I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this point. I feel that exploring space is key to the future of the human race, and that technologies developed in the exploration of space have great uses in terrestrial life.
I agree that we'll probably not agree, but I think that most of the spin-off benefits of space travel will be produced by unmanned space travel.
Let's assume for a minute that Phoenix can explore an area of 10 square meters. Let's also assume that you can get 500 missions for the cost of 5 manned missions. Let's also assume that, with the help of a pressurized rover, the manned missions have an effective range of 1000km (possible, there are cars that can go that far). This means that the probes can explore 5000 square meters, or 5 square kilometers. The manned missions can explore 5 x 3.14 x 1000km x 1000km (5 times pi times radius squared). The manned missions have an effective exploration area of 1.5 million square km, or about 300,000 times the area of the probes. Of course, that assumes that all they do is drive around. However, I think that each mission is capable of exploring both geologically and archeobiologically 10 square km (50 km^2 total), meaning that they still have 10 times the effective exploration capacity of 500 Phoenix missions. The very fact that the human crews can travel to newer and more interesting places as opposed to waiting six months for another mission to get there and having the added risks of 500 launches.
To an extent, yes I have to agree, a group of people can probably go further than a single probe. (We have too little evidence to say how far a rover could go, Lunokhod 2 holds the record at 37km). However, the numbers are still on my side.
If I may use an analogy.
We send some people to Mars. They touch down in one location and rove around it. Now they won't be able to risk the truly treacherous terrain, so they'll land somewhere flat.
It would be like sending a group of backpackers to - ummm let me see, Wichita, Kansas. A nice place I'm sure. We'll give our backpackers regional bus passes (no cars allowed, they have to return to the motel (read the landing site) to sleep, refuel and so on). Our backpackers can go out each day and learn all there is to know about Wichita and the surrounding region, but they are tied to the landing site. They can learn a lot about Wichita - but not much about the rest of Mars. If Wichita turns out to be very dull, tough, you're committed to learning all there is to know about the prairie.
Now my 150 Pathfinders, for which I will substitute 150 backpackers which I will drop all over America. Some of them will land in dull places, but some will land in interesting places. I can afford to drop some of them in treacherous places such as the polar caps and the canyons (which are inaccessible to manned missions) since a: I know I have more, and b: I don't care if I lose a few (sorry, I'm heartless like that). Each backpacker can only report back on their immediate surroundings, so some of them will be VERY dull, but some will find out something interesting.
So what is the result? I could have learned a lot about Wichita - which may or may not be an interesting location, or I could learn smaller amounts from 150 widely spaced locations right across the United States.
I think the big picture would be more interesting.
The rovers on Mars have always been so incredibly limited in what they could do because they have little power, and very little time to do what they want before dust covers over the solar panels or the batteries just fundamentally bite it from the extreme cold swings.
We have put one - count it - one rover on Mars, and that is it. For experience of long-term rover operation, you have to look at the Soviet Lunokhod remotely operated vehicles which trundled round the Moon in 1970 and 1973 respectively. Lunokhod 1 operated for 11 months, rolled over 10km and conducted over 500 soil tests. Lunokhod 2 worked for only 4 months but covered over 37km.
Yes there are problems with dust getting into mechanisms and onto solar collectors, but they're probably less difficult to resolve than the problem of keeping men alive on Mars.
Oh, please. Name one person who's ever died from space radiation exposure. Oh - wait - you can't. Is it bad? Yes. Would you have to take precautions? Sure, of course. Is it tremendously more dangerous than being on a nuclear submarine? Not really.
Ahem, no one has been outside the Earth's magnetosphere for long periods, so they haven't been exposed to the energy of the Sun. You can't expect to see symptoms of acute radiation exposure.
As for the radiation risk, most estimates put it at 50 rem for a mission to Mars. The maximum dose permitted for members of the public (excluding those receiving radiotherapy) is 170 millirem. A person living in the area of Chernobyl during the explosion and fire would have received around 43 000 millirem - still less than a Mars mission.
Then the emporer died. The bureaucrats though he had wasted funds on a folly of an idea (exploration) when more important things needed to be done at home, like irrigation projects. They ordered the fleets destroyed just as they were about to enter the Mediterranean, and China was subjugated by Europeans who had the will to explore and the courage to accept the risks.
Perhaps Zubrin should read his history a little more carefully before extrapolating from it. China was not overrun as a direct consequence of failing to explore the World. Its descent from a pre-eminent power started in the late Qing Dynasty which was in 1840. China had become decentralised, its bureaucracy was corrupt and their was a prevalent belief in an impending apocalypse. Note the lack of international reasons for a decline in Chinese power - these were internal structural problems. China had been through them before - but this time there was a difference...
China ran up against the newly emergent European superpowers, who were expanding their influence in the region. Britain was a more powerful country - China declined.
Zubrin's example is doubly flawed in that he extrapolates from a situation (albeit badly) where there is a clear winner and a clear loser to a situation where it is impossible to see what could be gained. Mars could never be an economic benefit to Earth, it has nothing of use, its too far away and its too hostile.
Material hyper efficient fuel cells and computers, inexpensive access to fusionable materials, and cheap metals and chemicals are all available in space.
