? I sure hope it's not urgent.

Build a dome.

A dome, as in one? Built with materials brought from Earth? And if it breaks, then everyone dies (or has to pack up and evacuate in a hurry), because they have no way of constructing more domes without having to rely on shipments from Earth?

We actually know how to do that part.

We don't, really.

We already have a sampling of plants which will grow in the martian regolith, even food plants which are edible.

We have a sampling of plants we believe will grow in Martian regolith. We have no idea of how this will work in the long run, which extra chemicals will be necessary to keep the plants growing, which diseases they might develop, and whether they will be actually edible (hexavalent chromium, anyone)?

And without flexible chemical synthesis and manufacturing, the colonists will have to wait months for a solution to be shipped in from Earth, or evacuate the colony, or die.

A colony that isn't capable of self-sufficiency and growth is a dead-end outpost.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Ihlosi]

If it was that simple the Manhatten Project would probably have happened in 1850.

Well, with the right mix of isotopes, nuclear reactors just happen without human effort, see Oklo. We're about a billion years beyond that stage in this star system, though.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Ihlosi]

OK, so our two options are either a "fully self-sufficient, Earth-goes-pop-and-noone-notices" colony, or nothing at all? Can anyone say "false dilemma fallacy"?

It's not a false dilemma. A colony that does not eventually reach the point of self-sufficiency is a dead-end outpost. A colony that has to wait six months for critical equipment to arrive from Earth is a death trap. So is a colony without either sufficient evacuation capacity or tons of redundancy if anything goes wrong. And I doubt it is feasible to provide evacuation capacity for more than just a handful of people.

Sure, we could probably send a few people for a picnic and some digging to Mars. But staying there for years, or decades, requires more technology. Once on Mars, you're months away from either returning to Earth or receiving anything from Earth. Just consider medical issues that can probably wait a few days, or even weeks, but not months or years, for example

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[PinkyGigglebrain]

You overlooked something in your "careful technical consideration".

Thorium is abundant on the Moon and Mars, almost as much as it is on Earth, and it is easy to extract and refine as a fuel since you don't need to enrich it. Also the basic technology needed to use it as a fuel for a space based reactor has already been developed, unlike the D-D fusion you advocate.

Another plus is a working multi megawatt output Thorium based reactor can fit inside the volume of a small truck, try that with a D-D based fusion unit.

We can use Thorium NOW, not 20 years from now, maybe.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Ihlosi]

We can use Thorium NOW,

We could try putting a reactor together on Earth. We don't have long-term experience with molten salt reactors.

Additionally, these reactors require lots of supporting technology, especially fuel reprocessing if they are to run continuously (not a problem in a nuclear powered long-range bomber application, but definitely something to consider in an extraterrestrial colony). And while a thorium fission reactor doesn't create as many actinides as an uranium- or plutonium-fueled on, it creates about the same amount of fission products that need to be removed from the fuel and stored someplace where they don't negatively affect the colonists.

And sources of thorium would still have to be found, mined (beginning on a very small scale) and processed, whereas a deuterium extraction step can be added on to water/ice mining.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Ihlosi]

Technically he's right, because nuclear processes are not 'sustainable', in that they use up fuel.

Considering that reserves would last for thousands of years, sustainability is not the issue in this case. It's setting up the complex fuel cycle. The colony needs to find minable deposits of thorium/uranium, mine them, process them into reactor fuel, and then keep reprocessing the fuel. It's a whole separate production chain just for power.

Deuterium could be extracted while mining water. It's an add-on to something that's already vital to the colony.

We have recently found that 14C makes a good, long-running "nuclear battery" for applications like this. When China gets its liquid fuel reactor design going, the moderator will be solid rods of 12C. Over time, these will be irradiated into 14C and will be replaced. That's your source of space power.

Riiiight. Launch a payload of intensely radioactive stuff with high environmental/biological mobility into space. What could possibly go wrong?

Also, RTGs can power a probe, a vehicle, or maybe a research outpost. A colony, requiring power for things like resource extraction, manufacturing, etc., needs something with more output.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Applehu Akbar]

"Riiiight. Launch a payload of intensely radioactive stuff with high environmental/biological mobility into space. What could possibly go wrong?"

RTGs are what we have already been using in space, for years, and plutonium-based. And yes, there have been launch accidents - and...nothing happened:
http://listverse.com/2012/01/2...

The 14C battery being envisioned is a type of RTG that uses carbon-14 rather than plutonium, and whose output is electrons directly, not heat.

Re:We are still lacking the technology ...

[Ihlosi]

RTGs are what we have already been using in space, for years, and plutonium-based

Yes. And plutonium is basically immobile in the environment. If a chunk of it drops from the sky, most of it will stay in that chunk.

