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Space Science

Russia Wants to Launch Manned Mission to Mars 511

Posted by Hemos from the ksr-should-fly dept.
Raul654 writes "The Maimi Herald, via the Associated Press, is reporting that Russia wants to launch a manned mission to mars. The article says that the Russians are hoping to work closely with the European Space Agency and/or NASA. The 6 person, 440 day trip would cost around $20 billion. Should be interesting to see how this shapes up. See also here for mirror article."
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Russia Wants to Launch Manned Mission to Mars More

Russia Wants to Launch Manned Mission to Mars

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  • Excellent! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Servo ( 9177 ) <dstringf@NospAM.tutanota.com> on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:01AM (#3831210) Journal
    This could be the boost to get NASA off its duff and on to Mars. The "space race" got us to the Moon, because we wanted to beat the Russians. I think this is just what we need.. some "friendly" competition.

    • Re:Excellent! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Raul654 ( 453029 )
      I see it differently. This is going to cost a lot of $, and really none of the space agencies can afford to go it alone. I think this is going to be a boon for international cooperation in the field. Until they have to decide who actually sets foot on mars first.

      • Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Funny)

        by ceejayoz ( 567949 ) <cj@ceejayoz.com> on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:05AM (#3831229) Homepage Journal
        Maybe they'll spend an extra couple billion and have six ladders for everyone to step off at the same time.

        "Three... two... HEY! BORIS! Damnit, that's not fair!"

        • LOFL (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Raul654 ( 453029 )
          I honestly don't see how they are going figure that one out. How do you decide when everyone involved is putting up billions?

        • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by karm13 ( 538402 )
          in german article [n-tv.de] about this yesterday, a read that only three would actually land on mars.

          imagine, travelling all the way, being in outer space in a tin can for eight months, and then one half has to stay in orbit, watch the others make history, have all the fun, and then listen to their stories about it all the way back...

          - "that was _so cool_! you have to try it for yourselves some day... i wish i could do it _again_!"

      • Re:Excellent! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Keiran Halcyon ( 550292 )
        It's not necessarily a big money loss. When NASA first threw everything they had at going into space, the creativity boom was something we've benefitted from for years. Ever use velcro? It came about because of NASA.

        Rockets became highly feasable because they HAD to. NASA had to be able to do something quickly and easily (in terms of their own abilities) because it was necessary at the time. Who knows what kind of advancements will come from this?

        Maybe NASA will develop a more efficient fuel-cell based power system because it's obviously just not sound to power everything by solar cells.

        Friendly competition as you put it, not only fuels action, it also fuels the imagination. Look at JunkYard Wars for example. These people aren't highly trained to do exactly what they're doing for the most part, yet they manage it nine times out of ten. Imagine what will happen if several professional agencies sit down and start working together on something as important as this.
        • NASA has been using fuel cells since the Apollo project, so they are unlikely to make any new major advances in that area.

          However, it is true that the space race and the ICBM race resulted in tremendous leaps in technology. It is hard to say what would have happened without that investment, but my guess is that the technological leaps would have taken longer.

          But NASA is no longer the hard driven organization that it was in the moon race. It has developed too many of the characteristics of other government bureaucracies, in spite of the fact that is has a lot of really smart people on its staff.

          NASA fell into the space shuttle trap as the only way to justify its existence. The result is an absurdly expensive launch system (and for many years, a total prohibition on competition). Then they justified the ISS on pretty much bogus grounds... the microgravity research is unlikely to be worth the many dozens of billions of dollars going into it.

        • It's not necessarily a big money loss. When NASA first threw everything they had at going into space, the creativity boom was something we've benefitted from for years. Ever use velcro? It came about because of NASA.

          Gee, and all it took was a multi-billion dollar space program to get velcro?

          The space program is nice, but that argument has always bothered me. If there is a need for something in the marketplace, usually supply and demand are better arbiters of whether or not a producct comes into existence.

    • Yes indeed. I hope that Russia, ESA, NASA and the others have gained a lot of experience from huge international projects after building the ISS. It took a while but finally it's there. I think that this next big international project will gain from this. Also, it would boost the public interest in space exploration to new heights, I'm sure.

  • yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ceejayoz ( 567949 ) <cj@ceejayoz.com> on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:03AM (#3831222) Homepage Journal
    does anyone actually believe the Russian promise to fund 30% (6 billion +) of the mission? Given their record with the ISS and the sorry state of their economy, I highly doubt it.
    • All they have to do is sell their vodka and old MIGs -- that should get the $20 billion ;-)
    • I'm sure they have 6 billion somewhere... plus they do have lots of military technology laying around to sell to lots of nations - maybe even the U.S.A.