None of them are on Mars, none of them require manned exploration, many of them probably don't even require space travel. Cheap metals are available on Earth (commodities and bulk chemicals are continuing to fall in price). There is nothing out there that we need to grab.
Saying we've got to go and get it when we have no need nor any conceivable need for it (whatever it is) is the economics of the British Empire (or more recently, the Pentagon). It's always someone else's money after all.
Why do I bring this up? Because it's ideas like yours that poison exploratory programs. Instead of grand gestures, you want small cheap steps. You speak of needs at home when they can be solved by innovating for the world.
And its that attitude of the seizing the Last Frontier that has produced white elephant after white elephant, whether it is the Shuttle, Concorde, BAM, NMD, fast breeder reactors - you name it. People are so busy convincing themselves that these things will be vital in the future, they forget to ask one question - why?
We simply have to want it enough.
Easy question then? Why do you want to send humans to Mars?
What if they could make all the air and fuel they'd ever need? Mars Direct calls for the production of methane, oxygen and water on Mars, as opposed to taking it all with us. The exploration of the world would probably never had happened if they had to bring everything they needed with them.
Fortunately, they could be pretty sure that they would have fresh air, water and food in the New World. None of those are found on Mars, you are reliant on the technology you bring with you to keep you alive.
The amount of radiation, barring a solar flare or coronal mass ejection is well within tolerable limits. Russians have spent years in orbit, and though they were not able to function, we're only talking about three months tops. This is, of course, not including the possibility of using a tether to create gravity. And the environment on Mars is much more temperate and friendly than the environment on the moon, and we've been to the moon.
Not the same at all. The Soviet long endurance records all took place within the Earth's magnetosphere where they were protected from the majority of solar radition. The Apollo missions were so short that they are hard to extrapolate from and they all took place during times of low solar activity.
Mars astronauts would be exposed to solar radiation both during the transit to Mars and whilst on the surface.
If we only did what was easy, none of us would get out of bed in the morning.
There is a difference between doing something worthwhile that is hard and something that is pointless and hard. IMHO exploring Mars is firmly in the latter category.
Even if we TRIPLE the cost of the proposed plan, it's still less than what we just spent on a war. ($150 billion.) And that gives five 1.5 year missions covering thousands of square km of the surface, establishing outposts, making discoveries, and learning about how to survive there.
So for $50 billion I could get 150 Phoenix missions (probably more once mass production cuts in), explore vastly more of Mars, land in places that are too risky for manned missions, spend far longer looking and not risk anyone's lives.
I think they should really be shooting towards a manned mission. Having actual people on the ship makes mission completion that much more important. Do you really think they would have tried that hard to get Apollo 13 back to earth if there was no people on it? Apart from spontaneous shuttle explosions such as columbia and challenger, they would do everything they could to make sure the mission was a success.
That's thinking backwards. If you don't have astronauts to worry about you don't have to worry about the mission succeeding come what may. You do everything you can to make the mission a success - but if it doesn't - oh well, switch it off, learn a lesson and do it again.
The simple economics are in favour of unmanned missions, Phoenix will travel to Mars, touch down on another World, and perform useful science for less than half the cost of a single Shuttle launch to take water to the white elephant currently circling the planet.
Yes let's have more exploration, but let's leave Roger Ramjet back on Earth. The manned space programme has been a drain on America's coffers and NASA's resources for far too long. It's time to put it to rest.
There are countless plans to go to Mars. I remember the talk about Bush saying we would go to Mars by 2015 or 2020 and the ensuing discussion about if it was possible. I think it would be if we put the same amount of effort in to it as the Apollo missions. But when we go to Mars, I want us to go to colonize, not visit once and leave. In order for that to happen we need to make it cheap enough to send tens of thousands of people to Mars with the equipment to survive there their entire lives. I don't know of any plans to do that in my life time, but I'm keeping my eye out for it.
Why? What is there that we can't have better and cheaper on Earth? Mars is a rock, frozen day and night, baked by solar radiation; its atmosphere, what little there is of it, is poisonous, the soil is just plain weird - why would we want to live there? It would make Antarctica look appealing.
Back here in the Sol system we'd set up a big solar collector that would focus a laser at the ship, pushing and powering it all the way to nearby stars.
And how much would this cost? When the US is tanking a $400 billion deficit this year and every other country is running c. 3% fiscal deficits who would pick up the bill.
Perhaps a tiny fraction of the expenditure you are calling for would be better spent on reducing our addiction to fossil fuels which is going to end up killing us. Not as sexy as going to the stars, but it is one real problem that we have to confront now - the stars will always be there waiting for us, a habitable world back here on Earth might not be.
However, they are still hampered by the fact that they are essentially "dumb" implements. They can't say, by themselves anyway, "Hey, that mountain over there looks like a good place to look for fossils. Let's hop in the rover and go take a look." No, they have to wait for human operators to decide for them, then tell them exactly how to get there, all with a 40 minute round trip communication time. Most of the time in a robotic Mars mission is spent sitting on the surface, waiting for orders.
And they could sit there for months or years whilst we make up our minds. Not like the astronauts who would be dependent on their air supply. The lunar explorations were always curtailed by the fragility of the men.