Carbon, on the other hand, will basically disperse completely.

Also, this type of battery is suitable for low-power applications only. Maybe nice for powering a probe, but not for running a colony with resource extraction/manufacturing operations that may require megawatts of electrical power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Getting along? What are you talking about.

[Ihlosi]

$3.5 billion, pfff. Imagine the leaps in science and space exploration we could make in no time if those silly humons just got along ..

Sorry, but a world where 7 billion people magically get along with each other is a fantasy.

It would be laudable, however, if humanity would just spend a little less money and effort on not getting along.

Re:Getting along? What are you talking about.

[Ihlosi]

I'll just take it all anyway because you have no way to stop me

I'm pretty sure that the capability to depopulate the entire planet a few times over is far beyond what's necessary to stop you.

Re:Getting along? What are you talking about.

[stealth_finger]

Easy enough: Gimme all your money, land, water, women, children & other ressources & then go die in the corner. Because I'm sure (as are so many others) that we deserve it more/would employ it better.

What? you don't want to? I'll just take it all anyway because you have no way to stop me -- unless you too start paying for that military you'd like to see diminished

They've been gutting the shit out the the UK armed forces for years and years and years now, it's now a shadow of its former self and we still haven't been invaded or anything, in fact we're still doing the invading. Not that I'm saying any particular army is too big or too small or whatever but there's no big boogie man waiting to jump on you and take all your stuff if you let your guard down even for a second and stop stockpiling and spending more and more and more on defence. Defence from who, Russia? Whatever.

Re:Getting along? What are you talking about.

[Rei]

Curious how women and children are seen as a resource to you, equivalent to money, land, water, and other resources.

Rather than, you know, human beings.

Re:Getting along? What are you talking about.

[Ihlosi]

They've been gutting the shit out the the UK armed forces for years and years and years now, it's now a shadow of its former self and we still haven't been invaded or anything,

That's just because Germany gutted its armed forces even harder.

*SCNR*

Re: Getting along? What are you talking about.

[swillden]

Two societies, one with your view, one with his. Who wins?

History shows that Rei's view wins. The GGP's view was dominant for millenia, and has lost.

Re:Getting along? What are you talking about.

[GuB-42]

Curious how women and children are seen as a resource to you, equivalent to money, land, water, and other resources.
Rather than, you know, human beings.

Every company hiring more than a few dozen people has a HR department. HR stands for Human Resources.
Humans can be considered resources in some contexts.

Re:Getting along? What are you talking about.

[budgenator]

And no, the nukes we have likely couldn't cause a nuclear winter that would kill off all humans, it wouldn't last long enough.

Don't make a challenge out of it.

Re:Getting along? What are you talking about.

[Altus]

generally agreed that there aren't enough to take out the whole of the species

[citation needed]

Re:Getting along? What are you talking about.

[erapert]

You're mistaking his actual thoughts about women and children for what he is saying are the thoughts of invaders and the barbarian hordes throughout history.

Re: Getting along? What are you talking about.

[HanzoSpam]

You have about seventy years of respite from the GGP's view out of millennia, and you declare victory? And that's only counting the western world. Make no mistake, that view is still operative in many parts of the world. I think history may still have a few lessons to teach you. It ain't over quite yet.

Re: Getting along? What are you talking about.

[swillden]

You have about seventy years of respite from the GGP's view out of millennia, and you declare victory? And that's only counting the western world. Make no mistake, that view is still operative in many parts of the world. I think history may still have a few lessons to teach you. It ain't over quite yet.

It's much more than 70 years, and it's not only in the west. Most of Asia is on board. And while the ancient view still holds in some places (and in some people in all places), it's clearly moribund.

No, we need Izzy!

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Hasn't he read Seveneves? We need Izzy for the survival of mankind!

Re:No, we need Izzy!

[Applehu Akbar]

"Hasn't he read Seveneves? We need Izzy for the survival of mankind!"

But if you did read Seveneves, you would recall that Hillary Clinton, as President in that scenario, pops in on the ISS and screws everything up.

Re:No, we need Izzy!

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I read her more as Sarah Palin, to be honest.

She had narrowly lost a senatorial race in California. Visibly pregnant by the time Election Day arrived, she had soon given birth to a baby with Down syndrome and become a human Rorschach blot for all sorts of angst around amniocentesis and selective abortion. Making the rounds of talk shows to discuss those topics, she had drawn the eye of national political campaigns on both sides of the aisle. During the following presidential campaign, she had found herself in the unusual position of being on both parties’ vice presidential short lists. She was staunchly middle-of-the-road, with enough ambiguity in her politics to extend the Democrats’ reach rightward and the Republicans’ leftward. No one had expected her to end up in the Oval Office; that was never seriously expected, nowadays, of vice presidents. But the scandal that had brought down the president in only the tenth month of his inaugural year had elevated her to the presidency and made her hairstyle fair game for dissertation-length treatments in the press.

