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Space

NASA Rolls Out Mars Mission Plans 124

Posted by timothy from the one-lump-or-two? dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes: "MSNBC is reporting NASA's plan for the next Mars mission: either a single rover or a team of two rovers to be sent to the red planet in 2003. I'm glad to see that the government hasn't lost faith in NASA despite the recent setbacks with their Mars program."
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NASA Rolls Out Mars Mission Plans More

NASA Rolls Out Mars Mission Plans

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  • After all those spacecraft were lobbed at Mars at a high speed, it should have been pushed closer to Earth by now.
  • Nothing more exciting than going back. The Pathfinder mission was certainly a PR success. Perhaps a couple more like that and we can look forward to some commercial ventures spurred on by the marketing people of the world. Get your Mars Happy Meals right here. Doesn't bother me as long as we go! I have been waiting for more exploration of the red planet for three years and now it seems like we may get our wish. I can't wait for the new findings on more water. More marketing...Evian Martian Blast!
  • of spending so much money looking at Mars. Why don't we just rerun the movie until everyone is sick of the whole thing, then focus on some of the real issues, like why we need so many cars?
  • sorry, i should go on one for spelling
  • Also see this [bbc.co.uk] BBC News article!

  • Going metric? (Score:5)

    by L41N14L ( 205602 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @02:06AM (#898269)
    capable of traveling 100 yards (meters) per day

    Isn't this the kind of thinking that got them in trouble before?

  • I think the MPA (Martian Picture Association) might have a problem with that and sue.

    Bet you never knew Jack Valenti was an Alien.

  • Pity, thought they might be sending people. Hopefully they won't lose contact with their vehicles before anything comes back from them

  • Surly it would be harder. Newton 2 (or maybe 3) every action has an equal and opposite reaction. i.e. The earth gets pushed away from Mars every time we launch a rocket at Mars.
  • ...it's not like it's their money that's getting spent.

  • Shaping the future (Score:5)

    by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @02:28AM (#898274) Homepage Journal
    The agency reportedly was operating under a self-imposed deadline of Aug. 1 for determining the shape of the 2003 probe.

    They current favourite within nasa is rumoured to be a 8 inch clear plastic cube with shiny bits inside. The metallicity of it gives it the edge over the previous revision which resembled a blue amorphous blob.

    A nasa spokeswoman commented "We want to make the probe as ergonomic and easy to use as possible. It really will be as simple as plugging it in and pressing the launch button"

    In an attempt to steal nasa's glory, microsoft today announced they would revive their own space program.. cancelled in the early nineties after their inability to run a craft for more than two hours without a catastrophic crash.
  • I'm glad to see that the government hasn't lost faith in NASA despite the recent setbacks with their Mars program."
    99% of nasa missions are succesful. just because media blows up those 1% unsuccesful missions doesnt mean that us govermant should shut down nasa. i really didnt except /. to start spreading fud about nasa.
  • MS also anownced that there new space program is to be named Space Explore 2.03 as SE 1 exploded on the lanch pad

  • rover (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i don't see a family saloon car making it all the way to mars.
  • Upon entry into the Martian atmosphere, a parachute would deploy to slow the spacecraft down, and then airbags would inflate to cushion the landing.
    The spacecraft would bounce about a dozen times and could roll as far a     [sic] half-mile before coming to a stop. Then the airbags would deflate, the petals of the spacecraft would open, and the rover would position itself to roll onto the surface.
    Seriously, though, this sounds way too much like a Rube Goldberg contraption. Okay, I'm not an engineer, but considering how much trouble NASA has had in the recent past, this scenario just doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in me, Joe Taxpayer.

    Still, I'm glad to see them doing something. It's depressing to think that after all this time, Mars is still such a pipe dream. As a child, I was expecting men to walk on Mars by now; I was hoping Gloria Steinem would get to bitch, "Mars needs women! [crosswinds.net]"

    2003. Airbags. Roll a half-mile. Sigh.

    ....

  • when the 1inch bolt dos't fit in the 1cm hole

    If it doesn't fit, use a bigger hammer...

  • Two Very Interesting Things (Score:4)

    by Catmeat ( 20653 ) <(mtm) (at) (sys.uea.ac.uk)> on Friday July 28, 2000 @02:41AM (#898280)
    • They're going back to the airbag style of landing that worked so well with Pathfinder in 97

    • They're thinking of sending two. In the old days, planetry missions always went in pairs, Viking 1, Viking 2, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 etc etc. Perhaps they now view sending a single craft as excessive overconfidence. Plus you get to look at two landing sites and as you only need to do the design work once, two can fly for roughly 1.5x the cost of one.
  • What?? The other missions to Mars weren't successful?? I though NASA was intentionally stockpiling spaceship and probe parts on Mars to be uses as spare parts in the future.

    Well I guess you learn something new every day.
  • Why don't we just rerun the movie until everyone is sick of the whole thing, then focus on some of the real issues, like why we need so many cars?

    (Assuming this is a real question, not a troll...)

    Because man has a need for exploration, and because while we're not sure what we will find, it is certain to be interesting.

    Besides, the two are not mutually exclusive. Surely in a country the size and with the economy of ours, we can afford both (and all those other things besides). The amount spent by NASA is a tiny fraction of the amount available. If you're so concerned about spending money, look at some of the bigger targets first - apply the 80-20 rule. You'd probably find the Defense Department loses more money in it's couch than NASA spends. Why not hammer on them?


    ...phil

  • But, so SLOOOWWW... (Score:5)

    by Sir_Winston ( 107378 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @02:44AM (#898283)
    I'm glad we're hurling more objects at Mars and all, but I'm amazed at the slowness with which we're exploring everyone's favourite big red bouncy ball. After all, it's been nearly a third of a century since we first put men on the moon, and yet that's as far as we've sent humans and, what's worse, we haven't even hurled very many probes out to our planetary neighbours. What's the total number? Not many...

    It honestly makes me wish there were still a space race going on; at least then we'd still be actively involved in space exploration. Instead of space exploration NASA spends most of its time trying to convince pointy-headed bureaucrats and politicians to give it enough money to survive. Despite recent successes--and failures--it really seems like NASA is suffering a slow and excruciating death by underfunding; a sad state of affairs for a space exploration program which built up such momentum way back in the Kennedy administration.