Point to the robots I think.
Humans can, should, and will go to Mars. Hopefully in my lifetime, but definitely in my children's. Anyone who's read The Case for Mars knows how easy and cheap it can be.
It's a sales book, of course it says it will be cheap. My Windows XP manual told me that my life would be much easier after installation. Experience of all high tech projects shows the opposite.
Someone once said "Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere." We've been halfway to Mars for almost 50 years. Let's get there.
We've done the easy bit. We haven't done the bit that involves spending months in microgravity, slowly cooking in solar radiation before attempting to live on a planet with a radically different environment.
We really need to leave this planet someday. Not tomorrow, but better be prepared to leave, coz neither will the earth nor the solarsystem last forever.:-)
Even the most pessimistic predictions of Earth's habitability give it another 1 billion years before the Sun's ever increasing energy output cooks the oceans. 1 billion years is a long time; 1 billion years ago there were no multicellular organisms on the planet. Almost certainly there is not a species alive today that existed a billion years ago.
Why should we be different?
And let's not bother with the asteroid problem, we could deflect any asteroid threatening Earth at a fraction of the cost of a manned mission to Mars.
And even if we went there, what is waiting? A bitterly cold, frozen, toxic, radiation baked, airless ball of rock.
There is nothing out there waiting for us. Earth is all we've got, perhaps we should look after it? If anyone goes to Mars it will be a political stunt, like the rest of the manned space program. It will be the quickest way of burning billions of Dollars for no conceivable gain yet imagined.
Phoenix was chosen ahead of a sample return mission. I haven't seen what the exact reason was, but I imagine the tight $325 million cap would have precluded a viable sample return mission.
ESA is thinking about a sample return mission at some point around 2011, but funding really depends on the success of Mars Express/Beagle 2.
I hope all of the probes make the journey in one piece.
Amen to that, we've had amazing luck so far. So let's wish all well - although since I'm over the road from the Beagle 2 team, I have to wish them a little bit more luck than the others.
Anyone know how "spread out" these probes are supposed to land? I hope that at least one is aimed at one of the polar regions.
They're all aimed at low latitudes close to the Equator. For them to reach the poles takes a fancy flightpath and a bit more fuel. It also adds an extra element of risk. For Beagle 2, simple weight constraints precludes anything other than an equatorial landing site, for the other two, NASA want to play things nice and safe.
The approximate landing locations are:
Beagle 2 : Isidis Basin, an ellipse centred around 270E, 10.5N, which places it East of Syrtis Major and North of Libya Montes. Landing 25th December 2003, although confirmation will not be made until the 26th.
MER 1, Gusev Crater, 175E, 14.5S. Landing 5th January 2004.
MER 2, Meridiani, around 355E, 2S. Landing 25th January 2004.
So as you can see, they are well spread out around the central region.
The other two craft, Mars Express and Nozomi are orbiters.
I was wondering the same thing. I mean I just don't see the connection:-) I suppose it must have to do with the angle, since as many other posters have pointed out, the Southern Hemisphere (and Austrailia was specificly mentioned) would have the best viewing. However, I think that is quite a reach to OCAU.
Essentially you want to minimise the amount of energy you need to send a probe away from the planet. You are quite right about needing most energy to climb away from Earth, but you then need additional energy to escape Earth's gravity and place the craft on a trajectory to encounter Mars.
These trajectories are known as transfer orbits. The most fuel efficient transfer orbits are known as Hohmann orbits. A Hohmann orbit describes an ellipse whose major axis touches the orbits of the two planets at a tangent.
So imagine Earth and Mars' orbit as seen from above - Earth inside, Mars outside. The transfer orbit forms an ellipse, one end touching the position of Earth at the time the rocket is launched; the other end touching the Martian orbit at the point where Mars will be located when the probe arrives. The spacecraft follows the path of the orbit to Mars, but does not make a total orbit back to the starting point.
Hohmann orbits are possible between the Earth and Mars every 26 months or so during times when Mars and Earth come closest (so called opposition). These form the launch windows - dates during which a spacecraft can follow a Hohmann trajectory between the two planets.
It is possible to follow a non-Hohmann orbit between planets, but only at the expense of vastly more energy.
The current flotilla to Mars is exceptionally large (4 craft - 3 if you exclude Nozomi, which should have been there last opposition), but it is not the largest. In 1971, the Soviet Union launched three craft to Mars, the United States 2. On the Soviet side, one became trapped in Earth orbit and was quietly renamed Kosmos 419. Of the other two, they both reached Mars; Mars 2 was DOA, Mars 3 became the first craft to touch down on Mars, began transmissions, and heartbreakingly failed after 20 seconds. For the Americans, Mariner 8 failed to reach orbit, but that was made up for by the astonishing success of Mariner 9, the first craft to orbit Mars.
Again in 1973, the Soviet Union launched four spacecraft to Mars (America sat this one out). Mars 4, its retro engine failed to fire and it did not enter Martian orbit, Mars 5 - a success and returned the first colour images of the planet, Mars 6 - a lander, failed about 20 seconds before touchdown and Mars 7 - another lander, lost its orientation and missed Mars entirely!
I hope that all helps and you're not regretting asking!
