Posted by
Hemos
on from the one-small-step-for dept.
NASA has flirted on and off again with the notion of a manned mission to Mars. It appears again that this may be a reality, with JPL physicist Mark Adler pushing ahead on this. Interesting stuff to read-and hopefully they won't make the same network mistake as the space station did.
80 comments
woohoo
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Anonymous Coward
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Woohoo, a Battlestar Galactica referance!
Now if only they'd start showing reruns again on the SciFi channel!
Network mistakes?
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Anonymous Coward
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I doubt there really were any. NASA caught some flak when it came out that they were using 10b2 networking and Windows NT. The Windows NT part is understandable, but I can't imagine anyone actually thought they would use something like Linux? Commercial Unix is awfully expensive, especially when we're going to have to pay for all the stuff we were expecing from Russia.
I'm no expert, but I'm guessing the 10b2 decision was made for reasons having to do with the environment up there, maybe because of the shielding or something. NASA's sort of out of date, but they're not that stupid. They must have had a really good reason to take the risk of a network topology that causes a network failure when a cable is cut.
This is really awsome!!
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Anonymous Coward
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Any of the plans outlined are really awsome. Just the idea of people going to Mars is great. It's hard to imagine what we could learn from 4-6 people spending 500 days on Mars.
NIML
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Anonymous Coward
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Takeoff from the Martian surface is facilitated by the planet's 1/4-Earth gravity. The mission could be accomplished with off-the-shelf technology. Government oversight is the stumbling block.
Frankly, we'd be better off establishing a viable lunar base before going to Mars. There's H3 to be harvested from the regolith, not to mention the very real possibility of ice at the poles. I am well aware that getting *at* the ice poses difficulties, but nothing we couldn't deal with. The whole process could be automated, with ballistic transports returning "ore" to lower latitudes.
Fun to talk about, certainly!
NIML
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Anonymous Coward
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Actually, you sound like the IT manager that turned down my well-deserved raise proposition because of its impossibility.
Look, I know you have a valid point, but you probably think that economics and people, etc. being what they are, you are forced to work in Visual Idiot (oops-- Basic), right?
Come on, there are more motivated people out there.
typo
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Anonymous Coward
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there was a rather unfortunate typo in the article:
"For each flight, threes stages are Launched separately into Low Earth orbit and assembled there. The crew arrives in a shuttle before the final fright departs. "
=)
Network mistakes? Real time control systems
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Anonymous Coward
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A power systems engineer(turbines etc.) told me that, they use their own embedded customized OS for turbine controls. Obiviously, with very limited functions but very high reliability
I want to go!
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Anonymous Coward
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Stuff the kids. To stand on Olympus Mons (the highest mountain in the solar system) would be worth pretty much any price, even 12 months exposure to high levels of radiation from the journey plus the presumably high levels on Mars (thin atmosphere = low radiation protection), and the (fairly high) chance of not making it back due to accidents etc.
Do you think they'll have any places for a Astrophysics grad. turned telecoms engineer?
We don't need to waste money...
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Anonymous Coward
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Are you saying the trip to the moon was a waste of time, all they found were rocks!
Re: We don't need to waste money...
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smeat
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Yeah sure, I think quite possibly the most important task of this is race is to develop interplanetary travel. Without it we are just a overcomsuming and overwasting creature, taht willl soon deplete what is left of this world.
With the ability to leave the planet we are now tied to, we could possibly survive the next millenium.
So if you think that wasting money on developing travel to other planetrs, you must not care about your grandchildren, or there gradchildren.
Read some Heinlein.
-- "Let's not bicker about who killed who." Monty Python
Send RTG's for power
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Anonymous Coward
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Send RTG's for power. Forget solar cells. Solar cells don't work in a sandstorm.
(RTG = Radiothermal generator. Contains 70 kg or so of Plutonium)
No TCP/IP from Mars.
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Anonymous Coward
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It needs to be integrated into the IETF's work, but there have been people working on just this sort of problem from the point of view of the CCSDS (a group which handles earth-to-space data protocols):
Distance mostly irrelevant
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Anonymous Coward
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It's not like we'd have to walk to the whole way. Once you leave Earth's orbit you don't really have to fire up the engines again until you get there. And supply needs are no higher than for a space station manned for a similar period.
Furthermore, with technology advances since 1969, a Mars mission would probably be easier AND safer than the Moon mission.
Non-NASA Perspective on Zubrin's Work
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Anonymous Coward
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Good article from Reason Magazine:
http://www.reasonmag.com/9902/fe.jt.martian.html
MJP
Don't worry, they won't.
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Anonymous Coward
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Money spent on space travel is not wasted. It's an investment in science and technology, both of which have proved vital time and time again.
AI can't die either
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Anonymous Coward
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Human exploration does limit AI because it diverts that could be spent on research to keeping the astronauts alive. Send up fifty Mars Pathfinders and what happens when one of them dies? Nothing because the Pathfinder was cheap and unmanned. What if something goes wrong on a manned mission? You're not only out some extremely expensive hardware, you also have the potential for casualties.
We don't need to waste money...
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Anonymous Coward
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1. Just about every damn thing around your sorry ass was spun off from NASA. Computers, plastics, etc etc.
2. The Apollo program to the moon was peanuts, budgetarily speaking. At the most expensive, it cost 4 cents out of every tax dollar. If there was a checkbox for it, I would gladly give my tax money to space exploration.
First things first.
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Anonymous Coward
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Geez, we can't even go back to the Moon, and they're yammering again about Mars. First things first. Mars Last. NASA doesn't have a clue how to do long-duration space missions.
Hell, if NASA would just get the fsck out of the way we'd have tourist trips to Mars before they ever expect to get there. Bigger fsking waste of taxpayers' dollars than the Incredible Shrinking Space Station.
Things we found
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Anonymous Coward
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Teflon. Minature motors. All that thinsulate goretexy type stuff.
Of course we didnt actully find minature motors on the moon, that would have been well spooky.
I can't believe /. missed the Geek Connection!
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Anonymous Coward
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The main person they interview in this article is Mark Adler of JPL. Friends, that's the same Mark Adler that's one of the main people behind Zlib's decompression library (used in a million different projects) and the gunzip decompressor.
Why, I bet you've already used some of his software today.
Houstan we have a probelm - blue screen of death
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Anonymous Coward
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Not even Linux is reliable for a manned space mission. Not to mention that it needs to be a RTOS! Of course who knows what RTLinux will be like in 2014.
Solution? One-way trip to Mars.
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Anonymous Coward
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No need to carry extra fuel or launch vehicle. Supposedly, a life-time's amount of food weighs less than fuel and a launch vehicle.
This "crazy" idea was proposed at some convention. The speaker asked the audience how many would be interested in a one-way trip to Mars; almost everyone in the room raised their hand.
Network mistakes?
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Anonymous Coward
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They are using wireless stuff by Proxim, to go between the modules, to avoid running cables through hatches, etc...
We can be on Mars by 2020
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Anonymous Coward
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Well, if you're over 60, it probably won't be in your lifetime. If you are younger than 60, you will see humans land on Mars, and return to Earth. NASA research on bioregenerative life-support systems has been fairly successful, but recent right-wing (read: religious fanatics) driven budget cuts pretty much killed the research. These systems significantly reduce the quantity of food/water/oxygen/etc. you need to take with you. En-route power can easily be supplied by radiothermal generators. The availablility of sufficient energy for on-board systems isn't an issue. Give them funding and remove the current hiring freeze, and NASA will put people on Mars in less than twenty years.
Launch vehicles: nuclear rockets using Martian water as reaction mass are more than capable of reaching Mars' escape velocity. This isn't even clese to being an insurmountable problem. It's 1960's technology: we know how to do this already. One of the things the remote probes are looking for (and have found): water, in suficient quantity to use as reaction mass for these rockets.
The real problem is the lack of NASA biologists. Nobody is really working on perfecting the long term bioregenerative life-support system. Until we get this absolutely perfect, we can't go to Mars. We can do this, we just need to fund the research. It is important to our future.