But I think he deliberately wrote her to not match any living politician too well, considering how much of a shitheel she turns out to be.

Re:Since he agrees with Trump...

[antek9]

Going hungry is not the same as starving. The American two thirds obesity rate should tell you as much. Plus, you can obviously very well be extremely poor, and extremely fat.

No child needs to starve, though, but that is just a matter of food distribution that doesn't take billions of dollars.

or sell it

[4im]

Why not sell the US parts to either the international partners or to potentially interested private companies? I'm quite sure some of the partners would be interested in keeping the station running, it is certainly a question of money though.

There's been talk about putting a station around the moon, I'm not sure if it would currently be feasible to push the ISS that far - or even to a lagrange point (e.g. L5 as proposed in The High Frontier).

I'd certainly prefer to see NASA just staying on with the ISS, but getting a higher budget - it certainly needs it much more than the seemingly utterly wasteful US military complex.

Re:or sell it

[Rei]

ISS is not designed to operate out of LEO. There are plans to build a new station around the moon (in a rather curious orbit). NASA wants it to be effectively a Mars spaceship, just parked around the moon, while the Russians want it to be a permanent fixture around the moon. So the plan appears to be to develop it so that a "Mars spaceship" portion can undock from the rest at an arbitrary future date.

Who knows how far along the design and development will actually get.

As for buyers... great if you can find them, and sure, get whatever money out of it that you can. But let's not fall for the sunk cost fallacy here. In a way, building an ambitious space project is akin to buying a computer. It may be the shiniest sleekest piece of modern technology when you make it, and it serves your purposes, but it's quickly rendered obsolete by advancing technology. ISS is increasingly obsolete, with modern technology allowing for structures that are lighter, more maintainable, and more capable for a given cost. For example, compare ATK Megaflex or Ultraflex to the ISS's solar arrays. Furthermore, part of the whole point of building such things is to advance technology. You don't advance technology by continuing to use old technology and just incrementally improving it. That may be the best option for a period of time, but eventually you need to start over with a new design that incorporates the knowledge accrued since your last design.

What's the obsession with mars?

[stealth_finger]

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for space exploration and travel and all that but why do we currently have such a boner for Mars? Yeah I get the whole was there/wasn't there life question, but other than that what can we actually learn from Mars and is that question worth it? Why is it worth sending people there rather than say, building a moon base or extending our orbital presence?

Re:What's the obsession with mars?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

It's not so much about Mars itself (other than to say "hell yeah, we put people on another planet!"), as it is about the spinoff technologies it will create.

Re:What's the obsession with mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's there, and we haven't been there. It's the ultimate mountain climb.

As for the moon, there's really not much there, it's a boring place, plus moon dust is really nasty stuff. It's not even useful as a base to get somewhere else in space, because it is still a gravity well. L4/L5 would be a much better place for that, but LEO is just fine other than the constant need for orbital boosts. Really, the only good part about the moon is that it's close, and maybe we could get some practice with life support systems.

If the hypothesis that the moon formed from a collision with a very young Earth billions of years ago is correct, then the moon seems to have ended up with only the boring basalt bits.

Re:What's the obsession with mars?

[WrongMonkey]

If you throw enough money at any technically challenging project, it will create spin off technologies. If we spent billions of dollars to explore the ocean, it would create spin off technologies. If we spent billions of dollars to on self-sufficient colonies in Antarctica, it would create spin off technologies. There is nothing particularly special about Mars.

Re:What's the obsession with mars?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I'm not American.

And yes, there has been a ton of spinoffs from Nasa research: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/

Space is a great excuse to spend tons of money, because everyone knows sci-fi and a lot of people want us to do those kinds of things in the future.

Re:What's the obsession with mars?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Sure, but space exploration is an easier sell.

Re:The ISS

[stealth_finger]

The ISS is not controlled by NASA, and NASA is only a small part of an international community... But yeah American exceptionalism at it's finest again, always believe you control the things others actually do and never admit you're a giant failure... (THE AMERICAN WAY)

Maybe they think its the Incredible Space Station?

Re:Need to launch from space

[Ihlosi]

We need to launch from space to eliminate all the massive amounts of energy to leave Earth gravity.

No. First we need a way to get stuff into orbit (and possibly beyond) that does not require the vehicle to transport all of the reaction mass and fuel necesary for this step.