For all of you out there that know more than I about the hardware needed, distances involved and the orbital mechanics of it, would this be within the realm of possibility?
The launch window to Mars has now closed which means that the relatively low energy trajectories used by our space probes are no longer available.
So if the Chinese were to go, they'd better have built one big-ass engine to send them there.
Also remember that the early space programmes were the public face of ICBM programmes. It became clear that trident was going to be our nuclear deterent, so there was little point in continuing the rocketry side of things.
I think you mean Polaris, and we already had launched HMS Resolution in 1968. The programme was actually cancelled to try and stem a gaping hole in government spending.
But remember that Britain was very much the declining power at this time and the labour government was cancelling most areospace projects at the time. Its typically British that we're the only country that developed a launcher then cancelled it after one sucessful flight.
Correct, except the programme was cancelled by a Conservative government.
However sad, it was probably the right thing to do, the economy was in a terrible state, Harold Wilson's devaluation had undermined confidence in the Pound, we were importing inflation from the US and labour relations were terrible. There was no way Britain could have afforded to have kept going on its own in the early 1970s. It's a crying shame therefore that we were not more enthusiastic members of ESA from day one.
Wow! The People's Republic of China must be the RIAA's dream state.
Imagine it. The government introduces a media standard; if you don't use it - they hurt you, if you break it they send you to a labour camp where they play that Britney Spears' 'Don't steal' advert 24/7.
Fritz Hollings is probably buying his Little Red Book even now.
A number of them have been dug up in Iraq. They were first described by Wilhelm Konig in a journal in 1938, but had been discovered several years earlier at a site called Khujut Rabu and put aside for later classification. They have been given dates of between 250BC and 1st Century AD.
The batteries consist of an earthenware pot, stoppered with asphalt. An iron rod goes through the centre of the stopper. The jar is lined with a copper cylinder which does not touch the iron.
Konig first proposed they were a form of battery in 1940, although other events meant his publication was overlooked until the post war era.
AFAIK the Egyptians did not develop anything similar, they did plate metals with gold, but they used mercury amalgam or gold leaf.
This discussion is exactly the one raised by Doctor Kit Pedler during the 1960s. Pedler was fascinated and appalled by the growing technologies of organ replacement, artificial intelligence and cybernetics.
He got together with the science fiction author Gerry Davis and created the Cybermen for 'Doctor Who'. Must have been around 1965 - 66 when they first appeared on 405 lines...
The back story? A race of humans that wanted to improve itself, eliminate weaknesses and live forever became more machine than man. Then they thought everyone else should have those benefits - whether they wanted them or not.
And a generation of children were scarred for life.
I expect Pedler would be simulatenously amused and appalled by the article. Pedler went on to write several Cybermen stories before turning to pen the very dark series 'Doomwatch'. Not a happy chappie.
(And yes, the Cybermen were the scariest monsters on 'Doctor Who'. Forget the low budget, it was that they could make people into more Cybermen that was SO scary.)
You're forgetting, this is being written for the Blair government. A government that is totally in love with the potential for technology to control people's lives. The government that brought in the draconian Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and which is dabbling round with smart ID cards.
The people who wrote this report know that the government is run by people who know nothing about technology and who want to know nothing about technology. The people who wrote this report know that the Blair government wants control of everything we do. The people who wrote this report know that Blair and his government are already in bed with the likes of Microsoft and News International who stand to benefit from the introduction of DRM.
This report is intended to sell DRM to the government. The 'debate' they call for will be every bit as one-sided and low profile as the one's we have just had on GM foods and ID cards.
It'll be as cynical as the other 'consultations' we have in the UK. The government makes up its mind, quietly calls for public debate then makes it as hard as possible to take part. Any group that organises a campaign is decried by ministers as 'a vocal minority', and if things go really badly, they just ignore the objections.
When it comes to getting the result you wanted all along, Katherine Harris is a mere amateur compared to Blair.
The Tunguska blast of 1908 was a roughly 100m asteroid, hitting land.
It was at most 50 metres across and made largely of ice, it would never have made it to the surface.
If it had been an ocean impact, it would have produced significant tsunamis.
At 15 megatonnes it wouldn't have raised much more than a ripple. The US exploded larger bombs at sea level.
The rest of your point is well taken though, although you left out one bit. Would Dubya, Putin or our little poodle in the UK wait to confirm the source of an explosion that took out one of their cities before launching a nuclear attack against their evil guy of the week?
Now I'm interested, if it didn't hit land what is thought to have caused it to explode, the sudden friction from our atmosphere?
Judging by the lack of debris that has been recovered from the site, it was most probably a chunk of ice that disintegrated during its deceleration through the upper atmosphere.
As far as I understand, the faster better cheaper philosophy came from back when NASA was working on several research probes that were to be launched into space, but were having problems with implimenting their plans under the old philosophy.
The loss of the $1 billion Mars Observer proved to be the final straw for NASA's bosses. They had already seen both Galileo and Ulysses delayed by the loss of Challenger, the birth pains of Cassini had been massive and they were finding it harder and harder to explain to the people who held the pursestrings why spacecraft were costing so much.
But like it was noted before... "Pick any two". I mean, you've got to have some give somewhere in there.