Hope I'll see you on Mars.:)
We don't need to waste money...
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Anonymous Coward
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lets see LOSER the intire integrated circuit industry sprang up as a result of the space program...and that's just for starters...perhaps they should spend my hard earned tax money on welfare recipients (40% of the current budget - "entitlements")...Jim i'll take clues for $200 please...
Houstan we have a probelm - blue screen of death
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Anonymous Coward
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Just shows the average intelligence of a slashdot reader. This may very well be one of the most important scientific events of the 21st century that we are discussing here - and all you have to say is mention your favorite piece-of-crap OS or flame someone else's favorite OS? Get a clue, you idiots. You are not worthy of the name 'nerd'. Yiu are on the same scale as John Katz in the nerd-world.
They didn't mention the nukes
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Anonymous Coward
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I went to a presentation of the Mars Direct plan at Princeton University in the early 90s. What they diplomatically don't tell you in the CNN article is that they also send a nuclear reactor to power the chemical plant that creates the fuel.
I asked the presenter about this - particularly as there was at that time a bug fuss over the launching the plutonium RTG with Galileo. The presenter said that before it was turned on, the reacter only contained uranium, of which there was a gazillion tonnes already in the earth's oceans, so a launch explosion would not be a major environmental issue.
(While this may be true, I expect it would have a significant local effect where the bits landed. Uranium, like all heavy metals, is very toxic.)
nasa web site
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Anonymous Coward
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It's from the January edition of Pop Sci. I saw this article sometime in Dec (I have a subscription). I agree with you that NASA should do something with that web site. I think it would add more credibility to the idea of going to Mars if NASA was to talk about it themselves, as opposed to through another party.
There's only one permanent way to Mars - via Moon
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Anonymous Coward
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Actually, I think both Mars Direct and the NASA reference mission plan on sending a new crew every two years. Did you read the part about the second living quarters being hooked to the first?
NIML
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Anonymous Coward
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That means, "Not In My Lifetime". Running a manned mission to Mars requires an extraordinary committment in time and resources.
Etc, etc.
Look, at this time we've been building fairly accurate ballistic missiles for over 50 years. The USA went from its first manned mission to a series of manned landings on the Moon in *8* years. We've been landing unmanned probes on Mars over a period of more than two decades. It just isn't that hard.
Any claim that it is impossible runs up against a mountain of evidence that the technical problems were solved long ago. The biggest problem is that any manned space mission is viewed as a huge money trough, and dozens of pols will hold the program hostage until they get enough for themselves and their backers. This is why the cost balloons out of sight when NASA does anything; it's the democratic version of graft. Hell, you can even kill people with your product and NASA, under pressure from the pols, will keep buying it.
The pathetic little Sojourner probe investigated half a dozen rocks in several days, and got stuck and had to be un-stuck. It learned very little. One person in a suit carrying a rock hammer could have investigated as much as Sojourner in about twenty minutes, and kept it up for an 8-hour day. After a few days of this, said person could evaluate the stuff collected thus far and decide what to look at next. With tools as simple as a pickaxe and a handcart, that "what" could be several feet down, some miles away, or both. Add a Mars truck a la Zubrin, and the "what" extends to hundreds of miles and as deep as your drills can penetrate. We're well past what unmanned craft can handle. People are the only available investigators for the next step. And, of course, only people can create a new human society on a new planet.
Landing is easy; having an adequate launch vehicle on the red planet is not.
Getting off Mars is far easier than getting off Earth. We've solved the Earth problem. We can prove we've solved the difference in details between Mars and Earth by doing a sample return mission using the same technology intended for the manned mission.
Dude, you need to learn more. Just seeing what's already been done would change your tune.
We don't need to waste money...
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Anonymous Coward
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What else of use did we find there?
Answers to questions about the origins of the Moon, and thus Earth. The history of our Solar system.
Life may have originated on Mars and come to Earth on a meteroid. Or there may never have been life on Mars. Either way, it is important to know, because the two most momentous questions you can ask are "Where did I come from?" and "Am I alone?"
Monopoly!(not)
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Anonymous Coward
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How exactly is NASA a monopoly? The competition that it has is limited to other government funded agencies (Russia). NASA isn't showing any characteristics of a monopoly. The reason there isn't very much competition in the space industry is because of the abnormally high costs of operation in space.
In the 1960s, when the USSR was heavily competitive in space research, NASA improved the technology by leaps and bounds. Don't blame NASA because the old Soviet Union collapsed and are no longer a threat to thier dominence in the space industry.
They haven't locked anyone out who have been serious about space exploration. Thier main competiter killed itself!!
No "mistakes"!
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Anonymous Coward
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I understand the/. community's reaction to the Space Station's network, but you need to understand a few things I learned when working with the folks at NASA Johnson Space Center as a Sun Network Ambassador a few years ago:
1. It takes a LONG time to build complex aerospace products like the space station. Generally, the design is frozen 5-10 years before first flight. The schedule was compressed for the Space Station (mostly due to the numerous downsizings/redesigns to reflect the realities of lower than expected budgets and political support, both in Congress and in foreign countries, especially Russia.)
2. NASA delayed the network until as late as they could in the design process. When they made the selection, the primary concerns were reliablity, robustness, interoperability and low cost. 10Base2 is actually a pretty good choice in that regard, and a coax-based network is more noise-immune and damage tolerant (not to mention cheaper than) twisted pair or fiber optics. There are high-speed, really cool multimedia-capable networks between the station and the ground (you wanna talk old - that team insisted on VME chassis gear, but wanted low weight, volume and heat dissipation - go figure), and that's where NASA put their network money. It's unlikely they'll need a whole lot more than 10 mbps internally the way things are laid out.
3. Calm down, Unix bigots (I can say that, I'm one, too) - I can tell you that astronauts are pretty sharp folks - most all of them know their way around Unix and serious scientific computing, and they realize as well as any of us the weaknesses of NT. Blame it on Dan Goldin, who decreed for political reasons several years back that NT was NASA's "standard" OS, and "deviations" (gee, now we're deviants!) must be approved on a case-by-case basis. This has led NASA to spend much more on IT than it really needs to, because critical systems based on NT must be backed-up by robust Unix-based systems. The serious computing on the Shuttle is done by portable SPARCstations (obsolete but flight-qualified Panasonics) and IBM ThinkPad laptops, both running Solaris. Without going into gory details, the astronauts have at times actually been fearful for their lives due to the repeated crashing of NT-based systems in Mission Control. They instituted their own crash program (pun intended) to put these critical systems onto the laptops so that they were no longer reliant on Mission Control in the event of NT bluescreens.
Understand that Flight-Qualified networks will always be at LEAST one generation behind what's in common use just due to the lag time in designing and building these things. Add another generation because they want proven, readily available technology, and that's exactly where they are.
The latest whiz-bang Fibre Channel or IEEE 1355 network would not necessarily be "appropriate technology" for a space station.
So were there mistakes in the network? Probably not, and I say that even though I had no hand in the selection, but I do understand their thinking. (BTW - the standard display on the station is 640x480x256! I had a hard time finding them an S-bus frame buffer that could deal with that antiquated resolution for one of the station subsystem prototypes! I think NASA bought a few dozen so they would be set for EOL on these things...
Dub Dublin dub@psw.com
Marssociety Website
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Anonymous Coward
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The Mars Society was mentioned in this article. Check out it's website at www.marssociety.org. KaOs
We don't need to waste money...
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Anonymous Coward
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You're implying that I have a choice. I don't. If I do not voluntarily contribute to Socialist Security, men with guns will force me to do so. So, yes, I will become a "welfare recipient" whether I like it or not.
They didn't mention the nukes
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Anonymous Coward
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They were talking about a nuclear reactor, not an RTG. (Remember we are talking about creating tonnes of rocket fuel, not powering some scientific instruments and a transmitter.) Possibly they can use the same fuel pellet encasing technology in a reactor as an RTG, in which case it wouldn't make much difference, but I don't know.