Once that is accomplished, we can think about setting up infrastructure away from Earth, including infrastructure for further launches.

The only way to skip this first step is developing infrastructure capable of sustained growth (this includes self-replication) that can be launched with a system of about the size of a Saturn V. However, I think better launch systems are easier to develop.

really, why?

[LabRatty]

Going to mars is a waste of time, it is dick waving. The fundamentals of space travel at current speeds are established, you need a big enough can holding air and water plus time, and the boosters to get the big can off our rock. Difficult technical challenges but understood.
Living on a surface without atmosphere is not solved, and ultimately must be. Permanent colonisation of the Moon represents an actual leap forward in our ability to as a species to survive, a sight-seeing trip to another rock does not.

Re:really, why?

[ventsyv]

We've had ISS for decades, as well as HI-SEAS, a Mars hab test site. I think it's safe to conclude living without atmosphere is well understood. To get to colonization you need to start with a sight-seeing trip, after all that's how America got colonized.

Re:really, why?

[budgenator]

Living on a surface without atmosphere is not solved, and ultimately must be. Permanent colonisation of the Moon represents an actual leap forward in our ability to as a species to survive, a sight-seeing trip to another rock does not.

Buzz actually proposed Near-side, Far-side and South-Polar permanent lunar colonies to support the Martian mission.

Going to Mars first = very stupid idea.

[Angeret]

Sending people off to Mars before we can prove survivability is a really dumb way to get people killed and possibly kill future off-world exploration. First, we need to prove we can sustain a colony on our nearest neighbour, the moon, and ONLY then start thinking about sending people off to another planet. Are the people who want a Mars colony *now* the kind of people who'd send a newly upright toddler off to drive a busload of other toddlers across the country? Probably.

Pick a spot on the moon suitable for a test colony, seed the area with redundant supply drops, THEN send a risk aware space trained construction crew to build the habitats. Spend at least 5 years learning how to live off-planet, working out all the bugs and expanding, then consider Mars. And FFS, make it a multi-national effort or there'll be so much political fallout it'll kill the project as sure as explosive decompression.

Re:Going to Mars first = very stupid idea.

[ventsyv]

We've had Mars Direct, a Mars mission concept that we know is viable, since 1990. There are legit reasons to go back to the Moon but testing is not one of them.

Should we allow ourselves off-world?

[campingman777]

Serious question. We can't get it right down here, so why should we start branching out? I guess I'm becoming nihilistic about humanity the older I get.

Re:Should we allow ourselves off-world?

[Baron_Yam]

>We can't get it right down here, so why should we start branching out?

Whatever your definition of 'right'... because we'd have more opportunities to get it.

Because an unused system may as well not exist, so I prefer a universe with intelligence in it. Life has an inherent value greater than that of non-living material. Intelligent life has an inherent value greater than that of mindless life.

Re:Should we allow ourselves off-world?

[campingman777]

I guess my definition of 'right' would be to live harmoniously with our environment. Perhaps the movie 'Independence Day' was allegory about us.

Re:Should we allow ourselves off-world?

[Baron_Yam]

No matter what we do, this rock will be baked dry in about 700 million year and then consumed by the Sun after floating, lifeless, for another 3 billion years.

There is no living 'harmoniously with our environment' on long enough scales. We ride the entropy gradient until the universe's spring finishes winding down.

However, yes, it would be nice if we managed to use our available resources in a manner that didn't exhaust them before Nature destroys them anyway, and in a way that didn't make our existence less comfortable.

Re:Should we allow ourselves off-world?

[Applehu Akbar]

Serious question. We can't get it right down here, so why should we start branching out?

There has NEVER been a time and place where we got it right before branching out to somewhere else. That's very basic human nature.

Re: Should we allow ourselves off-world?

[Millennium]

Throughout history, there are lessons we did not learn as a species until towns, nations, peoples, and even whole species had died due to our errors. Learn we did, but the cost was unspeakably high. We are not fast learners.

We still don't have it right. There are still lessons to learn, and undoubtedly some of those will not be learned until worlds have died. But someone still has to be around to learn those lessons afterwards, and for that to happen, we must go to other worlds.

Otherwise, it is pointless. No one will be saved if we don't go: a world will still die. But it will die for nothing, benefiting nobody whatsoever with the same detriments to those involved when it perishes. At least by going it can mean something.

Was it a paid speech?

[zedaroca]

Only someone paid for that would claim we cannot afford 3.5 billion.
It's hard to consider any other points made when the lack of good faith has been established.

Re:Was it a paid speech?