    Think of how many pivotal moments NASA has given us in the twentieth century. Nipping at the heels of the Soviets with our first man in space, and totally outdoing them with the moon landing (my grandparents shot a Polaroid of the television screen the moment Armstrong set foot on the moon); the gripping drama and ultimate redemption of Apollo 13; the public amazement when the Space Shuttles, like the spacefaring planes of science fiction, flew for the first time; the emotional Challenger disaster and the ensuing investigation; the colorful Pathfinder images that captivated the public for weeks. Just about every American can remember at least one of these things, and see it as an important event we'll always remember. Personally, I'll never forget my elementary school teacher hearing about it on her radio and taking the whole class to the school library to watch the live coverage following the Challenger disaster.

    But instead of great moments like these, we can look forward to much smaller events and less publicly enthralling ones. Quite sad, when our government spends $3 *T*rillion a year, that we "don't have the money" to explore space as vigorously as we did in the first decades of the space program. I'm beginning to think that we'll never see a manned mission to Mars in my lifetime, at this rateand before anyone complains about high expenditures for small returns, remember that there's always been more to the space program (til recently) than just scientific data. There's been national pride for Americans, and more general pride in the accomplishments of mankind; there's been old-fashioned adventure, space really being the final frontier, the last place man hasn't set foot; space *travel*, actual exploration by humans, is what fascinated us, not data from a probe. The budget of the NSA alone would probably be enough to keep sending men further into space for some time, maybe even enough to start planning a lengthy manned Mars mission. But instead we spend it on Echelon and corporate espionage. It's disappointing to say the least. I don't think, short of provably finding extraterrestrial microbes with one of its landers, there's anything NASA can do to captivate the public interest and spark public excitement any more. Nothing that can be done with a mere probe can top the Pathfinder images, except for finding Martian or Ionian or Europan life. But, here's hoping...

  • Re:Love the whole idea (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's not just that, we *need* to have space exploration otherwise anything that anyone does or has done in the past is totally worthless. The sun won't last for ever you know, and thats reason enough to spend some money on moving the human race out of our solar system.
  • 2003. Airbags. Roll a half-mile. Sigh.

    You sound skeptical. Are you aaware this is the very method they used for the last rover they planted on mars? Parachute to slow you down, air bags to cushion you, once you've settled in, deflate and deploy.

    Frankly, I'd rather see the probe landed like this and survive than their more traditional methods of rocket-slowed decent than has failed miserably lately.

  • PathFinder worked unlike last years fiasco and it had airbags. While its voodoo engineering it can't hurt to start strapping airbags onto all nasa's stuff. Airbags onto the side of the shuttle, stick a few around the international space station, just in case we need to bounce it off something.

    C.

  • Land directly on the surface using a booster? Haven't you ever played XLander? It's damn near impossible unless you are a mathematical prodigy with unusual dexterity.

    It's hella easier to just pad the thing you're going to throw and point it in the general direction of Mars. In any case, it's exactly what the last probe did and it worked fine.
    --
    Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
  • Well, this is exactly the problem. It's not whether or not the *government* has faith in NASA and the Mars program, as the story says, its whether the *general public* has faith in NASA and the Mars program.

    I see public support for space exploration waning. You, I and John Q. Geek might fully support NASA and the Mars program, but what about the average joe on the street? If public support isn't there, it's going to get hard to find money to keep throwing spacecraft at Mars at high-speeds... :)

  • A nasa spokeswoman commented "We want to make the probe as ergonomic and easy to use as possible. It really will be as simple as plugging it in and pressing the launch button"

    In related news, NasaInsider.com was hounded by calls from NASA to take down 'sneak peek, Top-Secret' pictures of its new Mars Probe, which it will present on Tuesday. A bystanding Slashdotter said, "I think [the NasaInsider picture] a fake. Look at the way the light strikes the NASA logo. It doesn't match the shadowing. Plus, why would you make a probe out of clear pink plexiglass?"

    NASA shares underwent heavy trading, and dropped 2 points.

  • Lost faith in NASA? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Is it just me, or has everyone lost faith in NASA? I mean, in the last 15 years we've had the Challenger disaster (more of a government coverup than a real disaster--they don't want you to know that it was off it's flight path and on a collision course with Miami), the Hubble Telescope which sat out there doing nothing for four years, the Mars probes that were suddenly lost, and the two year behind schedule International Space Station. Oh yeah, and there was the tadpoles in space project, too. Trust me, I'm the last guy that would like to see cut throat corporations take over the space industry, but if that's the only way that we'll make any progress, I'm all for it.
    We should have had a colony on the Moon by 1980. We could have been to Mars by now.
    Come on, NASA.
  • Land directly on the surface using a booster? Haven't you ever played XLander? It's damn near impossible unless you are a mathematical prodigy with unusual dexterity

    I'm sure there should be one or two people like that in NASA.

  • Mars is the stepping stone to the Solar System (Score:3)

    by Dan Hayes ( 212400 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @03:23AM (#898292)

    Not so much in terms of economics (a space elevator would make space travel vastly more feasable from an economic viewpoint), but in terms of public perception. Sure, we've put men on the moon, but the moon is still pretty much part of the Earth from a perception point of view - after all you can see it in space every night with your very own eyes.

    But Mars is definitely out there. Putting people on Mars would be an acheivement with some real impact on public perception of the space industry - people are in general bored with Shuttle launches, but look at the attention that has been paid to the Mars missions recently.

    Given that the technology to colonise Mars (and indeed other places in the solar system) is there it is only the will to do so that is lacking. People on Mars would make manned space travel an issue to the public again, and once something becomes an issue, governments tend to want to look good about it. And if one country does it, you can bet they'll all want to do it.

    Here's hoping for a manned Mars mission soon!

  • Wouldn't say it worked like a charm. A success, certainly, but the air cushions caused a bit of a hassle with getting the thing out and there were various minor problems getting the rover to listen.

    Of course, all teething troubles. One of the specific aims was to find out if the method worked.
  • I personally don't believe the technology is there.

    There are two major problems in my mind. The first in technological and the second is sociological.

    1) We have no means to protect our astronauts effectively from space radiation. The space radiation environment in terms of energetic protons is worse on Mars than it was for the recent solar flare. That solar flare would likely have killed any astronauts had we put them in as little shielding as Mars missions will have. There is no effective way to shield against energetic protons without adding a large amount of weight. This weight of course drives up cost and causes manuverability problems.

    2) We are afraid to have anyone die while visiting Mars. See the aftermath of the Challenger accident if you don't believe that. This fear will keep us off Mars for a long time, because it is likely that if, on average for the first dozen or so attempts, we send 100 men to Mars, I think only 30 or 40 would be likely to come back at best.