Of course, shielding for a reactor is very heavy. The proposed solution? Put the reactor on wheels with no shielding, and on landing, it drives away from the ship trailing a power cable to a safe distance.
Plans will change if Moon water pans out
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Anonymous Coward
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Although it will require a larger initial investment, going to Mars via the Moon -- specifically, by building a refueling base supplied by lunar pole water -- would make long-term large-scale Mars exploration cheaper and less hairy.
Lifting fuel to orbit from Earth is really, really, expensive. Getting Hydrogen, or Hydrogen and Oxygen, from the Moon could be a lot cheaper.
The minimum estimate amount of Moon water could provide fuel for several thousand "fast" trips to Mars using _very_ large ships.
Necessaries: The water has to be there, and be plentiful and easily extracted. Methods to haul it to orbit (and store it, and break it down) must be developed, and the hardware created and delivered.
Scentific advancement?
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Anonymous Coward
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Everyone who talks about a manned mission to mas as though it will be some profound scentific achievement. True, our ability to set foot on the surfact of another planet millions of miles away is indeed a testament to the scientific and technical acheivements of mankind. But the real issue here isn't a scientific accomplishment. There's probably precious little to discover on Mars other than practical knowledge needed for survival on Mars.
The real reason for going to Mars is what it will do for humanity. Once again there will be a frontier, like the era of colonization of the New World. If we can colonize and inhabit Mars, and spread our civilization to other parts of the universe, that will be a more profound accomplishment than any mere scientific advance.
Man I wanna be immortal
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Anonymous Coward
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Or 300 years ago... Same difference;)
We don't need to waste money...
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Anonymous Coward
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The argument that space exploration is valuable is fueled by watching too much Star Trek and fetishization the military-industrial complex.
Every day the San Francisco bay area has 50 mile long traffic jams, for which there is no plan to do anything. Yet now we've got a plan to drive a buggy around on Mars. Excellent.
Tech and the Mars Mission
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Anonymous Coward
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*posted by Roger 'Darkseid-[D!]*
Thinks back a few decades, then back a few centuries
ok, now you have some sense of history ponder this
They said the world was flat and you'd sail off its edge
Now it you said to those same people we could fly from the UK to the US in under 2 hours they'd call you crazy.
Are we crazy, no when the technology available didnt do what we wanted, we created something new.
This is what I forsee will happen with the space race, _someone_ will come up with a new technology or use an exsisting one in an unexpected way and the next step...
However NASA needs to learn to walk again before trying to run. A longer term moonbase would be a better idea than leaping for mars. (that is if you dont believe the conspiracy theorists who maintain theyve had one since the 60's).
Also I have a feeling that within the next decade NASA / ESA will have competition from PRCSA, or those not into acronyms, Peoples Republic of China. Their very size and population count make them obvious contenders....
That could be a good thing, the West vs the 'Commie' East.. the cold war space race all over again.
Darkseid-[D!] www.captured.com/boomstick
Tech and the Mars Mission
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Anonymous Coward
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Except for one thing: China can barely feed its people. They can't even keep their military in good shape. If we entered into another "Space Race" with China, it would be nothing like the "Space Race" with the USSR... We'd be sure to win.
nasa web site
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Anonymous Coward
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check out http://station.nasa.gov/mars/
NIML
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Anonymous Coward
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While it would be desirable to limit the travel and mission times, it's not really feasable. Assuming a six month travel time (if you leave at the optimal time,) you'll be six months FARTHER AWAY from earth by the time you get there. Assuming a two month mission, your return trip is now 12 months (you've gone past the point at which earth and mars are furthest apart.)
The biggest thing to avoid in a long duration mission is exposure to radiation. Since the greatest amount of radiation is absorbed while in deep space, we want to reduce this time. The best way to do this, is to stay on mars longer. Check out Zubrin's book. It's pretty good. Keep in mind that my estimates for travel time are rough numbers I pulled out of my ass. I'm no expert. I just read Zubrin's book, thought it was pretty cool, and am trying to remember pieces from when I read it. No flaming! Please! I can't take it!
More important things? Like what? Paying for unwed mothers to plop out children to get more child support? Paying for crooked politicians to flaunt each other's wickedness on national TV? Paying for the creation of stupid laws? Paying for Special Interest Groups fighting over which minority group can claim the most special benefits?
Sheesh.
If our money is going to be forcibly taken from us, the two best things that can be done with it are the military and scientific research. And we can't have enough of either.
I can't belive I'm first to offer to go! (No, not first post dummy)
I've got in mind a couple different females with a technical bent who I could try to talk into going with me. There is no true geek out there that wouldn't want to brag "My kid was born on Mars!" I think that will be the biggest achivment, getting people born up there. Soon were on our way to a perminate colony.
Personally I don't belive life will be found on mars, other then life we bring from earth. I could be wrong though.
So, I'm open to either group if they need more people to go.
Looks like two different groups will land people on mars the same year. Good for them, I hope both groups try ot out do each other, and in the end both have people on Mars at the same time.
If that happens, some advice: Agree that if one group has problems all compitition is off, both coopoerate to solve the problem. This is on mars of course. What I'm getting at is if one group loses both habitation modules, agree to live togather (very crowded) as best you can. If it turns out that both groups have problems mineing fuel, agree to share what cuelf you have made, so that some people stay for 4 extra years until a rescue mission can be launched, and the other group goes. In the case that one group can't return as planed, agree to get those who have had the most problems (health or personal) off of Mars first even if it means one entire group goes up in the other's rocket. There are more ways to cooperate, agree in an emergency the priority for both groups is solving it for whichever group has the problem.
When there isn't an emergency, compete at all costs. Don't let the other group out do you! Work long and hard to make the biggest best modules (NASA which is planning bigger ones) or the largest rockets (other group) Compete to get the best people for the job, the best test equipment.
We don't need to waste money...
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Eccles
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The integrated circuit industry growth was much more closely tied to military research, rather than NASA research. Admittedly, there's overlap between ICBMs and Saturn Vs, but it really was more a result of keeping the Reds at bay than achieving "One small step for a man..."
I'd rather have a cure for cancer, AIDS, paralysis and/or Alzheimer's than a couple of people dancing on the surface of Mars.
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Perhaps, but in the end we'd still have a moonbase, where we could build telescopes that would put the Hubble to shame, launch other planetary probes, etc.
Don't send up Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, though, I don't want that nuclear dump exploding and...
-- Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
When was it not being considered?
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heroine
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I thought the Mars project was always being considered. The space station was eventually supposed to turn into an assembly point for building interplanetary spacecraft in space.
Even DOS has too much baggage. Multitasking in and of itself is not a problem since anything that responds to interrupts is fundamentally multitasking. Most real time OS/app failures revolve around a failure to respond to some stimulus(interrupt) in time. IOW, can we guarantee that the proc will get the data and produce the proper response in time, every time, in every situation.
There are hundreds of OSs available for embedded apps that have a wide range of features, facilities, and no surprise, response times. Some have disk/file i/o modules, some do virtual memory, some do networking...
None that I know of are called win* or *nix or *nux.
-- Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. - W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Do you want 10 million Dollars?
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Colin+Smith
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The X prize organization is offering 10 million dollars for the first commercial agency that can get 3 people in to orbit and back again safely.
I'm sure anyone who gave NASA flack about this was just uninformed...
10base2 can be used with cable which is quite well shielded, and thus less susceptible to interference. (Of course I'm sure you could build a 10baseT cable with similar properties) and whats the last time you saw a BNC connector's retention mechanism break off? The clips on RJ45 can be kind of fragile. And of course, as the previous poster said, you don't need power, and theres no hub/switch to fail. I believe there are some products which offer protection against disconnections/loss of termination by auto terminating the cables somehow, not sure of the specifics. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-- -------------------------------- Not all who wander, are lost.
