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Private Mars Mission Planned For 2009 187
Enkidu writes "Spiegel and other German media are reporting that a complete private Mars mission (automated translation) is planned for 2009. Organizations behind are AMSAT and Mars Society Germany."
American Companies (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:American Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:American Companies (Score:1)
Much like the exclusive clause in the satellite photos?
Re:American Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
There are US companies in this arena, but Boeing is too big and corporate for it. Big companies like guaranteed profits, not high-risk high-reward ventures like private space flight.
Re:American Companies (Score:2)
Re:American Companies (Score:5, Funny)
Boeing doesn't have the technology or motive to travel to Mars yet. I think we'll see Union Aerospace Corporation really go all out on this and try to establish a Mars base by 2145. The UAC has the mining and space technology to outdo easily any other space ventures.
Umbrella? (Score:2)
You'd think MS would venture into space travel...if only to get the executives away from the DOJ... remember guys, Engineers are CHEAPER than lawyers!!!
Re:Umbrella? (Score:3, Informative)
Just FYI..
Re:American Companies (Score:3, Insightful)
1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
So they shelved it.
Re:American Companies (Score:2)
Granted, I think it will take someone with a pile of money AND vision (Mr Gates, are you listening??) to simply take the risk to build things like a space elevator or a real space program that has solid commercial goals like a moon base, or asteroid collection. Goverment is too bungling, and corporations ar
Sorry, are we talking about the man who... (Score:4, Insightful)
If anyone from Microsoft did such a thing, it would be Paul Allen - who IPOF is funding Bert Rutan - but I think he'd require more signs of life on Mars before he cut a cheque for it, since he seems to be an evangelist for materialism.
Re:Sorry, are we talking about the man who... (Score:2)
Actually, paul is less of an evangelist for materialism than you think. He is now the one of the top philanthripists in the world, and he does not attach strings to them (no required purchases, etc). Also, he is heavily funding SETI. I suspect that he may even be the one who
Re:Sorry, are we talking about the man who... (Score:4, Informative)
It DID ship without a web browser. Internet Explorer was shipped a few months later with the awesome ability to *snicker* show web pages while they were loading. Yet all downloads happened in the same browser windoe. i.e. If you clicked on a link to download, you'd then have to wait as the browser load bar told you the status of the download. If you left the page, you'd lose the downlaod.
IE shipped at the same time as win 95 in Plus (Score:2)
Count Paul Out (Score:2)
Re:American Companies (Score:2)
Mr Allen (Microsoft co-founder) has been funding the Scaled Composites X-Prize entry Space Ship One.
Just because Bill Gates is the best known man with money, doesn't mean that all the others are ignoring the field.
Re:American Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Space travel lacks one big thing. A true compelling reason that everyone agrees on that makes it needed, and makes it worthwhile, to make money from space travel is all but impossible. If say we ran out of gold on earth, and it became the most important thing to keap life going on earth, and we found some out and space, then you would have something. Until such things happen, it's not going to work. Space tourism will never keap it up since there isn't anough people wanting to go, or have anough money to go. And often people who want to go are those without the money, and those with the money are the ones who don't care to go.
Re:American Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Space travel lacks one big thing. A true compelling reason that everyone agrees on that makes it needed, and makes it worthwhile, to make money from space travel is all but impossible.
Correct, space travel is currently uneconomic. That does not make it pointless to invest in efforts researching it, because if you make it sufficently cheap, it will be economic. Whether space travel is "worth it" is a function of the cost of space travel. Bring that cost down, and all of a sudden your equation changes.
When flight was first invented it wasn't all that practical or economic either. Flying across oceans was simply beyond the range of aircraft, and rail and trucking was almost as fast as airplanes, but a hell of a lot less expensive. "Why would anyone use airplanes for transport? All you do is get a nice view from up there which isn't enough to sustain an industry. Building planes big enough to carry any sort of worthwhile load would be unbelievably expensive - there's just no money in it."
You don't need a compelling reason, you just need to keep researching new technology and improvements to make space travel cheap and efficient. That's what the X-prize is all about - bringing low cost reusable launch systems into existence. Scaled Composites looks like they've pulled it off too - though we'll have to wait to be sure.
Jedidiah.
Three Words (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Three Words (Score:2)
Re:American Companies (Score:2)
I honestly don't expect these companies to have a fully funded space program but I would expect that they put a few dollars from R&D in this area. I'm sure they do, we probably just haven't heard about it.
Re:American Companies (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem that exists is the fact that the land isn't something that we can utilize right now. The technology exists to make habitats in extreme places like Mars or the Moon but the technology to get it there is what's lacking.