    For these 2 reasons, I don't think that we will make it to Mars within the next 20 or 30 years. 50 or 100? Maybe.

    IMHO
  • Remember that last really successful mars mission? (Pathfinder, I think it was called.) THAT was dropped on mars by the "Airbag device."

    It was done before, and it's a LOT cheaper than, say, retro-rockets. (No oceans on mars, no runways, and the atmosphere's so thin... gotta have SOMETHING to stop with)
  • Although I have the utmost respect for NASA and it's accomplishments, maybe it's time for somthing new. Ever since the Apollo program funding for space exploration has steadily decreased. NASA's crowning achievement (the shuttle) is old technology. Maybe it's time for a new way of doing things? We are already seeing signs of privatization in the space industry, and i'm not just talking about Mir being used as a space hotel for tourists. Projects like the Xprize [xprize.com] could lead to a new era in space travel. The first is bbeing prize is given for simply getting into space. But future prizes could be awarded for say the first team to return a sample from Mars. Just my 2cents but I definetly think space travel should move away from Government organizations...
  • I'd love to agree with this ('cos I want to go to mars, too ;), but really a few more unmanned probes are probably in order before we try sending people there. If anyone is planning to stay there for more than a few days, we'll want to know a lot more about the chemistry of the martian surface. And a lot more about the water which seems to be available there.

    That said, I hope they start work on the manned trip soon...

  • People are always complaining, "Wah wah, why waste money on [insert interesting pastime here] when there are starving/cold/rusty/disenfranchised/boring/whateve r [insert poor beset-upon sector here] people in [wherever]. Blech. No one starves here in America by necessity. There are always jobs, if you want them. There are plenty of handouts--err, "assistance programs"--as it is, too, so there's no substantial complaint to be made that government doesn't already do enough to support people. So, why not take some of that pork-barrel BS that subsidizes corporate America, or cut some of the bloat and cruft of our bureaucracies, or take some of that NSA money [one Senate member called the classified spending figure "bigger than the Gross Demestic Products of almost all the countries we monitor, combined"], and give Americans something to be proud of? For decades NASA and its far-reaching programs were a source of both national pride and pride in man's accomplishments. Now, what do Americans have to be proud of? The universality of McDonalds? The fact that almost every other country either openly hates us or sniggers behind our backs? The fact that Bill Gates has much more money than NASA does?

    All I said is that our space exploration used to be a national pastime, providing many high points in the first decades of our space program. It was something all Americans, and all people, could be proud of. And, I said that we're not going to get any more of that unifying magic out of the space program, if all we do is throw more hunks of metal at Mars and the Jovian moons. So don't give me any of that bleeding heart crap about how the resources should go elsewhere, since most Americans think our government needs to cut back most of its spending on bureaucracy and mismanagement anyway. At least when NASA had a decent budget, they did amazing things that inspired people--you can't say that about the welfare system, corporate tax breaks, bureaucracies which cost ~75% of our tax dollars to manage the other ~25% that actually gets spent on something other than bureaucrats' salaries, etc.

  • We have no means to protect our astronauts effectively from space radiation.

    It depends on how long the journey takes really. Even today we've had men in space for a year and no more protection than our Mars ship would have. But still, a manned craft would have more shielding, they're not going to want to have people die from radiation sickness half way there are they? :)

    As for on Mars itself, surface activity isn't going to be viable for a long time (assuming terraforming). Structures erected on Mars will obviously be hardened against radiation. Although this will take more material, any long-term Mars mission will have carry the means to mine materials and make its own structures.

    We are afraid to have anyone die while visiting Mars.

    True, but I thing in the longer term this won't be so much of a factor. Anyway, the political spin that it'll be given should ease most people's worries about disaster. It was easy enough for the Apollo missions to carry on after near-disaster wasn't it?

  • Yeah, I'm a little skeptical. And yes, I'm well aware of the fact that it worked last time. I'm just saying that it sounds nuts.

    Unfortunately, even though we all ruled that egg drop thing in the 5th grade, we don't have a better suggestion.

    I'm not even saying that it won't work - I'm just saying that I don't think Sir Isaac Newton or even Arthur C. Clarke would have done it this way in 2003 (man, that used to sound so futuristic).

    ....

  • Re:Going metric? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the actual NASA press release says..

    far greater mobility and scientific capability than the 1997 Mars Pathfinder Sojourner rover, this new robotic explorer will be able to trek up to 110 yards (100 meters) a day

    which is a bit more like it..
  • >The spacecraft would bounce about a dozen times and could roll as far a [sic] half-mile before coming to a stop

    Sure it's not half a kilometer?

    //rdj
  • i am not entirely sure about this figure, but last i remember nasa's yearly budget was around 5 billion. that is really pathetic. when the soviets were in this race the US people loved the fact that the US could keep up and that we hit the moon first. now it is pretty much the US ... no competition ... no funding. unless china steps up its space mission or the soviets get back in the race, nasa isn't going to have its funding. the american people have less of a problem spending 5 billion on a nuclear submarine than a year for nasa to operate. i can't count how many times i have heard people bitch about the fact that nasa even gets what little they do. i guess education would help as well, but most americans are too content with their limited knowledge. contention is the root of stupidity!
  • Yeah, but one thinks in cm, the other in inches, and they like to co-operate....
  • Uh, 6 billion years out is a little beyond the thinking of most people. Politicians, for example, generally don't consider beyond the next election cycle.


    ...phil
  • ...we start talking about sending PEOPLE there.

    The whole benefit from Apollo wasn't the moon rocks we brought back; it's what we learned in the process of sending people there. It's a shame, but if history is any guide, we're not going to seriously try until some other country looks like it's going to do it. With no Soviet Union, we may be waiting a while.

  • "It depends on how long the journey takes really. Even today we've had men in space for a year and no more protection than our Mars ship would have. But still, a manned craft would have more shielding, they're not going to want to have people die from radiation sickness half way there are they? :) "

    By those men in space for more than a year, you mean Mir, right?

    Mir's orbit because of geomagnetic shielding provides more shielding than we could provide through shielding of material directly. On the way to Mars and at Mars, there will be little to no Geomagnetic shielding...the problem of radiation will be much worse.

    ....Random calculating below......
    I believe to have a manned spacecraft with enough shielding would be too heavy.