Network mistakes? - Maybe on the user end ...
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Bwah
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From what I understand (from people I have talked to who worked on it) all of the critical stuff on the station runs on dedicated real time controllers over MIL-STD-1553 buses. This is hardly a mistake. Maybe they are running NT and ethernet on the user end for non-critical functionality, but no one is dumb enough to try anything like that for safety critical functions.
Besides, trying to use NT for any real time control would never pass any formal qual tests. /dev
-- "There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
No one seems to realise that a manned mission is foolish, if not a big waste of money. Its true you can learn alot from designing systems to support human life, but when you do that you lose the chance to increase the knowledge in AI, and alternative methods to get things done. NASA seems obssesed in "manned" missions. If they want to test their theories out, they can get together with some of the best software and hardware experts, ship them off to different locations on our planet and get them to design robotic systems that can work and adapt to these conditions. Then send a coulpe of the robots on to mars or whatever planet they choose to send them on. I am sure that if they can extract enought fuel from the martian planet to get the astronauts back home, they create enought fuel to propel some small robots for a very long time. Couple this technology with alot of other technology that NASA has been fuxing around with and you can have a network of semi-intelligent robots scouring the planet surface within a maximum of 5 years and collecting more information than any manned mission could ever hope to accomplish in 50 years.
-- Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
People don't seem to realise the capability of AI right now. You see, you don't need "human like" AI to do a scientific mission. In fact, humans cannot gather the sort of information that is needed in any space mission. Did you know that alot of systems practically run themselve right now? and most of the software was based on 5 to 10 year old technology? Trust me, if NASA spent even a fraction of the money that they currently spend on shuttle missions in R&D of AI robotics that can think and react on their own, you would be surprised that we even thought about ever using humans to explore anything. The human mind may be one of the most amazing computer system ever designed, but when it comes to exploration, it has its limits. As we decide to explore furter into space, manned missions would be a waste of time. Robotic probes are the only way to do deep space exploration and research. We may as well start using them now, insteading of waiting till later on.
-- Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
That means, "Not In My Lifetime". Running a manned mission to Mars requires an extraordinary committment in time and resources. At closest point of approach, the distance to Mars is roughly 48 million miles from Earth, or roughly 200 times the distance to the Moon.
Technology, engineering, economics, people, and reality being what they are, such a mission would likely be limited to between 8 and 10 months - 3 to 4 months each way and 2 months on the planet. Much quicker and the expense to travel becomes enormous; much slower and the mission becomes untenable. We'd need to be capable of carrying sufficient food and water, balanced against resouces to recycle waste products. We'd need to be able to land on this planet that has an atmosphere (albeit a thin one) and subsequently lift off of it. Landing is easy; having an adequate launch vehicle on the red planet is not.
'Tis a grand vision, indeed, and would be a truly great journey. I hold little hope for it.
Graham
-- Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
Responses to comments on NIML
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grahamkg
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· Score: 1
Actually, I work with air traffic control R&D, not in the Government directly, but certainly with them. I'm one of those who keeps pushing the system, trying to get something done, AND standing on principles. Occasionally I succeed.
The responses to my original comment were encouraging! However, let me clarify a few things.
Under the aegis of NASA/Congress/et al, I don't think we have the ability to go to Mars. It requires very serious committment, something which Washington doesn't typically support. A mission to Mars cannot be subject to budgetary whims typical of Congress.
Technically, sure, we should be able to do it. Why not? Yes, we've gone to the moon. Going to Mars will be more difficult, but most of the difficult things are already solved, specifically materials science. Geez, if we'd had 450MHz PIIs in the Lunar Module (running real-time Linux, of course), it could have landed itself.
As far as sending a Mars lauch vehicle in advance, I think something such as that would be essential for safety, and could also be sent on a slower trajectory. It could also include living space, lab, et al. If it didn't check out properly after landing, the astronauts turn around at Mars for home a la Apollo XIII, without landing.
It takes grey matter, guts, and good hard/firm/software to go to Mars. Hype and a web site aren't enough.
Graham
-- Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
Houstan we have a probelm - blue screen of death
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doomy
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· Score: 0
Wonder what OS they would use on a Mars mission. Windows 2000? Um.. Windows 2002 + bug fixes and Visual Pack 3. Or would it be Windows Consumer + stablitiy kit (repartitions HD, installs one of the following OSes linux/solaris/*BSD and takes over the system).
What would martians say if they saw the advnaced user interfaces presented in windows 2000? My.. that's wayyyy too bluuuuuee (no wonder they are from the bluuuueee planet) --
-- ...free your source and the rest would follow...
space exploration = new technology
by
Cid+Highwind
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Science is a Good Thing(tm) to spend money on! Would you rather they spent all your tax dollars on continuous and ineffecive bombing in Iraq? Paying for a congressional circus that proved nothing? Funding stupid laws? Buying the NSA new crypto-crackers? A manned (and womaned) mission to mars is the next step forward for us. We landed a man on the moon in 1969. That was 30 years ago! The fact that we haven't already been to mars is mildly pathetic.
I think for such a long trip it's important to have good food. One way to add variety is to have some good beer. I would like to improve my brewing skills and expand general brewing knowledge by experimenting with brewing on Mars. After all, humans will eventually colonize Mars. Might as well start on the right foot....
~afniv "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier" "We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
-- ~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
The wheel on the rover falls off, and the axel gets stuck in the soil. How does AI solve the problem of putting the wheel back on?
My main point is with humans you can decide real time which rocks might reveal the most science and make the most observations.
Again, AI is only a tool. It can help with automation and extending human capabilities. But I've yet to see AI do "exploration" in the true sense of the word.
~afniv "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier" "We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
-- ~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
If this is the stuff they are just starting to do the best is yet to come. I wish I could live forever!! Hey, maybe by the time I'm an old fogie I could transfer my brain to another body!!
(Plug for my project). http://members.xoom.com/Lycadican ************* *******************************
TCP/IP can't be used between Earth and Mars. The time lag is too great - all your packets would be considered to have timed out by the machine on the other end before they got to there.
I guess someone's going to have to come up with a new protocol.
"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
We don't need to waste money...
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Stiletto
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on a manned mission to anywhere. What do they expect to find there?? I could just see the scientists: "Oh look! Another rock!!! and we're spending $10,000 per minute finding it!!" Sheesh.
To the USA: spend the money on more important things.
We don't need to waste money...
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Stiletto
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Absolutely.
What else of use did we find there?
We don't need to waste money...
by
rikkers
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In addition to all the mylar, integrated ciruits, etc. listed above, some of the biggest things to come from the space program has been in the field of medicine. Anything from tools like medical imaging, air tables for burn victums, & various medical sensors, to basic understanding of many biological functions. All came from all that poking and prodding they did to the astronauts for the moon missions. When your trying to solve how to keep humans in space for extended peroids of time you tend to learn a lot.
I am a systems analyst and work at JSC and I helped an engineer convert some animations to Quicktime of the Solar Electric (Ion) Propulsion system ("tug" as mentioned in the article, SEP as we know it, or as we sometimes refer to it as the "batwing" from the way it looks).
Kinda interesting, the SEP slowly spirals up the Mars Transfer Vehicle from a circular orbit to a highly elliptical, high energy orbit. The orbit stays above ~1000mi limit at closest approach until the very end. This is to avoid the space debris at these lower levels. The orbit is then tightened down into this area to rendezvous with the crew taxi.
The crew taxi on this model was a X-38 with an attached booster engine. For those who don't know, the X-38 is the crew return vehicle for the space station. It's a small lifting body shuttle-like vehicle. It has been designed to fit on top of an Airane rocket. Nice to see it reused here.
datazone is completely right. All you engineers and computer nerds have done too good a job. Making a robotic mission will give much much more bang for the buck than trying to life support humans and get them back to Earth.
Speaking of such things, I had to chuckle when I watched "Deep Impact." For the time and money they spent on that manned space ship, they could have sent up enough nukes to vaporize a small state.