[ventsyv]

NASA's budget is $17 billion and they are spending 20% of that on the ISS. If you want to lobby Congress for more money for NASA great, but I don't see it happening. In the mean time NASA should consider what's the best use of it's money. Buzz wants to get people to Mars, which is great, but there are other opportunities as well. For example just 1 year of ISS spending can pay for the Europa clipper ($2 billion estimate) plus a lander (another $1 billion), a leading candidate for finding extraterrestrial life. Or pay for WFIRST ( $2.7 billion), a space telescope that will search for dark energy and will be able to image exoplanets. ISS is great and all but it's growing expensive to operate and we have to ask ourselves if it's worth it.

Re:Was it a paid speech?

[zedaroca]

If you want to lobby Congress for more money for NASA great

Exactly. NASA is probably the top science agency in the US, there is no reason why they shouldn't get more money. Many in the comments pointed out that to take 3.5 billion from the "defense" budget (584 billion last year) would make no difference. Trump proposed increasing it by 54 billion.
When considering if the country can afford the 3.5 billion it was to be counted against the total budget of 3.9 trillion, not against the 17 billion.

think about orbital staging

[v1]

The ISS is certainly a financial burden but it seems well-suited to assist with transit to mars. To get to mars will require a meat can that's too big to go up in one launch, so it's going to require multiple launches and some staging in orbit. The ISS is one of the few existing stations that could be used for staging right now. (chandra I suppose, but the ISS would be better?) Even if you tried minimal support with staging, it would be less failsafe in the event of a problem. The ISS has a return capsule mounted to it and loads of power for example. NASA loves redundancy.

There's also some discussion about making a warm-up mission like a return to the moon, again orbital staging and a place to return to without returning astronauts and gear to earth is a big plus. Then there's the matter of where the support crew are going to hang out during construction and testing.

Also, I don't know how much the US spends on the ISS vs the rest of the world - I assume the costs are at least split up a bit. If we do a private or US-only mars trip, no one else is going to chip in on the staging and orbital support like we're probably getting with the ISS now.

So if they're going to do without the ISS to save money, it's going to cost some money anyway to develop and launch the replacement staging support. It may end up saving a little money in the end, but is a much less attractive option at that point., Losing that huge orbital facility and all the science and other side-benefits it constantly generates, just to save a percentage of that 3.5B$. The first quote I see on "what did the ISS cost" returns $150B. You don't just abandon that kind of investment without a very good reason. I see his point, but I don't think it's sufficient justification.

Re:think about orbital staging

[Gavagai80]

The ISS has no real advantages for staging, and some disadvantages compared to using an empty spot in orbit. First, it's in an orbit designed for its own purposes at a low altitude -- not designed for transfer to Mars -- and this could increase fuel costs significantly. Second, it has no manufacturing or assembly capabilities and retrofitting it with such will likely be more expensive than launching those facilities directly. Third, the "advantage" of being an emergency fail safe can as easily be seen as a disadvantage of endangering 6 more lives unnecessarily if something should go wrong that damages the station, and a soyuz can be parked in any random orbit if you want one so there's nothing special about the ISS having a soyuz.

Also, the seals on the ISS are going to have failed long before we can reach Mars -- and it's not easy to fix.

Re:think about orbital staging

[budgenator]

The problem with ISS is there is no fuel, other than what's lifted from Earth, and that fuel is insanely expensive. With the 3 lunar bases, you can make fuel on site out of lunar ice, then only have to lift it out of the moons's gravity well.

Emotionally I'd like to keep ISS out of sentiment, but logically it's a white elephant that's served it's purpose and is ready for retirement.

Re:think about orbital staging

[Creepy]

If we weren't adverse to nuclear power, we could send ships to Mars in about 39-90 days (Vasimr and a fusion drive proposed by NASA have these approximate dates attached). Probably no need for a lunar base or staging location in either case. I know the Vasmir I saw proposed was well under heavy rocket payload weight, the fusion rocket is still theoretical, so there weren't a lot of details on weight.

Re:think about orbital staging

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If we weren't adverse to nuclear power and if nuclear power and the laws of nature weren't adverse to our wishful thinking. It actually turns out that mining lunar, Martian, or asteroidal ice vastly favors hydrogen-oxygen engines even to velocities significantly higher than we currently use. Any space-based source of fuel in the solar system, save for the deep gravity wells of our gas giants, contains hydrogen bound to oxygen - as in water ice -, and throwing the oxygen out is inefficient at all but the most ludicrous velocities. Certainly at travel velocities between Earth and Mars.

As far as VASIMR is concerned, you'd have to reason first why nuclear electric sources with their inferior power-to-weight ratio would be preferable to modern lightweight space-based solar panels, which are approaching ~300 W/kg these days with none of the fragility of coolant loop radiators and mechanical assemblies of a nuclear electric generator.