    So with some quick calculations...
    100 Mev Proton has a range of 1.44 ft in Aluminum, so lets assume that we our ship to be a 10 ft radius sphere (simplified to make math easier) with a 1 ft Al wall to shield from radiation...that gives us a mass for just the shell (no contents) of...calculating... ~55742 lbs. If we make that 20 ft radius, we get ~2.5 million lbs.

    My guess is for a mission to Mars we would need the 20 foot radius size...so we are talking about really big launch costs here and possibly having to assemble the ship in orbit.

    ..........End of calculating........

    I just don't see it happening anytime soon. I think it would be very interesting and exciting, but I think we have a long way to go.

    Besides, I would rather NASA get funded for this than some of the other stuff they are doing.

    Now that is just a quick guesstimate, but I think it will tough for us to carry everything we want there and back with protection for the mission at
  • I'm glad we're hurling more objects at Mars and all, but I'm amazed at the slowness with which we're exploring everyone's favourite big red bouncy ball. After all, it's been nearly a third of a century since we first put men on the moon, and yet that's as far as we've sent humans and, what's worse, we haven't even hurled very many probes out to our planetary neighbours. What's the total number? Not many...

    I think we need to switch our time scales a bit here - when it comes to most things, and especially space travel, a third of a century is NOTHING. Space travel is now where evolution was in the time of one-celled organisms.

    Granted, with the accelerate pace of technology these days, we should be more than able to build robust probes and send men to the distant reaches of our solar system, but man isn't perfect. Even the space program to date has been a bit of a kludge - the Space Shuttle ended up being some horrible political vehicle that can do everything for everyone, but none of it well; the Apollo launches could have been much more sustainable if they had planted a stage in orbit and used that as a pushing off point - it could have been a manned space station well before Mir or Spacelab.

    But instead of great moments like these, we can look forward to much smaller events and less publicly enthralling ones. Quite sad, when our government spends $3 *T*rillion a year, that we "don't have the money" to explore space as vigorously as we did in the first decades of the space program.

    This is a tired refrain, as others have pointed out. So long as our government is spending money on more than one thing at a time, any nimrod can use it to point out how "screwed up" our nation's priorities are. There are no right answers to these questions - it's simply what we and our elected representatives decide NASA is worth to humanity. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for spending lots of money on the space program - but there is the reality of our situation on earth to consider before allocating resources.

    Nothing that can be done with a mere probe can top the Pathfinder images, except for finding Martian or Ionian or Europan life. But, here's hoping...

    This is rather pessimistic, don't you think? Our probes are the technological equivalent of toddlers, and today's technology has hardly been brought to bear on remote imaging and exploration, much less tomorrow's techno-magic. Let's wait and see before making any sweeping pronouncements.

    It seems clear that the era of government spending many billions on a single space mission are over, and that the private sector now has the cash, resources, and expertise to begin building the next Microsofts and Ciscos of that industry. Read Robert Zubrin's "Entering Space" [amazon.com] for a good overview of what it would take to get there - *way* out there.


  • I do hope you were joking.

    the Challenger disaster (more of a government coverup than a real disaster--they don't want you to know that it was off it's flight path and on a collision course with Miami)

    I'd love to see your evidence for this. The shuttle doesn't have any way to turn 180 degrees while under rocket thrust. If you have evidence for your claim, present it, or else we'll conclude you're just talking through your hat.

    the Hubble Telescope which sat out there doing nothing for four years

    Wrong. It didn't do nothing, it just didn't generate all the pretty pictures you'd like. There was quite a lot of science going on while the Hubble waited for it's corrective lenses. Look here [stsci.edu].

    the Mars probes that were suddenly lost

    Granted, as a result of the 'faster cheaper' mode of operation. You got one.

    and the two year behind schedule International Space Station

    Have you checked the Russian economy recently? There are lots of reasons outside the control of NASA for that delay.

    1 for 4. That's an accuracy rating of 25%, which means you scored 75 of 100 on the dork-o-meter scale. You can safely be ignored.


    ...phil

  • Check out http://www.MarsSociety.org [marssociety.org] We're currently working on simulating the trip to Mars through the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station. Very Cool.

  • I'm not going to argue with your calculations, at least not without some of the textbooks I've got at home :) But advances in lightwieght materials may render the cost within our reach within the next 20 years.

    But yeah, at the moment NASA are doing what they should - a few, relatively cheap scientific missions and funding some research into new technologies that may pay off in the future when we actually get the will to use them...

  • Didn't mean to overwhelm you with calcs...just pointing out that the cost is going to be huge most likely and it will be difficult to get into space.

    Lightweight materials in general stop radiation in proportion to their density...i.e. you still need ~ the same total weight. In the case of composite materials, it has been observed that the transport of radiation has been higher than predicted, especially with the lower energy particles (the ones that deposit more charge and are more dangerous to human beings).

  • In the case of composite materials, it has been observed that the transport of radiation has been higher than predicted, especially with the lower energy particles (the ones that deposit more charge and are more dangerous to human beings).

    Really? Any more info on that? Still, I'm sure that they'll come up with something in the next 20 years... of course that's if just IMHO :)

  • Don't get me wrong, I would be totally pumped if we had a manned mission to Mars (or better yet, a Mars Station).

    But I don't know if that would get the public all that excited. Back in 1969 the general public was pretty thrilled to see live pictures from the surface of the moon. But today most everybody has seen Star Wars, Star Trek, and a billion other SF shows and movies--they are going to need to see more than a man in a spacesuit jumping over some red rocks to get them excited.

    What we really need is a Mission (with a capital M). In the 60's this was Beat The Reds To The Moon. "Do it for science" is never going to be capitalized for Joe Schmoe. We need something like Mars Has Gold or Mars Has Life or whatever.

    The only (halfway valid) "cause" I can think of off the top of my head is The Asteroids Have Precious Metals And Mars Is Nearby. But that Mission requires more than a trip to Mars--it requires space-mining (a so-far fictional activity) and scheduled regular trips out to the asteroid belt (not cheap).
    --
    Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!

  • Re:Nope, here is where it goes.. (Score:3)

    by thesparkle ( 174382 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @04:49AM (#898315) Homepage
    "But instead we spend it on Echelon and corporate espionage."

    Nope, instead we spend it on:
    (In order of size, largest to smallest)
    Social Security
    Defense
    "Discretionary" - (I dunno, NSA, junkets, interns, cigars, etc...)
    Medicare
    Interest
    Medicaid
    Smaller entitlement programs
    Other Mandatory costs

    Not opinion, but fact. See below..

    http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2001/guide02 .html

    There are actually breakdowns by spending types and whatnot.