This was the cover story for the Feb. edition of Popular Science. This was on the magazine stands a month ago... It's still interesting, but I think most of the/. audience already knew about it at _least_ since last month.
As in many things, the journey is the reward. The whole miniturization trend (tubes to transistors to high-density chips) came out of the sixties space program. You do like your PC, portable CD player, and affordable stereo? These things would not exist if it wasn't for the first space program. They weren't the goal. They were byproducts. We're guaranteed to learn interesting things if this project proceeds.
On another note, it would be great to have a new frontier. It might even kindle a new spirit of hope and cooperation. Anyway its better than just sitting around just selling each other things. (what the world is basically doing now).
i think the old cliche still applies. no buck rogers, no bucks. nasa needs to send humans to make it glamerous enough to make joe sixpack not bitch too much about the cost of it. personally, i think sometimes the human race, just like an individual, needs to do things just so it can say, 'hey! i can do that!' i think a manned mission to mars is a good thing. my two cents worth.
The Space Race is open again...
by
Dilbert_
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Which desktop OS is going to be the first to get to Mars ?
Just curious... does anybody know what the Pathfinder robot was running ?
There's only one permanent way to Mars - via Moon
by
vik
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All these NASA plans for Mars are just one-shot wonders, brought to you by the ones who left footprints in the lunar dust like so much Killroy-was-here political graffiti.
The only way to do it properly is to colonise our Moon first and use the cheaper materials from a shallower gravity well, together with orbital construction, to manufacture large craft, and hit Mars with dozens of people with thousands of tonnes of supplies to estabish a spacefareing colony there.
There is already an organisation which wishes to do this. It is called The Artemis Project and it is pretty much as close as you can get to an Open Source space effort.
I wanna go to.... though I wouldn't want to have a child with anyone else up there! Sorry!
Do computer people ever get to go on these missions? Or just the military/scientist type people?
We don't need to waste money...
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cale
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· Score: 1
Well the spinoff's were/are the biggest things to come from that little mission to the moon. I can only imagine what kind of cool toys we will have as a result of the mission to mars. besides, I like velcro, and kevlar is hugely important (good chunk of my family are cops)
Yeah... and what was the deal with those stupid Apollo missions? What did we ever gain by going to the moon? Excuse me while I go MICROWAVE this burrito...
What's that Chris? You say you want to sail around the world? Don't be silly, you'll only fall off the edge of the earth!
Slashdot Mirror
Woohoo, a Battlestar Galactica referance!
Now if only they'd start showing reruns again on the SciFi channel!
I doubt there really were any. NASA caught some flak when it came out that they were using 10b2 networking and Windows NT. The Windows NT part is understandable, but I can't imagine anyone actually thought they would use something like Linux? Commercial Unix is awfully expensive, especially when we're going to have to pay for all the stuff we were expecing from Russia.
I'm no expert, but I'm guessing the 10b2 decision was made for reasons having to do with the environment up there, maybe because of the shielding or something. NASA's sort of out of date, but they're not that stupid. They must have had a really good reason to take the risk of a network topology that causes a network failure when a cable is cut.
Any of the plans outlined are really awsome. Just the idea of people going to Mars is great. It's hard to imagine what we could learn from 4-6 people spending 500 days on Mars.
Takeoff from the Martian surface is facilitated by the planet's 1/4-Earth gravity. The mission could be accomplished with off-the-shelf technology. Government oversight is the stumbling block.
Frankly, we'd be better off establishing a viable lunar base before going to Mars. There's H3 to be harvested from the regolith, not to mention the very real possibility of ice at the poles. I am well aware that getting *at* the ice poses difficulties, but nothing we couldn't deal with. The whole process could be automated, with ballistic transports returning "ore" to lower latitudes.
Fun to talk about, certainly!
Actually, you sound like the IT manager that turned down my well-deserved raise proposition because of its impossibility.
Look, I know you have a valid point, but you probably think that economics and people, etc. being what they are, you are forced to work in Visual Idiot (oops-- Basic), right?
Come on, there are more motivated people out there.
there was a rather unfortunate typo in the article:
"For each flight, threes stages are Launched separately into Low Earth orbit and assembled there. The crew arrives in a shuttle before the final fright departs. "
=)
A power systems engineer(turbines etc.) told me that, they use their own embedded customized OS for turbine controls. Obiviously, with very limited functions but very high reliability
Stuff the kids. To stand on Olympus Mons (the highest mountain in the solar system) would be worth pretty much any price, even 12 months exposure to high levels of radiation from the journey plus the presumably high levels on Mars (thin atmosphere = low radiation protection), and the (fairly high) chance of not making it back due to accidents etc.
Do you think they'll have any places for a Astrophysics grad. turned telecoms engineer?
Are you saying the trip to the moon was a waste of time, all they found were rocks!
Send RTG's for power. Forget solar cells. Solar cells don't work in a sandstorm.
(RTG = Radiothermal generator. Contains 70 kg or so of Plutonium)
It needs to be integrated into the IETF's work, but there have been people working on just this sort of problem from the point of view of the CCSDS (a group which handles earth-to-space data protocols):
http://www.scps.org
It's not like we'd have to walk to the whole way. Once you leave Earth's orbit you don't really have to fire up the engines again until you get there. And supply needs are no higher than for a space station manned for a similar period.
Furthermore, with technology advances since 1969, a Mars mission would probably be easier AND safer than the Moon mission.
Good article from Reason Magazine:
l
http://www.reasonmag.com/9902/fe.jt.martian.htm
MJP
Money spent on space travel is not wasted. It's an investment in science and technology, both of which have proved vital time and time again.
Human exploration does limit AI because it diverts that could be spent on research to keeping the astronauts alive. Send up fifty Mars Pathfinders and what happens when one of them dies? Nothing because the Pathfinder was cheap and unmanned. What if something goes wrong on a manned mission? You're not only out some extremely expensive hardware, you also have the potential for casualties.
1. Just about every damn thing around your sorry ass was spun off from NASA. Computers, plastics, etc etc.
2. The Apollo program to the moon was peanuts, budgetarily speaking. At the most expensive, it cost 4 cents out of every tax dollar. If there was a checkbox for it, I would gladly give my tax money to space exploration.
Geez, we can't even go back to the Moon, and they're yammering again about Mars. First things first. Mars Last. NASA doesn't have a clue how to do long-duration space missions.
Hell, if NASA would just get the fsck out of the way we'd have tourist trips to Mars before they ever expect to get there. Bigger fsking waste of taxpayers' dollars than the Incredible Shrinking Space Station.
Teflon.
Minature motors.
All that thinsulate goretexy type stuff.
Of course we didnt actully find minature motors on the moon, that would have been well spooky.
Why, I bet you've already used some of his software today.
Not even Linux is reliable for a manned space mission. Not to mention that it needs to be a RTOS! Of course who knows what RTLinux will be like in 2014.
No need to carry extra fuel or launch vehicle. Supposedly, a life-time's amount of food weighs less than fuel and a launch vehicle.
This "crazy" idea was proposed at some convention. The speaker asked the audience how many would be interested in a one-way trip to Mars; almost everyone in the room raised their hand.
They are using wireless stuff by Proxim, to go between the modules, to avoid running cables through hatches, etc...
. idg/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9902/01/space.lan
Well, if you're over 60, it probably won't be in your lifetime. If you are younger than 60, you will see humans land on Mars, and return to Earth. NASA research on bioregenerative life-support systems has been fairly successful, but recent right-wing (read: religious fanatics) driven budget cuts pretty much killed the research. These systems significantly reduce the quantity of food/water/oxygen/etc. you need to take with you.
:)
En-route power can easily be supplied by radiothermal generators. The availablility of sufficient energy for on-board systems isn't an issue. Give them funding and remove the current hiring freeze, and NASA will put people on Mars in less than twenty years.