Re:We're not going to mars

[tehcyder]

no sane person will go on a one way trip to die there

There seem to be plenty of slashdotters who would, so either you're wrong or there are a lot of loonies on slashdot (pun intended). And you're not wrong.

Re:We're not going to mars

[Applehu Akbar]

This trip is not for sane people. It's for the folks who went West not knowing whether they would be the Sutters or the Donners.

Re:Since he agrees with Trump...

[Applehu Akbar]

"He literally, like Trump, wants children to starve."

This is the 'priorities' argument. It does not exist in the private sector.

Re: Since he agrees with Trump...

[Applehu Akbar]

Trump wants to take money from children to pay for science.

If it were not for science, every American would be worse off than the poorest of those children.

optimality

[Anonymous Coward]

The first quote I see on "what did the ISS cost" returns $150B. You don't just abandon that kind of investment without a very good reason.

No, you abandon it as a "sunk cost" in accounting terms. Per Richard Bellman's principle of optimality, you take the least cost path from where you are now, independent of the history of how you got there. The (unresolved) question is simply "Does the ISS have future value in excess of its future costs?" It simply doesn't matter how much we spent on it in the past.

Government and corporate speeding is rife with violations of Bellman's principle of optimality because no one wants to manage an "unsuccessful" project.

Re:optimality

[v1]

though that "future value" has to somewhat be measured in terms of "how much will it cost us to replace it if we need to keep getting more of that value after we've written off and demo'd that *sunk cost*"

Granted, ISS2 would probably be a lot cheaper to throw up there to serve the same purpose, since a lot of that 150B is truly sunk cost for the R&D and the higher prices when the tech was newer. But to continue to provide the same value that the ISS is providing now is surely going to cost less to maintain (3.5B/yr) than to replace it outright with new. (and then don't forget, that too has a maintenance cost)

Science ain't free. If you want it, you gotta pay for it. And if you want more of that science to keep flowing, you're going to have to keep paying for it. And because the initial cost of the lab (in both construction and R&D) isn't an expense you want to sink any more often than reasonably necessary.

Just get along?

[PPH]

You don't understand our priorities. $3.5bn is a lot of money until it's time to declare war on something. Then, money is no object. We've got to declare war on Mars. Convince Trump that ISIS has a secret base hidden on Mars and we'll have boots on the ground there in no time. Cost be damned.

You just don't understand the situation

[dbIII]

Wilfully blind to nuclear fission, I see.

For submarines it's a very good choice - aerospace where every gram counts not so much, but the complex fuel cycle kills it dead once you go off planet.
The fuel does not stay useful forever and shipping in new fuel at intervals would be very difficult to sustain.

It's fine to be a big fan of nukes but in some situations they are not so good a fit.

Re:You just don't understand the situation

[cheesybagel]

I don't know about that. It has a high energy density. I also doubt that you can't find uranium deposits on the Moon or Mars considering the geology isn't THAT different from Earth. Plus both those places are essentially untapped unlike the Earth.

The fuel cycle isn't that complicated. The mining is an issue as is the manufacturing of hexafluoride. But with a gas centrifuge process you actually don't need that much power to manufacture the fuel. It wouldn't happen in an initial exploration phase but I could see it happening later on.

Private industry is not ready to take over yet

[ventsyv]

If Bigelow or another private company wants to put up a module and fly tourists to it fine, but I don't think private industry is ready to run the ISS. A better way to lower the cost is to get more counties involved, China being the most obvious choice. India might also be interested.

Re:We're not going to mars

[ColdWetDog]

Man is not a rational animal.
He is a rationalizing animal.

- RAH

Buzz @ Silicon Valley Comic Con

[__aaclcg7560]

When Buzz Aldrin spoke at the Silicon Valley Comic Con to promote his book, "No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon," I don't think he mentioned anything about the space station. Then again he read from prepared notes. When it came time for Q&A, he tended to drift off topic and the moderator had to bring him back on topic.

What the ISS does is important

[mhollis]

I met Buzz Aldrin some years ago when he was on a book tour signing books. Very nice guy. I respect him but I think he is wrong on this issue.

Firstly, right now, they are testing how fire works in micro-gravity on the ISS. Knowing how to deal with fire aboard a craft on the way toward Mars is essential research. Some people on earth don't know how to deal with a kitchen fire and training astronauts in necessary knowledge can prevent unnecessary deaths. Apollo 1 happened in my lifetime (as well as Buzz Aldrin's) and that was caused by fire in 1G. Apollo 13 had an explosion (fire) that could have killed three astronauts on the way to the Moon.