Pretty much the whole history of engineering will tell you that, but no one ever listens. The people of Tacoma WA got a nice new bridge in early 1940. Originally costed at $11 million, the project was sent back for redesign to reduce costs. By using a radical new lightweight design incorporating all the latest technologies, the World's third longest bridge was completed in just over a year for just $6.4 million.
It looked beautiful, but six months later it fell down.
You can't cost-cut your way out of engineering problems.
it sacrifices some features and some value in trade for improved portability.
And that was sadly my problem with the VAIO Z 505, it made too many sacrifices with its external floppy, external CD drive (nice to see this one has it included), big power block, port replicator and so on. So instead of carrying a small computer, you lugged round a whole load of extras. But it was a cute machine.
I went off the VAIO when it came to upgrading memory, not only was it extortionately expensive, but Sony had crippled the machine. It could take (and hold on to your seats here) 96Mb of RAM, but thanks to a crappy motherboard, if you installed any more than 64Mb it slowed down!
The final straw came when I couldn't put up with Windows 98 any longer and wanted a more robust OS. Sony's insistance on doing things their way (ie. via a custom install disk that only supported 98) made things far more complicated than they need be.
As a word of warning, beware of Sony's habit of pulling technical support (such as drivers) from their Web sites as soon as a model is replaced. Getting software for older VAIOs can be tricky.
So if you want a PC laptop, this looks very nice, but I won't be joining you this time round.
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I agree that we'll probably not agree, but I think that most of the spin-off benefits of space travel will be produced by unmanned space travel.
Let's assume for a minute that Phoenix can explore an area of 10 square meters. Let's also assume that you can get 500 missions for the cost of 5 manned missions. Let's also assume that, with the help of a pressurized rover, the manned missions have an effective range of 1000km (possible, there are cars that can go that far). This means that the probes can explore 5000 square meters, or 5 square kilometers. The manned missions can explore 5 x 3.14 x 1000km x 1000km (5 times pi times radius squared). The manned missions have an effective exploration area of 1.5 million square km, or about 300,000 times the area of the probes. Of course, that assumes that all they do is drive around. However, I think that each mission is capable of exploring both geologically and archeobiologically 10 square km (50 km^2 total), meaning that they still have 10 times the effective exploration capacity of 500 Phoenix missions. The very fact that the human crews can travel to newer and more interesting places as opposed to waiting six months for another mission to get there and having the added risks of 500 launches.
To an extent, yes I have to agree, a group of people can probably go further than a single probe. (We have too little evidence to say how far a rover could go, Lunokhod 2 holds the record at 37km). However, the numbers are still on my side.
If I may use an analogy.
We send some people to Mars. They touch down in one location and rove around it. Now they won't be able to risk the truly treacherous terrain, so they'll land somewhere flat.
It would be like sending a group of backpackers to - ummm let me see, Wichita, Kansas. A nice place I'm sure. We'll give our backpackers regional bus passes (no cars allowed, they have to return to the motel (read the landing site) to sleep, refuel and so on). Our backpackers can go out each day and learn all there is to know about Wichita and the surrounding region, but they are tied to the landing site. They can learn a lot about Wichita - but not much about the rest of Mars. If Wichita turns out to be very dull, tough, you're committed to learning all there is to know about the prairie.
Now my 150 Pathfinders, for which I will substitute 150 backpackers which I will drop all over America. Some of them will land in dull places, but some will land in interesting places. I can afford to drop some of them in treacherous places such as the polar caps and the canyons (which are inaccessible to manned missions) since a: I know I have more, and b: I don't care if I lose a few (sorry, I'm heartless like that). Each backpacker can only report back on their immediate surroundings, so some of them will be VERY dull, but some will find out something interesting.
So what is the result? I could have learned a lot about Wichita - which may or may not be an interesting location, or I could learn smaller amounts from 150 widely spaced locations right across the United States.
I think the big picture would be more interesting.
Your mileage might vary.
Best wishes,
Mike.
No I'm not.
The rovers on Mars have always been so incredibly limited in what they could do because they have little power, and very little time to do what they want before dust covers over the solar panels or the batteries just fundamentally bite it from the extreme cold swings.
We have put one - count it - one rover on Mars, and that is it. For experience of long-term rover operation, you have to look at the Soviet Lunokhod remotely operated vehicles which trundled round the Moon in 1970 and 1973 respectively. Lunokhod 1 operated for 11 months, rolled over 10km and conducted over 500 soil tests. Lunokhod 2 worked for only 4 months but covered over 37km.
Yes there are problems with dust getting into mechanisms and onto solar collectors, but they're probably less difficult to resolve than the problem of keeping men alive on Mars.
Oh, please. Name one person who's ever died from space radiation exposure. Oh - wait - you can't. Is it bad? Yes. Would you have to take precautions? Sure, of course. Is it tremendously more dangerous than being on a nuclear submarine? Not really.
Ahem, no one has been outside the Earth's magnetosphere for long periods, so they haven't been exposed to the energy of the Sun. You can't expect to see symptoms of acute radiation exposure.