Launch vehicles: nuclear rockets using Martian water as reaction mass are more than capable of reaching Mars' escape velocity. This isn't even clese to being an insurmountable problem. It's 1960's technology: we know how to do this already. One of the things the remote probes are looking for (and have found): water, in suficient quantity to use as reaction mass for these rockets.
The real problem is the lack of NASA biologists. Nobody is really working on perfecting the long term bioregenerative life-support system. Until we get this absolutely perfect, we can't go to Mars. We can do this, we just need to fund the research. It is important to our future.
Hope I'll see you on Mars.
lets see LOSER the intire integrated circuit industry sprang up as a result of the space program...and that's just for starters...perhaps they should spend my hard earned tax money on welfare recipients (40% of the current budget - "entitlements")...Jim i'll take clues for $200 please...
Just shows the average intelligence of a slashdot reader. This may very well be one of the most important scientific events of the 21st century that we are discussing here - and all you have to say is mention your favorite piece-of-crap OS or flame someone else's favorite OS? Get a clue, you idiots. You are not worthy of the name 'nerd'. Yiu are on the same scale as John Katz in the nerd-world.
I went to a presentation of the Mars Direct plan at Princeton University in the early 90s. What they diplomatically don't tell you in the CNN article is that they also send a nuclear reactor to power the chemical plant that creates the fuel.
I asked the presenter about this - particularly as there was at that time a bug fuss over the launching the plutonium RTG with Galileo. The presenter said that before it was turned on, the reacter only contained uranium, of which there was a gazillion tonnes already in the earth's oceans, so a launch explosion would not be a major environmental issue.
(While this may be true, I expect it would have a significant local effect where the bits landed. Uranium, like all heavy metals, is very toxic.)
It's from the January edition of Pop Sci. I saw this article sometime in Dec (I have a subscription). I agree with you that NASA should do something with that web site. I think it would add more credibility to the idea of going to Mars if NASA was to talk about it themselves, as opposed to through another party.
Actually, I think both Mars Direct and the NASA reference mission plan on sending a new crew every two years. Did you read the part about the second living quarters being hooked to the first?
Etc, etc.
Look, at this time we've been building fairly accurate ballistic missiles for over 50 years. The USA went from its first manned mission to a series of manned landings on the Moon in *8* years. We've been landing unmanned probes on Mars over a period of more than two decades. It just isn't that hard.
Any claim that it is impossible runs up against a mountain of evidence that the technical problems were solved long ago. The biggest problem is that any manned space mission is viewed as a huge money trough, and dozens of pols will hold the program hostage until they get enough for themselves and their backers. This is why the cost balloons out of sight when NASA does anything; it's the democratic version of graft. Hell, you can even kill people with your product and NASA, under pressure from the pols, will keep buying it.
The pathetic little Sojourner probe investigated half a dozen rocks in several days, and got stuck and had to be un-stuck. It learned very little. One person in a suit carrying a rock hammer could have investigated as much as Sojourner in about twenty minutes, and kept it up for an 8-hour day. After a few days of this, said person could evaluate the stuff collected thus far and decide what to look at next. With tools as simple as a pickaxe and a handcart, that "what" could be several feet down, some miles away, or both. Add a Mars truck a la Zubrin, and the "what" extends to hundreds of miles and as deep as your drills can penetrate. We're well past what unmanned craft can handle. People are the only available investigators for the next step. And, of course, only people can create a new human society on a new planet.
Getting off Mars is far easier than getting off Earth. We've solved the Earth problem. We can prove we've solved the difference in details between Mars and Earth by doing a sample return mission using the same technology intended for the manned mission.
Dude, you need to learn more. Just seeing what's already been done would change your tune.
Answers to questions about the origins of the Moon, and thus Earth. The history of our Solar system.
Life may have originated on Mars and come to Earth on a meteroid. Or there may never have been life on Mars. Either way, it is important to know, because the two most momentous questions you can ask are "Where did I come from?" and "Am I alone?"
How exactly is NASA a monopoly? The competition that it has is limited to other government funded agencies (Russia). NASA isn't showing any characteristics of a monopoly. The reason there isn't very much competition in the space industry is because of the abnormally high costs of operation in space.
In the 1960s, when the USSR was heavily competitive in space research, NASA improved the technology by leaps and bounds. Don't blame NASA because the old Soviet Union collapsed and are no longer a threat to thier dominence in the space industry.
They haven't locked anyone out who have been serious about space exploration. Thier main competiter killed itself!!
I understand the /. community's reaction to the Space Station's network, but you need to understand a few things I learned when working with the folks at NASA Johnson Space Center as a Sun Network Ambassador a few years ago:
1. It takes a LONG time to build complex aerospace products like the space station. Generally, the design is frozen 5-10 years before first flight. The schedule was compressed for the Space Station (mostly due to the numerous downsizings/redesigns to reflect the realities of lower than expected budgets and political support, both in Congress and in foreign countries, especially Russia.)
2. NASA delayed the network until as late as they could in the design process. When they made the selection, the primary concerns were reliablity, robustness, interoperability and low cost. 10Base2 is actually a pretty good choice in that regard, and a coax-based network is more noise-immune and damage tolerant (not to mention cheaper than) twisted pair or fiber optics. There are high-speed, really cool multimedia-capable networks between the station and the ground (you wanna talk old - that team insisted on VME chassis gear, but wanted low weight, volume and heat dissipation - go figure), and that's where NASA put their network money. It's unlikely they'll need a whole lot more than 10 mbps internally the way things are laid out.
3. Calm down, Unix bigots (I can say that, I'm one, too) - I can tell you that astronauts are pretty sharp folks - most all of them know their way around Unix and serious scientific computing, and they realize as well as any of us the weaknesses of NT. Blame it on Dan Goldin, who decreed for political reasons several years back that NT was NASA's "standard" OS, and "deviations" (gee, now we're deviants!) must be approved on a case-by-case basis. This has led NASA to spend much more on IT than it really needs to, because critical systems based on NT must be backed-up by robust Unix-based systems. The serious computing on the Shuttle is done by portable SPARCstations (obsolete but flight-qualified Panasonics) and IBM ThinkPad laptops, both running Solaris. Without going into gory details, the astronauts have at times actually been fearful for their lives due to the repeated crashing of NT-based systems in Mission Control. They instituted their own crash program (pun intended) to put these critical systems onto the laptops so that they were no longer reliant on Mission Control in the event of NT bluescreens.
Understand that Flight-Qualified networks will always be at LEAST one generation behind what's in common use just due to the lag time in designing and building these things. Add another generation because they want proven, readily available technology, and that's exactly where they are.
The latest whiz-bang Fibre Channel or IEEE 1355 network would not necessarily be "appropriate technology" for a space station.
So were there mistakes in the network? Probably not, and I say that even though I had no hand in the selection, but I do understand their thinking. (BTW - the standard display on the station is 640x480x256! I had a hard time finding them an S-bus frame buffer that could deal with that antiquated resolution for one of the station subsystem prototypes! I think NASA bought a few dozen so they would be set for EOL on these things...
Dub Dublin
dub@psw.com
The Mars Society was mentioned in this article. Check out it's website at www.marssociety.org.
KaOs
You're implying that I have a choice. I don't. If I do not voluntarily contribute to Socialist Security, men with guns will force me to do so. So, yes, I will become a "welfare recipient" whether I like it or not.
They were talking about a nuclear reactor, not an RTG. (Remember we are talking about creating tonnes of rocket fuel, not powering some scientific instruments and a transmitter.) Possibly they can use the same fuel pellet encasing technology in a reactor as an RTG, in which case it wouldn't make much difference, but I don't know.
Of course, shielding for a reactor is very heavy. The proposed solution? Put the reactor on wheels with no shielding, and on landing, it drives away from the ship trailing a power cable to a safe distance.
Although it will require a larger initial investment, going to Mars via the Moon -- specifically, by building a refueling base supplied by lunar pole water -- would make long-term large-scale Mars exploration cheaper and less hairy.