We continue to learn more about long-term weightlessness on the ISS. We continue to learn more about EVA (spacewalks) and repairs to the exterior of a spacecraft. We continue to learn about how the surface tension of various liquids works and we are learning about how to grow plants (that can process Carbon Dioxide into oxygen safely) in micro-gravity.

In short, the ISS is serving an excellent function.

What Buzz Aldrin needs to to is to start encouraging a priority change for NASA. When we mounted the Apollo program, NASA's budgets were very high. After all, we were in a space race. We did not achieve all of the planned Moon landings because NASA's budget was cut. Surely Aldrin recalls this. So, were I to meet up with the distinguished gentleman again, I would ask why we're spending so much on war that could be spent on NASA and engage many of the same companies who are lobbying for war contracts. We need to change the US priority from war to the peaceful use of much the same technology for exploration.

Oh, and Martian regolith may well be poisonous, so were we to begin colonizing Mars, we would need to address that.

How about we solve the radiation problem.

[Mysticalfruit]

How about we solve the radiation problem of sending people to Mars first. You know... having gone to the moon, those bright flashes you saw in your vision even when your eyes were closed... those comic rays are NOT good for humans...

Let's go to the moon first and figure out how to deal with the radiation problem first... then we'll go to Mars.

Re:How about we solve the radiation problem.

[Mysticalfruit]

I had heard that "thin" layer of water needed to be several feet thick.

Re:Need to launch from space

[ventsyv]

The rocket's efficiency can be measured in dollars and the fuel is cheap - only 1% or 2% of the cost of a launch is due to fuel. So having to carry all that reaction mass is not that big of a deal after all.

Re:Since he agrees with Trump...

[Creepy]

It doesn't help that the cheapest foods are usually loaded with carbs and sugar and have little nutritional value. Processed foods are incredibly cheap. When I see poor people shop, they have zero fresh vegetables and fruits in their cart and a bunch of shit like mac and cheese and spaghetti-Ohs. They may get some staples like eggs and milk, but those are also cheap. Yogurt? Never gonna happen.

So yeah, most poor people I know are fat, especially if they have stamps and housing. If they're on the street, not so much (many of these people don't even have stamps).

How about the moon first?

[Tony Isaac]

Sure, we've been to the moon, but we haven't established a presence there, like we would be required to do on Mars. We would learn a lot about what to do and not do by establishing a permanent presence on the moon. Because it's a lot closer, it will be a lot easier to rescue a moon-dweller in trouble, than somebody on Mars. Also, with infrastructure on the moon, getting to Mars will become a lot easier.

I like the notion of going to Mars, but I think we missed a step!

Re:Need to launch from space

[Ihlosi]

The rocket's efficiency can be measured in dollars and the fuel is cheap - only 1% or 2% of the cost of a launch is due to fuel.

You also need a launch vehicle that can carry and burn all the fuel. You basically need to buy the biggest rocket engines for the part of the trip that only lasts a few minutes.

It's kinda like mounting a jet engine on your car to move it from your garage down your driveway and onto the street, where you switch to a regular internal combustion engine.

Re:Need to launch from space

[Ihlosi]

Also, if the launch vehicle doesn't have to carry all the fuel, it can carry more useful payload instead - which drives down launch costs.

Just imagine being able to swap seven tons of rocket fuel for seven tons of additional cargo on something like a Soyuz rocket. That's double the payload. If the launch costs stay the same, you have just halved your relative launch costs.

Agree!

[p51d007]

NASA, lost its way, when they scrapped Apollo, and went with the stupid space shuttle. IT NEVER WENT ANYWHERE, except to orbit Earth. If you want to EXPLORE, you need to leave our planet, and go elsewhere.

Re:Agree!

[WrongMonkey]

The Hubble has made more discoveries than all the Apollo missions combined. All without ever leaving LEO.

Re:We're not going to mars

[k6mfw]

If I didn't post earlier I'd mod you up. We do have flying cars but they are called roadable airplanes, not many as that is a small niche market. We don't have any fusion reactors except those that make a huge boom. I don't know what people will do there, many constantly working on life support equipment. I see no land rush to the Gobi Desert even though it is a 10000 times easier to settle there. We just romanticize about Mars because it is so far away.

Red Mars Blue Mars Green Mars

[neoRUR]

If you have not read Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars and your interested in what Musk is trying to do and Mars, then I suggest you get reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Most of the plan has been laid out there and there are quite a few similarities to what he and anyone else will have to do to survive there and some of the other issues that will happen on a planet that takes a year or more to get to. Think New with a new president.

Lets just leave all the telephone sanitizes here though.

Re:Actually

[Hognoxious]

Wrong. Eagle did.

I know your mom drives you everywhere so perhaps you don't get the concept, but Neil Armstrong was, and is almost universally billed as, the first man to walk on the moon.