I think that is the movitation to get into space personally. It's got to be something that we can keep. Wouldn't it be great to have a home here and a condo on a nice flat out on Mars? Sure the ping time would suck when playing your favorite FPS and the commute would be a bitch but new industries would develop. This is where the biggest payoff would be. If someone privately went to the Moon or to Mars and colonized. If the could colonize and sustain they could charge whatever they wanted to allow people to move into their colony. It's kinda like the expansion of America. Once there they'd need a shitload of transportation, communications, etc. $$$.
Re:American Companies (Score:4, Insightful)
To think that this situation will remain forever unchanged is just plain foolish. Affordable space travel will be developed no matter the whining of the naysayers. Each advance puts *someone* that much closer to cashing in on a frontier that'll make the current crop of billionaires look like amateurs in comparison.
It won't be a race between corporations who can't look beyond the quarter, much less strain themselves over a five-year plan. It'll be a race between people with vision and the ability to plan 20, 30 or even 50 years in advance. *They* will be the ones to win, and have the last laugh over everyone who said that it couldn't be done.
Max
Re:American Companies (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:American Companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you honestly think the U.S. would bow to any U.N. treaty over something like this? Pause a moment while I laugh my ass off.
Max
Re:Slow down cowboy! (Score:2)
As for Mars, of course we want to take life there! The damned ball of rock is utterly lifeless, barring the slimmest possibility of some microbe still eking out a miserable existence underneath the surface. What good is Mars if we don't terraform the place? Only a whack-job would argue *against* terraforming the only viable world in the entire solar
Re:American Companies (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you could charter enough of the red stuff back by the ton and sell half a gram for a few dozen millions, then it might turn a few corporate heads.
Irony (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, better get cracking...! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems overly ambitious to me, although the goal sounds honorable.
Re:Wow, better get cracking...! (Score:5, Informative)
"No private organization has even been to the moon, and NASA is going pretty great lengths to ensure they understand all effects and implications from staying in space a very long time."
Be careful, this has nothing to do with staying is space for a long time. They aren't sending a human, living, person.
It's all right there in google's attempt at translating. [google.com]
Re:Wow, better get cracking...! (Score:2)
Although the article doesn't specify, I think it is a safe bet that the 500kg probe will not be home to an astronaut. The effect of space travel on robotic missions is understood quite well...
Re:Wow, better get cracking...! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow, better get cracking...! (Score:2, Interesting)
NASA also has the responsibility to make sure our bioforms don't contaminate other (possible) ecosystems - not only pre-mission, but end-mission as well. Take Galileo's crash into Jupiter for example.
I'm not sure whether we can trust private corporations with the same responsibility
Faugh. (Score:1, Funny)
I'll send some lucky volunteer in 2008, if you all send me enough money to pack a tube full of dynamite.
Yeah right.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, they can't even get to *Earth's* orbit, and they are planning to go to Mars?
Re:Yeah right.... (Score:5, Informative)
they have sent up private amateur radio satellites into earth orbit for years using some spare space in ESAs arianes since 1980.
they're a rather large group of scientists who work on the project for free in their spare time.
here are some infos in english (and german) [amsat-dl.org]
So you could think of it as... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah right.... (Score:2)
Re:Yeah right.... (Score:2)
Maybe you should have read the article.
Linux to Mars? (Score:1)
I wonder what kind of case mods they will have on board...
Re:Linux to Mars? (Score:3, Funny)
Let me guess... (Score:4, Funny)
Powered by cold fusion and manned by Ewoks.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:2)
Re:Let me guess... (Score:3, Funny)
Don't be ridiculous. It would be ewoked by Ewoks.
That's nothing (Score:2, Funny)
Money (Score:2)
Re:Money (Score:2, Informative)
"How can a private group raise the money for a mission like this? I would think the cost would easily be in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, maybe the billion dollar range."
Please! RTFA!
It'll cost 10 million euros! Not a penny less, not a penny more.
I don't remember the exact current exchange, but I think that should be a little over 12 million US. Dollars.
Re:Money (Score:3, Interesting)
I defy you to find a group of people who can manage to bring in lunch in at the initially projected price. Unless these have purchased all their hardware (and none of it fails in the meantime), paid all their people (and none of em die or jump ship), paid all their service fees (and none of the providers goes out of business or sells the service out from under them), and 10 million other things I can't think of then "not a penny less, not
Re:Money (Score:2)
Re:Money (Score:2)
Re:Money (Score:3, Insightful)
the point is not raising 100 billons to fund a mission to mars, the point is doing it for less than 100 billons...