    Please remember, that the information presented there, is from the President's office. Most data is correct, with a little "fine tuning".

  • Science Online: Gov Has Little Faith in NASA (Score:5)

    by hbo ( 62590 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @04:50AM (#898316) Homepage
    According to Science, the administration has been fighting NASA's desire to send two landers:

    NASA and the White House are locked in a quiet but intense struggle over the future scale of Mars exploration. NASA wants to send two landers to Mars in 2003, but the Administration is wary of the additional cost. The issue led to the cancellation this week of an announcement about Mars missions, and it might spur a budgetary gamble on NASA's part, Science reports in the 28 July issue.
    The news item notes that NASA wants to send two landers to reduce the risk of mission failure, but is facing resistance from the White House:
    Doubling up means a heftier price tag, however, and the White House is loath to ask Congress for more Mars money in 2001 and future years. "It's big bucks," says one Administration manager. The White House may still approve two landers--but on the condition that NASA cut current programs to pay for an expanded Mars effort. That would be bitter medicine for an overall space science effort already strapped for cash.

    And it's not just the White House. Congress is taking a dim view of NASA's budgets as well:
    NASA chiefs must move quickly. The larger program would require more planning, and NASA had already set a 1 August decision deadline to ensure that it could meet the 2003 launch date. Yet NASA won't know its 2001 budget--which is still stalled in Congress--until fall, while the 2002 budget request won't be released until next year. So if the agency wants two landers, it may have to gamble that there will be money to do it. Says one Administration manager: "We're playing a high-stakes game."

    This is obviously why NASA announced they are considering "one or two" landers.

    So write your congress critters. Tell them what you think about their budget priorities in an age of government tax surpluses. Tell them you want to vacation on Mars, and you'll send them straight to Io if they don't help you get there!

    "Even if you are on the right track, you'll
    get run over if you just sit there." Will Rogers

  • "Mars is the stepping stone to the Solar System"
    Gee, and I always thought that we were already in the Solar System.

  • What we really need is a Mission (with a capital M).

    And colonising Mars wouldn't be a Mission? I think the idea of having people living on another planet would be enough to capture the public's imagination, even in today's cynical atmosphere.

    And as for the asteroid belt? Well the sheer amount of raw resources there makes it a prime target for anyone looking to make money. And by the time we get around to it I'm sure that robotic mining techniques will have improved dramatically.

    All it takes is a reasonably small increase in the level of technology for these things to become feasible. It's not beyond our imagination at all.

  • http://www.radiation-effects.com/Com posite.pdf [radiation-effects.com] has information about the first proton transport measurements on composite materials. If you have any questions about it, email me at boing_boing23@nospam.hotmail.com

  • new NASA slogan (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    NASA - finding new and creative ways to waste all your money.

    screw education or law enforcement or healthcare, we need 10 billion dollars to throw into a pile then blow up.

    You know they don't have any real rockets, they just pocket the billion dollars, then throw a missile casing full of pinball machine parts into space and blow it up, then say "oops"

    waste of money, I can't believe people still buy into that crap.

  • I think the better termage is pulled. With more mass added, Mars would be actually pulled toward the Sun a little more... (granted, a little rover isn't much mass... altogether we've probably only planted less than 50 Earth pounds on Mars, if even)

    Probably only a slight fraction of a micrometer closer, of course!

    Then again, since we on Earth lost that mass, we probably moved a slight fraction of a micrometer farther from the sun!
  • "And colonising Mars wouldn't be a Mission?"

    For you and me, yes. But to motivate The People, you need competition. There is no competition in "colonize Mars". There IS competition in "We Can Beat The Pants Off Japan With Mars' Gold" or even "Colonize Mars Before The Chinese Do".

    "Capturing the public's imagination" is not enough. You MUST capture their competitive spirit. When Joe reads the daily status report on the Mars Mission, we don't want him to say "Huh, neat". We want him to shout "Go team!".

    I'm not saying the asteroid belt is beyond our technological grasp. I'm saying that we probably wouldn't see anything from there for 20 years and that's too long to make Joe wait.

    Don't ask yourself "what would motivate me to go to Mars". Don't ask your techie friends/co-workers. Ask people in bars and supermarkets. These are the people who have to pay for the mission, they are the people you have to excite.
    --
    Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
  • No, probably not. Otherwise, every pill of Viagra would cost several million dollars. Every car would cost about as much, too.

    First you do the research and development work. You pay the engineers. You test the parts in various conditions. You design, you redesign, you do it over and over again. Much of the expense is in the R&D. For a second probe, just copy the first. No additional R&D required, just like in cars.

    It's probably smarter to design the hell out of a single probe, then launch ten of the things, all identical, like buckshot.

  • A bystanding Slashdotter said, "I think [the NasaInsider picture] a fake. Look at the way the light strikes the NASA logo. It doesn't match the shadowing

    If that probe is real, I'll eat a hockey-puck shaped moon rock ;)
  • That's why it would be, yes, pretty smart to have a small "egg" for the Marsnauts (Aresnauts?) to travel in, safely contained for the bulk of the mission, then, when they land, have a smelter start kicking out some iron from nearby ore. You'd need digger bots, some transport bots, three or four smelters, and some mold bots together, I see no reason why we have to carry all of that iron with us. We could even have it set up before we land. Five foot thick iron walls shouldn't be a problem. Mars appears to be lousy with the stuff.

    Meanwhile, rather than the "let's put a big wall around it" approach, how about deflecting those oncoming protons with, say, a magnetic field? We could safely assume a rough direction for them, straight down, plus or minus 120 degrees in either direction. A stable magnetic field wouldn't be harmful to human flesh, as opposed to an oscillating one. Let's see, assume go with your 100 MeV proton, make the shelter five meters tall...well, we'd probably need to get cracking on that superconductor technology to make it happen, but it is worth a shot.

    Meanwhile, let's take a clue from R. Durans and see if we can't hijack some of its DNA to help our aresnauts rebuild their damaged DNA at a faster rate, which is where most of the radiation damage occurs, anyway.

    These are all three separate projects and problems, but, my guess is that they are all capable of being research independently and could conceivably be finished around the same time. I give the genetic engineering a bit more time than the rest of them, but hey, it's worth a shot.

  • What we do need is a space elevator. However, not the kind that you see in books (I can't remember the book it was in, I think it was a Clarke one... also reference Kim Robinson's Red Mars).