As for the radiation risk, most estimates put it at 50 rem for a mission to Mars. The maximum dose permitted for members of the public (excluding those receiving radiotherapy) is 170 millirem. A person living in the area of Chernobyl during the explosion and fire would have received around 43 000 millirem - still less than a Mars mission.
Still so sanguine?
Best wishes,
Mike.
Perhaps Zubrin should read his history a little more carefully before extrapolating from it. China was not overrun as a direct consequence of failing to explore the World. Its descent from a pre-eminent power started in the late Qing Dynasty which was in 1840. China had become decentralised, its bureaucracy was corrupt and their was a prevalent belief in an impending apocalypse. Note the lack of international reasons for a decline in Chinese power - these were internal structural problems. China had been through them before - but this time there was a difference...
China ran up against the newly emergent European superpowers, who were expanding their influence in the region. Britain was a more powerful country - China declined.
Zubrin's example is doubly flawed in that he extrapolates from a situation (albeit badly) where there is a clear winner and a clear loser to a situation where it is impossible to see what could be gained. Mars could never be an economic benefit to Earth, it has nothing of use, its too far away and its too hostile.
Material hyper efficient fuel cells and computers, inexpensive access to fusionable materials, and cheap metals and chemicals are all available in space.
None of them are on Mars, none of them require manned exploration, many of them probably don't even require space travel. Cheap metals are available on Earth (commodities and bulk chemicals are continuing to fall in price). There is nothing out there that we need to grab.
Saying we've got to go and get it when we have no need nor any conceivable need for it (whatever it is) is the economics of the British Empire (or more recently, the Pentagon). It's always someone else's money after all.
Why do I bring this up? Because it's ideas like yours that poison exploratory programs. Instead of grand gestures, you want small cheap steps. You speak of needs at home when they can be solved by innovating for the world.
And its that attitude of the seizing the Last Frontier that has produced white elephant after white elephant, whether it is the Shuttle, Concorde, BAM, NMD, fast breeder reactors - you name it. People are so busy convincing themselves that these things will be vital in the future, they forget to ask one question - why?
We simply have to want it enough.
Easy question then? Why do you want to send humans to Mars?
Best wishes,
Mike.
Fortunately, they could be pretty sure that they would have fresh air, water and food in the New World. None of those are found on Mars, you are reliant on the technology you bring with you to keep you alive.
The amount of radiation, barring a solar flare or coronal mass ejection is well within tolerable limits. Russians have spent years in orbit, and though they were not able to function, we're only talking about three months tops. This is, of course, not including the possibility of using a tether to create gravity. And the environment on Mars is much more temperate and friendly than the environment on the moon, and we've been to the moon.
Not the same at all. The Soviet long endurance records all took place within the Earth's magnetosphere where they were protected from the majority of solar radition. The Apollo missions were so short that they are hard to extrapolate from and they all took place during times of low solar activity.
Mars astronauts would be exposed to solar radiation both during the transit to Mars and whilst on the surface.
If we only did what was easy, none of us would get out of bed in the morning.
There is a difference between doing something worthwhile that is hard and something that is pointless and hard. IMHO exploring Mars is firmly in the latter category.
Even if we TRIPLE the cost of the proposed plan, it's still less than what we just spent on a war. ($150 billion.) And that gives five 1.5 year missions covering thousands of square km of the surface, establishing outposts, making discoveries, and learning about how to survive there.
So for $50 billion I could get 150 Phoenix missions (probably more once mass production cuts in), explore vastly more of Mars, land in places that are too risky for manned missions, spend far longer looking and not risk anyone's lives.
What was the case for manned missions again?
Best wishes,
Mike.
There are some things I can't explain :)
Best wishes,
Mike.
That's thinking backwards. If you don't have astronauts to worry about you don't have to worry about the mission succeeding come what may. You do everything you can to make the mission a success - but if it doesn't - oh well, switch it off, learn a lesson and do it again.
The simple economics are in favour of unmanned missions, Phoenix will travel to Mars, touch down on another World, and perform useful science for less than half the cost of a single Shuttle launch to take water to the white elephant currently circling the planet.
Yes let's have more exploration, but let's leave Roger Ramjet back on Earth. The manned space programme has been a drain on America's coffers and NASA's resources for far too long. It's time to put it to rest.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Why? What is there that we can't have better and cheaper on Earth? Mars is a rock, frozen day and night, baked by solar radiation; its atmosphere, what little there is of it, is poisonous, the soil is just plain weird - why would we want to live there? It would make Antarctica look appealing.
Back here in the Sol system we'd set up a big solar collector that would focus a laser at the ship, pushing and powering it all the way to nearby stars.
And how much would this cost? When the US is tanking a $400 billion deficit this year and every other country is running c. 3% fiscal deficits who would pick up the bill.
Perhaps a tiny fraction of the expenditure you are calling for would be better spent on reducing our addiction to fossil fuels which is going to end up killing us. Not as sexy as going to the stars, but it is one real problem that we have to confront now - the stars will always be there waiting for us, a habitable world back here on Earth might not be.
Best wishes,
Mike.
And they could sit there for months or years whilst we make up our minds. Not like the astronauts who would be dependent on their air supply. The lunar explorations were always curtailed by the fragility of the men.
Point to the robots I think.