Re:Money (Score:3, Interesting)
There are plenty of people that could finance a probe to mars instead of, say buying a football stadium or a fleet of privat jets or whatever billionaires do with all their money...
Re:Money (Score:2)
Also, people building satellites in their spare time tend to work at companies that can support the program. If you work at Agilent for example, you have access to cutting ed
shuttle (Score:5, Funny)
Re:shuttle (Score:2, Informative)
http://k26.com/buran/Future/Mars/_energia_to_mars. html [k26.com]
Sounds a bit kinky to me... (Score:2, Funny)
500 Kilos heavy probe
and
Favorable Mars position
Suddeny, "Private" takes on a whole new meaning...
You rocket scientists out there... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You rocket scientists out there... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You rocket scientists out there... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You rocket scientists out there... (Score:3, Funny)
By then, 10 million euros will buy you 100 million us dollars, so they could just use cheap american labor and materials.
Re:You rocket scientists out there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Things get somewhat easier when you don't need to accomodate for those annoying carbon based life forms and their needs of water, food, and air.
Re:You rocket scientists out there... (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the money will go into building the probe.
Private?? (Score:5, Funny)
Aiming High (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Aiming High (Score:2)
Ha ha ha, have you any evidence to suggest that "government" scientists are any smarter or more efficient than those in the private sector?
They have bigger budgets, usually, that's true. But they need 'em when they're spending $800 on a hammer or a toilet seat...
Re:Aiming High (Score:2)
Our Gordon Brown makes your US Govt. look like mere amateurs when it comes to waste, corruption and inefficiency...
About AMSAT's Phase 5-A (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.amsat-dl.org/p5a/p5a-to-mars.pdf [amsat-dl.org]
And here is the main Phase 5-A website on AMSAT-DL, with text in both German and English:
http://www.amsat-dl.org/p5a/ [amsat-dl.org]
Stuff like this makes you proud of holding a HAM license
73s
Onward to space, Free Marketeers! (Score:3, Funny)
A few quarters later, the taxpayer will bail out the investors.
Absent from the article... (Score:4, Funny)
Are they asking for volunteers yet?
Translation of the Spiegel article (Score:5, Informative)
--
Marburg Consortium plans mars mission before 2009
A German consortium of scientists, engineers, and technicians wants to prove that private groups are also in the race for interplanetary flights. By 2009, the group plans to send a probe and a satellite to Mars.
The Amsat consortium has approximately 1200 members working largely as volunteers on the rpoject. The mission of exploration will cost around 700 million Euros, according to Amsat in Bochum, Saturday.
The goal of the mission is to prove that private organizations can make space flights within the solar system possible, according to Karl Meinzer, professor of Space Flight Technology at the University of Stuttgart. The 500 kilogram probe will be put into earth orbit on board an Arianne rocket.
The space flight organization intends to purchase spare capacity on a rocket that would not be filled enitrely by other satellites. Later the probe would be brought into an orbit around Mars where it would serve as a communications relay.
Ground Control in Bochum
Meinzer says, We'd be able to receive signals from transmitters already on Mars". The Observatory in Bochum would serve as ground control. Before the actual flight to Mars could commence, the probe will have to be placed into orbit around the Earth. "We can't set a term for the rocket launch, but we must begin the flight to Mars within a limited timeframe." In 2007 and 2009 Mars will be in a beneficial location for the flight.
After the nine month flight to the neighbouring planet the probe will begin sending signals from Mars to Earth. The signals will be broadcast on amateur radio frequencies, so that anybody with a transceiver will be able to receive them.
Another goal of the mission will be investigation of the Martian atmosphere. To achieve this, the Munich Mars Society, also an organization of scholars and technicians, wants to send along the "Archimedes" probe on the mission to the red planet. "Once in Martian orbit, a 14 meter diameter balloon will inflate above the probe", said Hannes Gabriel of the Mars Society. The balloon will slow down substantially as it glides through the atmosphere towards the surface of the planet with its landing craft. The researchers hope this will yield better opportunities to collect data.
The 30 year old Amsat consortium has succesfully lanched satellites into space, according to Meinzer. Since the eightiies they have participated in a total of nine missions.
Re:Translation of the Spiegel article (Score:5, Informative)
Oops. That was supposed to read 10 million Euros, not 700 million Euros. I do apologize.
Balloon (Score:2)
Hey, let me ask a question. . . (Score:5, Funny)
Just how stupid does an announcement have to be before working journalists decide not to report it? A private mission to Mars by 2009?
Okay fine, in that same spirit:
"Dear Speigel:
I plan to evolve into a being composed entirely of ionized gas and electromagnetic energy by 2009. I realize this is an ambitious timeframe, but with recent advances in genetic engineering and non-CFC spray bottle technology I believe it's achievable.