NO. Wrong

[WindBourne]

We need to use it a bit longer to get multiple companies going with vetted habitats. But, let it go in 2024, or sooner to any other American private company that wants to run it.

Yes - 3kW

[dbIII]

Yes - 3kW.
A lot of the people here look after servers that draw about half that each.
Not much for all that weight is it?
You can have an RTG that produces a lot more than that but it doesn't last anywhere near as long.

Re:Since he agrees with Trump...

[cheesybagel]

Yogurt isn't particularly expensive unlike what people seem to think. When you figure out the amount of water content that they removed from the milk, and look again at the price, you'll see that milk only seems cheaper because of the extra water in it.

You have utterly no clue about the situation

[dbIII]

The fuel cycle isn't that complicated

Yes, just like coding.
Any ten year old can do it (it's called sarcasm used to defeat cluelessness).
Have I laid it on thick enough yet to intersect with something you are aware of?

I suggest you consider what has been in the news about Iran for more than the last decade to get an idea of how simple it is not.


I really don't get how people can get that idea that a tiny initial colony is going to immediately be able to make fuel rods when currently only a few nations on the planet can do it and require a lot of infrastructure to do so.
In the meantime, where are they going to get all of that energy to do all the mining and that incredibly energy intensive fuel processing? Sure, you get a lot more out that you put in but you need to get started somehow.

Re:You have utterly no clue about the situation

[cheesybagel]

Like I said, it certainly wouldn't happen in the initial phases, but it isn't *that* hard to do in the long term. Plus I just told you already the fuel processing isn't that energy intensive with gas centrifuge tech. The main issue would likely be the production of Uranium Hexafluoride. Not the isotope separation process.

Getting the energy in place to boostrap the process is not particularly hard. You just bring a workable nuclear reactor and some fuel to start the process. The major issue is transporting all the industrial machinery and transplant the industrial processes required to manufacture the fuel and maintain the machinery in working condition. That's the real problem and that's why there's little chance it will happen in the initial phases.

Re:You have utterly no clue about the situation

[dbIII]

Like I said, it certainly wouldn't happen in the initial phases

The initial phases were the discussion, not your unannounced goalpost shift, however this leads into other things that are still incorrect ...

Plus I just told you already the fuel processing isn't that energy intensive with gas centrifuge tech

There is even a wikipedia page that will help, which leads into you next comment about a process that certainly does not happen for free:

The main issue would likely be the production of Uranium Hexafluoride

Rather an enormous issue without an on-planet industrial base bigger than Iran has now (for example) and kind of fundamental to the isotope separation process.

Getting the energy in place to boostrap the process is not particularly hard

I very strongly disagree and a reason is in your words:

The major issue is transporting all the industrial machinery and transplant the industrial processes required to manufacture the fuel and maintain the machinery in working condition

Perhaps you should consider how major an issue it is and you'll get an understanding of some of the posts above.


The pioneers going to California didn't bring blast furnaces in their covered wagons. Your suggestion is comparable to that.
How about getting back on topic and considering what could be used to set up a colony and not a point to aim for after a few decades while generating electricity some other way.
I've got nothing against nuke fanboys but it would help if you know a bit about the subject matter.

Re:You have utterly no clue about the situation

[cheesybagel]

What makes you assume that you *need* electricity in the first place?

Re:You have utterly no clue about the situation

[Ihlosi]

What makes you assume that you *need* electricity in the first place?

Because it's a fairly universal way to power a wide range of processes, from chemical to motor to computing. Sometimes, it provides a more efficient or lower temperatur way to power these processes compared to other forms of energy.

And a colony - as opposed to a research outpost - will have many energy-intensive operations like resource extraction, refining, construction, manufacturing, recycling, etc.

Re:You have utterly no clue about the situation

[dbIII]

Because steampunk is fantasy.

You don't know what reality means, do you?

[DerekLyons]

The reality

The reality is that the current baseline for Red Dragon is to use parachutes. The paper you link to is a proposal to not use parachutes. Either way, Red Dragon is a paper spacecraft, not reality.

Re:You don't know what reality means, do you?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

And of course you can provide a citation for that? Aside from that, I was talking about the reality of physics, not about any specific vehicle. The fact that X was used for something by someone doesn't imply that X has to be used, merely that someone deemed it to be useful in his specific case. The mere fact that JPL people suggested not using parachutes as option means that they're not a requirement, no matter how large or small benefits they could provide. Much less your hypothetical "baseball-infield-sized parachutes". So it doesn't really matter if Red Dragon will or will not land using parachutes (presumably to increase payload mass?) because whether it can land at all without them is a different question.