Lifting fuel to orbit from Earth is really, really, expensive. Getting Hydrogen, or Hydrogen and Oxygen, from the Moon could be a lot cheaper.
The minimum estimate amount of Moon water could provide fuel for several thousand "fast" trips to Mars using _very_ large ships.
Necessaries: The water has to be there, and be plentiful and easily extracted. Methods to haul it to orbit (and store it, and break it down) must be developed, and the hardware created and delivered.
Everyone who talks about a manned mission to mas as though it will be some profound scentific achievement. True, our ability to set foot on the surfact of another planet millions of miles away is indeed a testament to the scientific and technical acheivements of mankind. But the real issue here isn't a scientific accomplishment. There's probably precious little to discover on Mars other than practical knowledge needed for survival on Mars.
The real reason for going to Mars is what it will do for humanity. Once again there will be a frontier, like the era of colonization of the New World. If we can colonize and inhabit Mars, and spread our civilization to other parts of the universe, that will be a more profound accomplishment than any mere scientific advance.
Or 300 years ago... Same difference ;)
The argument that space exploration is valuable is fueled by watching too much Star Trek and fetishization the military-industrial complex.
Every day the San Francisco bay area has 50 mile long traffic jams, for which there is no plan to do anything. Yet now we've got a plan to drive a buggy around on Mars. Excellent.
*posted by Roger 'Darkseid-[D!]*
.. the cold war space race all over again.
Thinks back a few decades, then back a few centuries
ok, now you have some sense of history ponder this
They said the world was flat and you'd sail off its edge
Now it you said to those same people we could fly from the UK to the US in under 2 hours they'd call you crazy.
Are we crazy, no when the technology available didnt do what we wanted, we created something new.
This is what I forsee will happen with the space race, _someone_ will come up with a new technology or use an exsisting one in an unexpected way and the next step...
However NASA needs to learn to walk again before trying to run. A longer term moonbase would be a better idea than leaping for mars. (that is if you dont believe the conspiracy theorists who maintain theyve had one since the 60's).
Also I have a feeling that within the next decade NASA / ESA will have competition from PRCSA, or those not into acronyms, Peoples Republic of China. Their very size and population count make them obvious contenders....
That could be a good thing, the West vs the 'Commie' East
Darkseid-[D!]
www.captured.com/boomstick
Except for one thing: China can barely feed its people. They can't even keep their military in good shape. If we entered into another "Space Race" with China, it would be nothing like the "Space Race" with the USSR... We'd be sure to win.
check out http://station.nasa.gov/mars/
While it would be desirable to limit the travel and mission times, it's not really feasable. Assuming a six month travel time (if you leave at the optimal time,) you'll be six months FARTHER AWAY from earth by the time you get there. Assuming a two month mission, your return trip is now 12 months (you've gone past the point at which earth and mars are furthest apart.)
The biggest thing to avoid in a long duration mission is exposure to radiation. Since the greatest amount of radiation is absorbed while in deep space, we want to reduce this time. The best way to do this, is to stay on mars longer.
Check out Zubrin's book. It's pretty good.
Keep in mind that my estimates for travel time are rough numbers I pulled out of my ass. I'm no expert. I just read Zubrin's book, thought it was pretty cool, and am trying to remember pieces from when I read it. No flaming! Please! I can't take it!
Sheesh.
If our money is going to be forcibly taken from us, the two best things that can be done with it are the military and scientific research. And we can't have enough of either.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
I can't belive I'm first to offer to go! (No, not first post dummy)
I've got in mind a couple different females with a technical bent who I could try to talk into going with me. There is no true geek out there that wouldn't want to brag "My kid was born on Mars!" I think that will be the biggest achivment, getting people born up there. Soon were on our way to a perminate colony.
Personally I don't belive life will be found on mars, other then life we bring from earth. I could be wrong though.
So, I'm open to either group if they need more people to go.
Looks like two different groups will land people on mars the same year. Good for them, I hope both groups try ot out do each other, and in the end both have people on Mars at the same time.
If that happens, some advice: Agree that if one group has problems all compitition is off, both coopoerate to solve the problem. This is on mars of course. What I'm getting at is if one group loses both habitation modules, agree to live togather (very crowded) as best you can. If it turns out that both groups have problems mineing fuel, agree to share what cuelf you have made, so that some people stay for 4 extra years until a rescue mission can be launched, and the other group goes. In the case that one group can't return as planed, agree to get those who have had the most problems (health or personal) off of Mars first even if it means one entire group goes up in the other's rocket. There are more ways to cooperate, agree in an emergency the priority for both groups is solving it for whichever group has the problem.
When there isn't an emergency, compete at all costs. Don't let the other group out do you! Work long and hard to make the biggest best modules (NASA which is planning bigger ones) or the largest rockets (other group) Compete to get the best people for the job, the best test equipment.
The integrated circuit industry growth was much more closely tied to military research, rather than NASA research. Admittedly, there's overlap between ICBMs and Saturn Vs, but it really was more a result of keeping the Reds at bay than achieving "One small step for a man..."
I'd rather have a cure for cancer, AIDS, paralysis and/or Alzheimer's than a couple of people dancing on the surface of Mars.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Perhaps, but in the end we'd still have a moonbase, where we could build telescopes that would put the Hubble to shame, launch other planetary probes, etc.
Don't send up Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, though, I don't want that nuclear dump exploding and...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I thought the Mars project was always being considered. The space station was eventually supposed to turn into an assembly point for building interplanetary spacecraft in space.
Even DOS has too much baggage. Multitasking in and of itself is not a problem since anything that responds to interrupts is fundamentally multitasking. Most real time OS/app failures revolve around a failure to respond to some stimulus(interrupt) in time. IOW, can we guarantee that the proc will get the data and produce the proper response in time, every time, in every situation.
There are hundreds of OSs available for embedded apps that have a wide range of features, facilities, and no surprise, response times. Some have disk/file i/o modules, some do virtual memory, some do networking...
None that I know of are called win* or *nix or *nux.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
The X prize organization is offering 10 million dollars for the first commercial agency that can get 3 people in to orbit and back again safely.
http://www.xprize.org/
Deleted
I'm sure anyone who gave NASA flack about this was just uninformed...
10base2 can be used with cable which is quite well shielded, and thus less susceptible to interference. (Of course I'm sure you could build a 10baseT cable with similar properties) and whats the last time you saw a BNC connector's retention mechanism break off? The clips on RJ45 can be kind of fragile. And of course, as the previous poster said, you don't need power, and theres no hub/switch to fail. I believe there are some products which offer protection against disconnections/loss of termination by auto terminating the cables somehow, not sure of the specifics.
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Not all who wander, are lost.
From what I understand (from people I have talked to who worked on it) all of the critical stuff on the station runs on dedicated real time controllers over MIL-STD-1553 buses. This is hardly a mistake. Maybe they are running NT and ethernet on the user end for non-critical functionality, but no one is dumb enough to try anything like that for safety critical functions.
Besides, trying to use NT for any real time control would never pass any formal qual tests.
/dev
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
Stop the madness!!!
Keep PC OSes out of rt apps!!!
blatant RTEMS plug.
/dev
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
No one seems to realise that a manned mission is foolish, if not a big waste of money. Its true you can learn alot from designing systems to support human life, but when you do that you lose the chance to increase the knowledge in AI, and alternative methods to get things done. NASA seems obssesed in "manned" missions. If they want to test their theories out, they can get together with some of the best software and hardware experts, ship them off to different locations on our planet and get them to design robotic systems that can work and adapt to these conditions. Then send a coulpe of the robots on to mars or whatever planet they choose to send them on. I am sure that if they can extract enought fuel from the martian planet to get the astronauts back home, they create enought fuel to propel some small robots for a very long time. Couple this technology with alot of other technology that NASA has been fuxing around with and you can have a network of semi-intelligent robots scouring the planet surface within a maximum of 5 years and collecting more information than any manned mission could ever hope to accomplish in 50 years.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Thats why its called AI!
fool....