Please call me if you have any questions, or I'll be happy to seep into your offices in five years."
Re:Hey, let me ask a question. . . (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hey, let me ask a question. . . (Score:2)
Oh, and it helps that they know how to spell Spiegel.
with an 'M' (Score:4, Funny)
Re:with an 'M' (Score:2)
Prepare yourselves... (Score:2, Troll)
And they'll get a lot of sympathetic ears, too. The crowd here on Slashdot who grew up on "gee wow" Science Fiction stories won't want to believe it, but my gut feeling is that once regular people start thinking about it, they won't want to see Mars screwed up.
And settlements on Mars are even less lik
Easily fixed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Easily fixed (Score:3, Interesting)
As for whether it's a "waste" to not colonize it, I'm not convinced that it isn't a waste. Mars a big freaking ROCK. It's not that interest
Re:Easily fixed (Score:2)
really what laws would I be breaking? there are no laws protecting undiscovered endangered species on another planet.
"One nut can't just send a "simple probe", it takes a lot of nuts with a lot of money"
as technology increases so does personal power. it will get more and more feasible as technology marches forward and access to space grows.
"villainized for the rest of human history."
i could live with that
Re:Easily fixed (Score:2)
really what laws would I be breaking? there are no laws protecting undiscovered endangered species on another planet.
The ones that will be created when the technology exists to necessitate the laws.
as technology increases so does personal power. it will get more and more feasible as technology marches forward and access to space grows.
Yes, but as personal technology grows, government technology grows faster. If you have the tech to send a personal spacecraft to Mars, chances are, the government has
Re:Easily fixed (Score:2)
My guess is that 99% of the people out there could give a shit one way or another if some nameless Mars microbe is wiped out.
And in any event Mars is pretty worthless unless it's eventually terraformed. I'm willing to bet you'd find that the number of people interested in terraforming Mars into brand new real estate (if it becomes possible) is many times greater than the whining losers who'd scream about 'despoiliing the Martian environment'
Re:Prepare yourselves... (Score:2)
Re:Prepare yourselves... (Score:2)
It's going to take a lot more than a couple of environmentalists and scientists showing up and telling me I've got to leave!
Re:Prepare yourselves... (Score:4, Funny)
Then we'll just have to grind up the "environmentalists" for martian fertilizer.
Re:Prepare yourselves... (Score:2)
Remember folks, green soil is people.
Make it a reality TV show (Score:2)
Put em in a space ship for like 15 months and give them utterly useless but challenging tasks to do while they Keepin it Real in Space, yo.
Re:Make it a reality TV show (Score:2)
Re:Make it a reality TV show (Score:2)
And the downside is... ?
What does "private" mean in this context? (Score:2)
AMSAT is a private organization, but the article fails to identify where the funding comes from . . . if a probe or experiment from a private university is launched into space or performed on the space station, is that a "private space experiment" because the experiment came from a private organization? If the funding is from public sources (like the National Science Foundation in the USA), does that make it
Guys - that red stuff aint sand.. (Score:2)
First man to mars (Score:2)
I have child-like [ie non seriously] sketched is a ship with a rotational gravity ring [stabalizers and counterweights] or a partial ring to allow 2 years of centrifugal gravity^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hforce.
It would unfurl from its stored position about 2 days into the trip. I am sure there are more problems, such as micro-particle belts or other wierdness of space we haven't seen.
Oh and I would want some
Nietzsche has a great answer for your "philosophy" (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Nietzsche has a great answer for your "philosop (Score:2)
Re:Nietzsche has a great answer for your "philosop (Score:2)
Yes, it really should have been marked as "overated", becuase that sums up Nietzsche pretty well. He seems very impressive when you are an angsty teenager, but he really isn't all that (and yes, I've read a fair bit of Nietzsche).
Now I don't agree with the very original post, there will always be more "worthy" goals that could use funds, but if we invest exclusively in them there would never be progress. However, the idea that you shouldn't seek to end suffering because that is where all human greatness c
Re:Nietzsche has a great answer for your "philosop (Score:2)
Pretty much every great thinker since Nietzsche has credited him with a profound contribution to modern thought. Your dismissal of him based on his appeal to youthful angst is, at its heart, an extreme example of intellectual naivete. For that reason, I won't respond further to your post. I just wanted to point out tha
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Max
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
Think about it, this is in essence what you are proposing.
No use to be a scientist/engineer/whatever if you decide to use *all* your money for 'better' goals. For them these goals you propose ae equally valid, but it's just not *their* forte. And again and again and again: money 'wasted' on stuff like this doesn't disappea