    It needs to have a terminal in space, sufficiently radiation shielded, like in the book, and also sufficient thrust to get back up into orbit. However, don't anchor the Earth terminal, leave it free floating, as a platform.

    I'm not much of a scientist, so I don't know how good the balancing effects are for a spacebound end, if it would be able to keep the Earthbound end floating freely or if the Earthbound part would drag the whole thing down. Maybe anchoring is a good idea, I don't know.

  • why just one or two... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why not send a fleet of rovers? If one costs 250 million, two would be much cheaper to build, three even cheaper, etc. Why not make a production line for these things instead of custom building each one. Also, it'll be another 3 or 4 years before Mars will be aligned with Earth again to send out more rovers. They should get their roving out of their system by covering Mars with rovers and then in 3 or 4 more years they could send humans. As it's going, they send one rover every 3 or 4 years then it'll be year 3000 before they send humans. And what with the Y3K bug...
  • AFAIK, this is the proton energy spectra to be used in upcoming Mars missions. This spectra is much worse than what you are currently experiencing on Earth and would most likely kill you. Notice the high energy particles. A 2000 MeV particle can penetrate some 3 to 4 meters through Aluminum...a small shielded area won't cut it, IMHO.

    Energy (MeV) Particles/cm2
    0.100000001 9.99999996e+011
    0.200000003 9.99999996e+011
    0.300000012 9.99999996e+011
    0.400000006 4.99999998e+011
    0.5 4.99999998e+011
    0.600000024 4.99999998e+011
    0.699999988 4.99999998e+011
    0.800000012 2.99999986e+011
    0.899999976 2.99999986e+011
    1 2e+010
    2 2e+010
    3 2e+010
    4 2e+010
    5 1e+010
    6 1e+010
    7 1e+010
    8 1e+010
    9 1e+010
    10 1e+010
    20 5e+009
    30 5e+009
    40 5e+009
    50 5e+009
    60 5e+009
    70 5e+009
    80 5e+009
    90 5e+009
    100 1e+009
    200 1e+009
    300 1e+009
    400 1e+009
    500 500000000
    600 500000000
    700 500000000
    800 500000000
    900 300000000
    1000 200000000
    2000 100000000
    3000 4.5
  • 1) We have no means to protect our astronauts effectively from space radiation

    Well, space suits do the job now (though perhaps not under extreme conditions), but you probably don't want to wear those for extended periods of time. Perhaps the answer is to build Mars settlements underground? There would be a larger production cost initally, and it would definitely be more difficult, but it would solve the problem of radiation/storms.

    2) We are afraid to have anyone die while visiting Mars

    Yup, this one thing will be the largest obstacle in settling Mars. It would be possible to jack up the nations support for the first mission, but what happens when somebody dies? It's suddenly not worth it to go to many people. And they have a point. It's easy for me down here on Earth to say, "Go ahead, risk your life going to Mars, it's important.". But if it came down to brass tacks, I don't know if I'd be willing to put myself in that position.

    That's why it will probably take a catastrophic event here on Earth, like massive global warming or overpopulation, for people to get really serious about colonizing the moon or Mars.

  • It needs to have a terminal in space, sufficiently radiation shielded, like in the book, and also sufficient thrust to get back up into orbit. However, don't anchor the Earth terminal, leave it free floating, as a platform.

    I didn't think that the cables in the Mars books were fixed to the ground - they sort of floated in a fixed jacket or something.

    I'm not much of a scientist, so I don't know how good the balancing effects are for a spacebound end, if it would be able to keep the Earthbound end floating freely or if the Earthbound part would drag the whole thing down.

    I doubt they'd make it if it was going to fall down... :) It should be kept up by its rotational motion - centrifugal forces...

  • . . . as nothing succeeds without various pressure groups in Washington these days, perhaps NASA should propose an alliance with the National Organization for Women (NOW [now.org]), noting that until now, only white males have set foot on other worlds. NOW throws its's support behind NASA for a female -first-step on Mars. . .

    In other words. . .

    MARS NEEDS WOMEN!!!!

    I'll dive for cover now. . . (g)

  • Space suits don't really perform that job. When astronauts are on EVA, they accumulate more dose than normal of course. They provide modest shielding, but most of the shielding is coming from the Earth's geomagnetic shielding, not the space suit or even the Shuttle/ISS itself.

  • Re:But, so SLOOOWWW... (Score:3)

    by laborit ( 90558 ) on Friday July 28, 2000 @05:45AM (#898333) Homepage
    I'm not entirely convinced by your reasons for space exploration. Pride can come from any number of things, and I'd rather --

    note to those who are about to stop reading
    This is NOT a "we should feed the starving children first" argument

    -- see us learn to take pride in all our accomplishments, even more mundane ones like raising the standard of living or making our government a bit less corrupt.

    I think the major reason for space exploration and colonization is survival.

    If you think rogue states and terrorists and pollution are problems now, they're only going to get worse. Industry will continue to grow heedlessly, and science's progress will inevitably make nukes easier to build and easier to hide. The possibility of some seriously huge, species-damaging shit going down on planet Earth continue to rise.

    Colonizing space is a high-cost hedge against the highest-cost of all risks. No, it won't solve our problems, but it will give us some room to breathe.

    Maybe if we're lucky we'll even have freedom to diversify (your frontier argument, perhaps) , and send some good social ideas back to the motherland.

    Some people argue that we should try to solve our problems, rather than scattering them throughout the cosmos and despoiling virgin planets with our idiocy. That would indeed be nice, but we're not a monolithic species and those who do have solutions can't afford to wait for those who don't. In the final analysis, I say, the human race is more important than keeping planets entirely untouched. (note: not an anti-environmentalist argument because if we fail to keep things in good condition, we're screwed as well).

    - Michael Cohn
  • I was born in Cocoa Beach, my father worked on the Saturn V then. He left and is now reciently back working on the shuttle as a reliability and quality control engineer at the Cape. Listening to his accounts of NASA corporate culture and the decision-making process it is apparent little has changed since Feynman's account of the last shuttle tradegy.

    It is my opinion that NASA retards our nation's space exploration needs more than it champions them.

    I want to see us go to Mars. Colonizing other planets is necessary for our species long-term survival. But NASA is squandering resources and wasting time.
  • I think they are sending 2 of the same probe hence this "as you only need to do the design work once" you make a strong argument for exactly what he's talking about. :)


  • The change in orbit due to mass would be greater on earth since the fuelled rocket + rover(s) would have a significantly larger mass than that of the rover(s). Some parts of the rocket and some of the spent fuel (water + carbon dioxide) would not fall back to earth, therefore disrupting earths orbit moving it further away from the sun than mars would move away from the sun.