Humans can, should, and will go to Mars. Hopefully in my lifetime, but definitely in my children's. Anyone who's read The Case for Mars knows how easy and cheap it can be.
It's a sales book, of course it says it will be cheap. My Windows XP manual told me that my life would be much easier after installation. Experience of all high tech projects shows the opposite.
Someone once said "Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere." We've been halfway to Mars for almost 50 years. Let's get there.
We've done the easy bit. We haven't done the bit that involves spending months in microgravity, slowly cooking in solar radiation before attempting to live on a planet with a radically different environment.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Even the most pessimistic predictions of Earth's habitability give it another 1 billion years before the Sun's ever increasing energy output cooks the oceans. 1 billion years is a long time; 1 billion years ago there were no multicellular organisms on the planet. Almost certainly there is not a species alive today that existed a billion years ago.
Why should we be different?
And let's not bother with the asteroid problem, we could deflect any asteroid threatening Earth at a fraction of the cost of a manned mission to Mars.
And even if we went there, what is waiting? A bitterly cold, frozen, toxic, radiation baked, airless ball of rock.
There is nothing out there waiting for us. Earth is all we've got, perhaps we should look after it? If anyone goes to Mars it will be a political stunt, like the rest of the manned space program. It will be the quickest way of burning billions of Dollars for no conceivable gain yet imagined.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Phoenix was chosen ahead of a sample return mission. I haven't seen what the exact reason was, but I imagine the tight $325 million cap would have precluded a viable sample return mission.
ESA is thinking about a sample return mission at some point around 2011, but funding really depends on the success of Mars Express/Beagle 2.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Amen to that, we've had amazing luck so far. So let's wish all well - although since I'm over the road from the Beagle 2 team, I have to wish them a little bit more luck than the others.
Anyone know how "spread out" these probes are supposed to land? I hope that at least one is aimed at one of the polar regions.
They're all aimed at low latitudes close to the Equator. For them to reach the poles takes a fancy flightpath and a bit more fuel. It also adds an extra element of risk. For Beagle 2, simple weight constraints precludes anything other than an equatorial landing site, for the other two, NASA want to play things nice and safe.
The approximate landing locations are:
Beagle 2 : Isidis Basin, an ellipse centred around 270E, 10.5N, which places it East of Syrtis Major and North of Libya Montes. Landing 25th December 2003, although confirmation will not be made until the 26th.
MER 1, Gusev Crater, 175E, 14.5S. Landing 5th January 2004.
MER 2, Meridiani, around 355E, 2S. Landing 25th January 2004.
So as you can see, they are well spread out around the central region.
The other two craft, Mars Express and Nozomi are orbiters.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Essentially you want to minimise the amount of energy you need to send a probe away from the planet. You are quite right about needing most energy to climb away from Earth, but you then need additional energy to escape Earth's gravity and place the craft on a trajectory to encounter Mars.
These trajectories are known as transfer orbits. The most fuel efficient transfer orbits are known as Hohmann orbits. A Hohmann orbit describes an ellipse whose major axis touches the orbits of the two planets at a tangent.
So imagine Earth and Mars' orbit as seen from above - Earth inside, Mars outside. The transfer orbit forms an ellipse, one end touching the position of Earth at the time the rocket is launched; the other end touching the Martian orbit at the point where Mars will be located when the probe arrives. The spacecraft follows the path of the orbit to Mars, but does not make a total orbit back to the starting point.
Hohmann orbits are possible between the Earth and Mars every 26 months or so during times when Mars and Earth come closest (so called opposition). These form the launch windows - dates during which a spacecraft can follow a Hohmann trajectory between the two planets.
It is possible to follow a non-Hohmann orbit between planets, but only at the expense of vastly more energy.
The current flotilla to Mars is exceptionally large (4 craft - 3 if you exclude Nozomi, which should have been there last opposition), but it is not the largest. In 1971, the Soviet Union launched three craft to Mars, the United States 2. On the Soviet side, one became trapped in Earth orbit and was quietly renamed Kosmos 419. Of the other two, they both reached Mars; Mars 2 was DOA, Mars 3 became the first craft to touch down on Mars, began transmissions, and heartbreakingly failed after 20 seconds. For the Americans, Mariner 8 failed to reach orbit, but that was made up for by the astonishing success of Mariner 9, the first craft to orbit Mars.
Again in 1973, the Soviet Union launched four spacecraft to Mars (America sat this one out). Mars 4, its retro engine failed to fire and it did not enter Martian orbit, Mars 5 - a success and returned the first colour images of the planet, Mars 6 - a lander, failed about 20 seconds before touchdown and Mars 7 - another lander, lost its orientation and missed Mars entirely!
I hope that all helps and you're not regretting asking!
Best wishes,
Mike.
The launch window to Mars has now closed which means that the relatively low energy trajectories used by our space probes are no longer available.
So if the Chinese were to go, they'd better have built one big-ass engine to send them there.
Best wishes,
Mike.
I think you mean Polaris, and we already had launched HMS Resolution in 1968. The programme was actually cancelled to try and stem a gaping hole in government spending.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Correct, except the programme was cancelled by a Conservative government.