People don't seem to realise the capability of AI right now. You see, you don't need "human like" AI to do a scientific mission. In fact, humans cannot gather the sort of information that is needed in any space mission. Did you know that alot of systems practically run themselve right now? and most of the software was based on 5 to 10 year old technology? Trust me, if NASA spent even a fraction of the money that they currently spend on shuttle missions in R&D of AI robotics that can think and react on their own, you would be surprised that we even thought about ever using humans to explore anything. The human mind may be one of the most amazing computer system ever designed, but when it comes to exploration, it has its limits. As we decide to explore furter into space, manned missions would be a waste of time. Robotic probes are the only way to do deep space exploration and research. We may as well start using them now, insteading of waiting till later on.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Technology, engineering, economics, people, and reality being what they are, such a mission would likely be limited to between 8 and 10 months - 3 to 4 months each way and 2 months on the planet. Much quicker and the expense to travel becomes enormous; much slower and the mission becomes untenable. We'd need to be capable of carrying sufficient food and water, balanced against resouces to recycle waste products. We'd need to be able to land on this planet that has an atmosphere (albeit a thin one) and subsequently lift off of it. Landing is easy; having an adequate launch vehicle on the red planet is not.
'Tis a grand vision, indeed, and would be a truly great journey. I hold little hope for it.
Graham
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
The responses to my original comment were encouraging! However, let me clarify a few things.
Under the aegis of NASA/Congress/et al, I don't think we have the ability to go to Mars. It requires very serious committment, something which Washington doesn't typically support. A mission to Mars cannot be subject to budgetary whims typical of Congress.
Technically, sure, we should be able to do it. Why not? Yes, we've gone to the moon. Going to Mars will be more difficult, but most of the difficult things are already solved, specifically materials science. Geez, if we'd had 450MHz PIIs in the Lunar Module (running real-time Linux, of course), it could have landed itself.
As far as sending a Mars lauch vehicle in advance, I think something such as that would be essential for safety, and could also be sent on a slower trajectory. It could also include living space, lab, et al. If it didn't check out properly after landing, the astronauts turn around at Mars for home a la Apollo XIII, without landing.
It takes grey matter, guts, and good hard/firm/software to go to Mars. Hype and a web site aren't enough.
Graham
Graham
Linux - Fast Pane Relief
Wonder what OS they would use on a Mars mission. Windows 2000? Um.. Windows 2002 + bug fixes and Visual Pack 3. Or would it be Windows Consumer + stablitiy kit (repartitions HD, installs one of the following OSes linux/solaris/*BSD and takes over the system).
What would martians say if they saw the advnaced user interfaces presented in windows 2000? My.. that's wayyyy too bluuuuuee (no wonder they are from the bluuuueee planet)
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Science is a Good Thing(tm) to spend money on! Would you rather they spent all your tax dollars on continuous and ineffecive bombing in Iraq? Paying for a congressional circus that proved nothing? Funding stupid laws? Buying the NSA new crypto-crackers? A manned (and womaned) mission to mars is the next step forward for us. We landed a man on the moon in 1969. That was 30 years ago! The fact that we haven't already been to mars is mildly pathetic.
0 1 - just my two bits
I think for such a long trip it's important to have good food. One way to add variety is to have some good beer. I would like to improve my brewing skills and expand general brewing knowledge by experimenting with brewing on Mars. After all, humans will eventually colonize Mars. Might as well start on the right foot....
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
The wheel on the rover falls off, and the axel gets stuck in the soil. How does AI solve the problem of putting the wheel back on?
My main point is with humans you can decide real time which rocks might reveal the most science and make the most observations.
Again, AI is only a tool. It can help with automation and extending human capabilities. But I've yet to see AI do "exploration" in the true sense of the word.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
If this is the stuff they are just starting to do
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the best is yet to come. I wish I could live forever!! Hey, maybe by the time I'm an old fogie I could transfer my brain to another body!!
(Plug for my project).
http://members.xoom.com/Lycadican
************
I didn't see anyone else mention it, so...
TCP/IP can't be used between Earth and Mars. The time lag is too great - all your packets would be considered to have timed out by the machine on the other end before they got to there.
I guess someone's going to have to come up with a new protocol.
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"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
on a manned mission to anywhere. What do they expect to find there?? I could just see the scientists: "Oh look! Another rock!!! and we're spending $10,000 per minute finding it!!" Sheesh.
To the USA: spend the money on more important things.
Absolutely.
What else of use did we find there?
In addition to all the mylar, integrated ciruits, etc. listed above, some of the biggest things to come from the space program has been in the field of medicine. Anything from tools like medical imaging, air tables for burn victums, & various medical sensors, to basic understanding of many biological functions. All came from all that poking and prodding they did to the astronauts for the moon missions. When your trying to solve how to keep humans in space for extended peroids of time you tend to learn a lot.
Kinda interesting, the SEP slowly spirals up the Mars Transfer Vehicle from a circular orbit to a highly elliptical, high energy orbit. The orbit stays above ~1000mi limit at closest approach until the very end. This is to avoid the space debris at these lower levels. The orbit is then tightened down into this area to rendezvous with the crew taxi.
The crew taxi on this model was a X-38 with an attached booster engine. For those who don't know, the X-38 is the crew return vehicle for the space station. It's a small lifting body shuttle-like vehicle. It has been designed to fit on top of an Airane rocket. Nice to see it reused here.
datazone is completely right. All you engineers and computer nerds have done too good a job. Making a robotic mission will give much much more bang for the buck than trying to life support humans and get them back to Earth.
Speaking of such things, I had to chuckle when I watched "Deep Impact." For the time and money they spent on that manned space ship, they could have sent up enough nukes to vaporize a small state.
Ehh, what network mistakes did they make on the Space Station?
This was the cover story for the Feb. edition of Popular Science. This was on the magazine stands a month ago... /. audience already knew about it at _least_ since last month.
It's still interesting, but I think most of the
As in many things, the journey is the reward. The whole miniturization trend (tubes to transistors to high-density chips) came out of the sixties space program. You do like your PC, portable CD player, and affordable stereo? These things would not exist if it wasn't for the first space program. They weren't the goal. They were byproducts. We're guaranteed to learn interesting things if this project proceeds.
On another note, it would be great to have a new frontier. It might even kindle a new spirit of hope and cooperation. Anyway its better than just sitting around just selling each other things. (what the world is basically doing now).
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
NASA seems obssesed in "manned" missions.
i think the old cliche still applies. no buck rogers, no bucks. nasa needs to send humans to make it glamerous enough to make joe sixpack not bitch too much about the cost of it. personally, i think sometimes the human race, just like an individual, needs to do things just so it can say, 'hey! i can do that!' i think a manned mission to mars is a good thing. my two cents worth.
Which desktop OS is going to be the first to get to Mars ?
Just curious... does anybody know what the Pathfinder robot was running ?
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
The only way to do it properly is to colonise our Moon first and use the cheaper materials from a shallower gravity well, together with orbital construction, to manufacture large craft, and hit Mars with dozens of people with thousands of tonnes of supplies to estabish a spacefareing colony there.
There is already an organisation which wishes to do this. It is called The Artemis Project and it is pretty much as close as you can get to an Open Source space effort.
Vik :v)
I wanna go to .... though I wouldn't want to have a child with anyone else up there! Sorry!
Do computer people ever get to go on these missions? Or just the military/scientist type people?
Well the spinoff's were/are the biggest things to come from that little mission to the moon. I can only imagine what kind of cool toys we will have as a result of the mission to mars. besides, I like velcro, and kevlar is hugely important (good chunk of my family are cops)
Yeah... and what was the deal with those stupid Apollo missions? What did we ever gain by going to the moon? Excuse me while I go MICROWAVE this burrito...
What's that Chris? You say you want to sail around the world? Don't be silly, you'll only fall off the edge of the earth!
Most sigs are dumb. This is one of them.