    Also momentum must be conserve. As the earth will be accelerated away from mars by the launch, mars must be accelerated towards the sun in order to conserve momentum. But as the planets orbit the sun the small velocity will be only in a constant direction therefore not plunging ether of them in to the sun

    (I think, maybe?)
  • I remember a high school physics teacher telling the class that humankind's only chance for survival was space travel, since we were going to inevitably screw this one up too much to live on.

    I don't necessarily think that's true... while I believe that corporations and private citizens will continue to destroy the planet out of greed and apathy respectively, it is quite possible that if we spread out our damage across the solar system we could survive a lot longer.

    In any event, colonization of other planets is a great solution to population pressure, and a perfect opportunity to try social experiments.

    Unfortunately it is not the solution to terrorism. A mars colony would be _supremely_ vulnerable to terrorism, unless we manage to completely terraform the red planet.

  • And the orbiter went into orbit approximately above the ground.


    ---
  • We have no means to protect our astronauts effectively from space radiation. The space radiation environment in terms of energetic protons is worse on Mars than it was for the recent solar flare. That solar flare would likely have killed any astronauts had we put them in as little shielding as Mars missions will have.

    According to The Case For Mars, Robert Zubrin's excellent book on manned Mars exploration, solar flares are relatively low-energy and can be shielded against without too much trouble. Essentially, you put the food store in the centre of the ship, and when a flare comes (the dangerous charged particles arrive well after the storm is detected) everybody hops in the food store. In a worst-case solar storm, the crew receives about 3 rem. That's not something you'd like to take every day, but it's not going to kill you and it doesn't raise your risk of cancer very much at all.

    The cosmic ray dose (which, you're right, can't be shielded against without a ridiculously large craft), is about 50 rem over a two-year mission. Compared to the other risks that a manned Mars mission would face, this isn't really too much of a problem.

    As to the risk-aversion of the current American psyche, yes, it's a problem. But I think you're a little pessimistic here. Given our technical capabilities now vs. the 1960's, I can't see why our failure rate for Mars missions is going to be so much higher than the Apollos.

    #ifdef RANT

    Anyway, manned Mars missions are possible, and they're a hell of a lot better way to spend money than on a BMD system that won't work, is pissing off just about every other country in the world, and even if it works against missiles won't protect against the most likely nuclear attack on the US - a smuggled weapon.

    #endif
  • If you really want to inspire corporate america to get behind a mars mission, better hope that rover finds gold.
  • One group that wants to colonize Mars is the Mars Society [marssociety.org]

    The Mars Society is currently working on the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in the Canadian Arctic to simulate what going to Mars would be like.

  • hey!
    i never knew oliver stone was a slashdotter!
  • I believe that this was the same book quoted in a special issue of Scientific American in May 99 or so. I believe he is quite wrong. If you look at the recent solar flare (july 14th through the 18th), at http://crlgin.crl.go.jp/s edoss/solact3/do?d=2000%2C7%2C19 [crl.go.jp] you'll see that the spectrum is much harder than that mentioned in that article (he talks about 1 MeV protons)...this flare had many many protons above 100 MeV. note: I noticed the graph here doesn't explain the data much...go down to proton flux and look at the red white and blue lines...the white line is protons with energy greater than 100 MeV, the blue is greater than 50 MeV, and teh red is greater than 10 MeV. This is a real danger. If you look in another one of my posts, I cut and pasted the spectrum for particles (just protons) expected on one of the upcoming Mars missions...this spectra too is much more penetrating than what Robert Zubrin's book describes (assuming it matches the SciAm article, I don't have the book, but will check it out).
  • Are the planets the best route for human expansion?

    Please read this FAQ:

    Mikes Space Settlement FAQ [aol.com]

    Here is an excerpt:

    How is space settlement different from any of the other space colonization proposals?

    Most thinking regarding human expansion into space has focused on the settling of the surfaces of other planets, sometimes after modifying their environments to make them more Earth-like (called terraforming). The space settlement concept maintains that planets are not the most ideal location for human colonies beyond the Earth.

    Who developed the space settlement concept?

    Principally, Gerard K. O'Neill (1927-1992), who was a physicist with Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study. Prior to popularizing space development, O'Neill was well known as a researcher in high-energy physics, and as the inventor of the colliding-beam storage ring, an innovation now standard on most particle accelerators.

    What are the origins of the space settlement concept?

    In 1969, O'Neill was teaching a physics course at Princeton. America was engaged in the Apollo effort, so O'Neill was working space travel into many of the physics problems assigned.

    He was concerned about the persistent talk among academics regarding overpopulation and "limits to growth". He was also dismayed by many young people's resigned acceptance of two concepts he personally found repugnant. One was future totalitarian control over the use of resources, the other was that a decline in the standard of living was inevitable. One day he asked his students the following question: Is the surface of the Earth really the best place for an expanding, technological civilization? After some calculation, the answer seemed to be "no".

  • wow ... like i have always said "religion breeds ignorance". in todays world the idea that people still believe in god is appaling. how can you possibly .... you know what .... never mind!
  • You can blame Lockheed Martin for that. As for the other crash...I'm ashamed to say, but it was the fault of JPL...even the employees admit it internally. (I hear stuff...since Caltech and JPL are so closely related)
  • reading some of these posts is humorous ... yours, well ... just stupid. you put law enforcement in your post? are you high? cops only care about people when they are directly affected by them. philidelphia comes to mind ... yes, our wonderful police ... THEY NEED THE MONEY!!!
  • you know, i agree. we really can't settle mars mainly because its gravitational field is far weaker then ours. children born on mars would have a dificult time coming to earth. it is much easier to form artificial gravity on a space station .... considering we don't know how to on a planet.
  • What is the feasibility of constructing a Mars-going manned vessel within, say, 10 years? Would utilizing the ISS as a construction platform help this at all?

    Thank you.

    4920616D206E6F7420656C6974652E
    Email me.
  • There is anti-rationalist Christianity and there is rational Christianity. Don't take the views of the anti-rationalists (like the guy above) for the rest of us.

    Faith is orthogonal to reason. One can believe or not believe and be rational or non-rational completely independantly. Belief that Science and reason tell you all there is to know about what there is or belief that there is nothing outside of what Science can measure is as much a statement of Faith as is Christianity.