However sad, it was probably the right thing to do, the economy was in a terrible state, Harold Wilson's devaluation had undermined confidence in the Pound, we were importing inflation from the US and labour relations were terrible. There was no way Britain could have afforded to have kept going on its own in the early 1970s. It's a crying shame therefore that we were not more enthusiastic members of ESA from day one.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Imagine it. The government introduces a media standard; if you don't use it - they hurt you, if you break it they send you to a labour camp where they play that Britney Spears' 'Don't steal' advert 24/7.
Fritz Hollings is probably buying his Little Red Book even now.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The batteries consist of an earthenware pot, stoppered with asphalt. An iron rod goes through the centre of the stopper. The jar is lined with a copper cylinder which does not touch the iron.
Konig first proposed they were a form of battery in 1940, although other events meant his publication was overlooked until the post war era.
AFAIK the Egyptians did not develop anything similar, they did plate metals with gold, but they used mercury amalgam or gold leaf.
Best wishes,
Mike.
He got together with the science fiction author Gerry Davis and created the Cybermen for 'Doctor Who'. Must have been around 1965 - 66 when they first appeared on 405 lines...
The back story? A race of humans that wanted to improve itself, eliminate weaknesses and live forever became more machine than man. Then they thought everyone else should have those benefits - whether they wanted them or not.
And a generation of children were scarred for life.
I expect Pedler would be simulatenously amused and appalled by the article. Pedler went on to write several Cybermen stories before turning to pen the very dark series 'Doomwatch'. Not a happy chappie.
(And yes, the Cybermen were the scariest monsters on 'Doctor Who'. Forget the low budget, it was that they could make people into more Cybermen that was SO scary.)
Best wishes,
Mike.
It would be nice to see that done in CGI.
Best wishes,
Mike.
PS. Any chance we can get Eliza Dushku as the young Servalan?
The people who wrote this report know that the government is run by people who know nothing about technology and who want to know nothing about technology. The people who wrote this report know that the Blair government wants control of everything we do. The people who wrote this report know that Blair and his government are already in bed with the likes of Microsoft and News International who stand to benefit from the introduction of DRM.
This report is intended to sell DRM to the government. The 'debate' they call for will be every bit as one-sided and low profile as the one's we have just had on GM foods and ID cards.
It'll be as cynical as the other 'consultations' we have in the UK. The government makes up its mind, quietly calls for public debate then makes it as hard as possible to take part. Any group that organises a campaign is decried by ministers as 'a vocal minority', and if things go really badly, they just ignore the objections.
When it comes to getting the result you wanted all along, Katherine Harris is a mere amateur compared to Blair.
Best wishes,
Mike.
It was at most 50 metres across and made largely of ice, it would never have made it to the surface.
If it had been an ocean impact, it would have produced significant tsunamis.
At 15 megatonnes it wouldn't have raised much more than a ripple. The US exploded larger bombs at sea level.
The rest of your point is well taken though, although you left out one bit. Would Dubya, Putin or our little poodle in the UK wait to confirm the source of an explosion that took out one of their cities before launching a nuclear attack against their evil guy of the week?
Best wishes,
Mike.
Judging by the lack of debris that has been recovered from the site, it was most probably a chunk of ice that disintegrated during its deceleration through the upper atmosphere.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The loss of the $1 billion Mars Observer proved to be the final straw for NASA's bosses. They had already seen both Galileo and Ulysses delayed by the loss of Challenger, the birth pains of Cassini had been massive and they were finding it harder and harder to explain to the people who held the pursestrings why spacecraft were costing so much.
But like it was noted before... "Pick any two". I mean, you've got to have some give somewhere in there.
Pretty much the whole history of engineering will tell you that, but no one ever listens. The people of Tacoma WA got a nice new bridge in early 1940. Originally costed at $11 million, the project was sent back for redesign to reduce costs. By using a radical new lightweight design incorporating all the latest technologies, the World's third longest bridge was completed in just over a year for just $6.4 million.
It looked beautiful, but six months later it fell down.
You can't cost-cut your way out of engineering problems.
Best wishes,
Mike.
And that was sadly my problem with the VAIO Z 505, it made too many sacrifices with its external floppy, external CD drive (nice to see this one has it included), big power block, port replicator and so on. So instead of carrying a small computer, you lugged round a whole load of extras. But it was a cute machine.
I went off the VAIO when it came to upgrading memory, not only was it extortionately expensive, but Sony had crippled the machine. It could take (and hold on to your seats here) 96Mb of RAM, but thanks to a crappy motherboard, if you installed any more than 64Mb it slowed down!
The final straw came when I couldn't put up with Windows 98 any longer and wanted a more robust OS. Sony's insistance on doing things their way (ie. via a custom install disk that only supported 98) made things far more complicated than they need be.
As a word of warning, beware of Sony's habit of pulling technical support (such as drivers) from their Web sites as soon as a model is replaced. Getting software for older VAIOs can be tricky.
So if you want a PC laptop, this looks very nice, but I won't be joining you this time round.
Best wishes,
Mike.
As a guess, it's an in-joke for Walter Jon Williams fans - Reno was a character in 'Hardwired' who spent most of his life plugged into computers.
Best wishes,
Mike.