    --
    Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
  • the Challenger disaster (more of a government coverup than a real disaster--they don't want you to know that it was off it's flight path and on a collision course with Miami) He's just taking a little trip out from under the bridge, that's all. But regardless, just so everyone knows - the Shuttle has an escape system - ejection seats, I believe - for just such an occurance.

    Thank you.

    4920616D206E6F7420656C6974652E
    Email me.
  • [sigh]

    Screw education? Consider that the reason US education in math and science was #1 in the world for decades was largely the emphasis the government was putting on the space program, a priority which spilled over into education. Two whole generations of engineers and scientists came out of an educational system designed to "win the space race." In fact, math and science ed. has largely declined in proportion to NASA's budget. Coincidence?

    Screw law enforcement? The spinoff technologies of the space program include really effective bullet-proof vests (which were a _joke_ before 1970 or so) which have saved the lives of countless cops.

    Screw health care? Spinoff tech is even more apparent here. Practically every single piece of equipment in a modern hospital is literally "space age technology." If you or anyone you care about has ever had an MRI, CT, EKG, or even a lowly IV with a plastic line and a Teflon-coated catheter (trust me, this is important) you have NASA to thank for it.

    The fact is that the space program has improved the lives of nearly everyone on Earth in countless ways. It will continue to do so ... if we give it the chance.
  • The problem with space exploration is that we value human life too much. How many thousands of sailors died on the trip from Europe to the new world? (please understand, I do value human life, I just think sacrifices for mankind should not be in vain. Exploration is not a vain purpose.)

    To stay on topic over 36,000 people die of gunshot wounds in the U.S. every year. We CAN do something about that (but we don't). Yet one death for exploration purposes is a waste?

    Joe Stalin (Russian Dictator WWII) said this once, "a million men deaths is a statistic, one mans death is a tragedy" While I'm not a fan of Stalin by any means, he was killed more people than Hitler , that quote (which may not be word for word) i think sums up our preception of one person dying. You think of all the media attention in the recent school shotings, yet 10 people under the age of 18 die every day from guns in america. We don't report them on national news. (this was posted on cnn in the last 2-3 weeks)

    Governments didn't organize the exploration of the new world 500 years ago, it was business/entrapeneurs (sp?), with government help. If businesses begin to finance exporation again then we will make progress. If not, then by the time I'm 100 (78 years from now) we will probably only have landed enough probes on Mars to be counted on by my then frail two hands. Lets go private people.

    --a mind is like a parachute, it only functions when open

  • Here's a list of all space news sites talking about this story. Compare and contrast the coverage.

    Astronomy Now [spaceflightnow.com]
    BBC News [bbc.co.uk]
    CNN Space [cnn.com]
    MSNBC [msnbc.com]
    Space Chronicle [chron.com]
    Space Online [hhttp]
    SpaceDaily [spacedaily.com]
    SpaceViews [spaceviews.com]

    And, of course, my own at Universe Today [universetoday.com]

    Fraser Cain

  • I agree - if you read Gene Kranz's book "Failure is Not an Option", at the end he talks a little bit about how to move the space program along.

    Number one is getting out and convincing others. Number two is letting Congress know that, yes, this is something you want tax dollars spent on. And remember - snail mail letters make a much bigger impact than emails. Don't know who or where to write to? Check here for the House of Representatives [house.gov] and here for the Senate [senate.gov]

  • Unfortunately, it has also been *proven* to work, courtesy of the Mars Pathfinder. An easier, simpler, less complicated method has not been found, yet, unfortunately. It does separate nicely the dual problems of landing and positioning; you can land anywhere, and let the rover take care of itself in trying to get where it needs to be.

    It would be interesting to see if instead one could create an atmospheric entry craft that actually 'flew' through the atmosphere, and when it was flying in the right direction and the right velocity, drop the parachute, then the airbags. That may give us more control, at the expense of even more complexity.

    Perhaps if we could build a helicopter into the craft; parachute to the proper velocity, then heli to the right spot?

    Still, this is the best we have, currently

    Bye!
  • faster, better, cheaper...

    whether it's concorde maintenance or large aerospace projects, this mantra should be examined for it's validity before more lives or large projects are wasted.
  • Hmm... there's only one thing you haven't explained yet. Why is the radiation dose higher for Mars than for the Moon? Mars has an atmosphere, Luna does not. I would suspect that if things were as bad as you say, no Lunar astronaut would have returned alive. However, I'll grant you that the duration of the exposure is much shorter. Also, I suppose you could be referring to the radiation received whilst in transit. If that is what you are talking about, I guess I can see your point... the thing is, as has been pointed out elsewhere, it's relatively easy to enclose yourself in a shell of water. Water makes an excellent insulator against radiation, or so I'm told. So, I think the real barrier to Mars missions is the fact that there's no immediate return on investment. So, from a corporate point of view (and thus, a lobbyist point of view) there's no reason to do it. This is the greatest tragedy.

    Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity

  • "while I believe that corporations and private citizens will continue to destroy the planet"

    You left out the government. You know, the people who brought you nuclear weapons and waste that cannot simply be detroyed but has to detiorate over a long period of time.

    Oh, the same guys who hand out forest and mining rights to the biggest campaign contributors.

    Yep, the same folks who routinely dump whatever they feel at sea from Navy ships.

    The same people who fired depleted uranium shells throughout the Gulf War with little regard for the contaminents involved.

    Yes, the distributors of Agent Orange.

    Remember, don't ask what you can do for your government, ask what the hell are they doing to you.

  • Ahem...

    "... while I believe that corporations, private citizens, and the government will continue to destroy the planet through greed, apathy, and hubris respectively..."

  • If you want to know Zubrin's ideas on going to Mars, read his "The Case for Mars". He lays out a plan that the US government could do in 10 years for $20 billion dollars. You don't need to refuel once you launch. It's more feasible currently to launch from Earth and go straight there. In the future it would be nice to build and launch from Luna, but you wouldn't want to go from Earth to Luna to refuel since it takes a dV of about 6 km/s to get to the moon and only a dV of 4 km/s to go to Mars directly! Mars is easier to launch to than the moon. We could have had a 500 day Mars mission for the cost of the scientifically marginal ISS.
  • > If businesses begin to finance exporation again then we will make progress.

    The problem is, the only way businesses will go is if we give them unbounded licenses to plunder. I fear that even NASA's feeble fumblings are likely to destroy something precious before we realize what is going on.

    --
  • Uhhh...NASA's already done this successfully....How do you think Surveryor landed?

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