    • Re:yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)

      by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @03:39AM (#3831782) Journal
      I submitted this same story earlier today:
      # 2002-07-05 22:03:16 Russia Proposes International Mission to Mars (articles,space) (rejected)
      Only in my description, I mentioned that this article comes one day after the Iraqi ambassador announced his country is ready to repay [yahoo.com] the $8 billion Russia loaned it. That would conveniently cover 30% of $20 billion with money Russia probably never really expected to see, boost morale and raise Russia's international public image.

      I'm sure there are plenty of starving Russians who could think of something better to do with that money. Iraq doesn't feed its people either, but we know it has the money because of its oil trading and we know it's willing to pay that amount to gain Russia's friendship at a time when we are seeing regular reports in the news about Bush's plan to invade Iraq [yahoo.com].

      I'm not grousing about the fact that my story was rejected, just adding information that the lucky submitter left out.

  • What kind of food do astronauts from other nations get? There are countless movies about American astronauts eating freeze dried food, things out of little packets... but what do cosmonauts eat, and how is it packaged?

    Just curious...
    • Freeze dried vodka

  • If International Space Station Is An Indicator... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cybrpnk2 ( 579066 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:07AM (#3831233) Homepage
    ...$20 billion isn't even gonna be enough to buy the paint for the logos on the side of the spacecraft. We are SO overbudget on ISS it stopped being funny a decade ago. Every shuttle flight is $0.5 billion, so $20 billion will get 40 shuttle flights, which can carry if we're lucky 40*30,000 = 1,200,000 pounds or 600 tons to low Earth orbit. A Mars mission is 95%+ fuel so the $20 billion is just TRANSPORTATION COSTS for a 30 ton vehicle and the fuel for it. I don't think you can get 6 people to mars and back in a 30 ton ship; somebody prove me wrong - and then tell me how we build it for free!

    • Re:If International Space Station Is An Indicator. (Score:5, Funny)

      by dsb3 ( 129585 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:12AM (#3831250) Homepage Journal
      > and then tell me how we build it for free!

      Easy.

      1. collect underpants
      2. wait
      3. travel to mars!!

      Who's interested in the IPO?
    • somebody prove me wrong - and then tell me how we build it for free!
      Well, we could always try to put it under the GPL....No, wait, that would just make it the other kind of free. My bad.

    • Maybe they'll finally consider nuclear power or something similar for this sort of trip -- it seems to be the only feasable way to make a large trip. Switch to nuclear, and you suddenly cut your fuel mass by a whole lot!

      Or, maybe use those spiffy ion propulsion engines they've been using on some sattelites lately.

      Either way, this is something that should definitely be done no matter what the cost. You can't eye space travel as a direct commercial gain, but the social, technological, and fringe benefits of such a trip are great. Let's not forget the thousands of useful inventions that came out of the NASA Space program. It's nice to get a nation, or in this case, a group of nations together for a cause other than fighting an enemy.

    • Yeah, that number raises the old bullshit flag with me as well. The cost of the Apollo budget over the years 62 - 73 was around 20 Billion [nasa.gov] in nomial dollars. Factor in inflation since then and you get something more like $40 Billion in todays dollars. Granted, there were 7 attempted moon landing during the Apollo missions, plus 4 manned test flights, plus the Apollo 1 disaster, but still... I think they'd be lucky to get to the moon and back for $20 Billion today...
    • If the ISS is an indicator, Russia will ante up a ridiculously small portion of what it's committed to, and the U.S. will pay for the rest.

    • Re:If International Space Station Is An Indicator. (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript902.h tm

      ALAN ALDA (Narration) It's the rocket's fuel that for Bob opens up the possibility of a small, cheap Mars mission.

      BOB ZUBRIN: This is the lab where we have the machine that can make rocket propellant on Mars. Here it is. The carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere comes in here, goes down into a reactor here which is something just the size of this, where it reacts with some hydrogen that you've brought from Earth, to turn into carbon monoxide and water.

      ALAN ALDA (Narration) Out the other end you get rocket fuel and many other useful chemicals. And it all happens on Mars.

      BOB ZUBRIN: This is a general purpose Martian still. It makes oxygen, water, methane, methanol, kerosene, ethylene, anything you want.

      ALAN ALDA This is going to affect the whole cost of the mission, won't it? What will that effect be?
    • The Russians can launch stuff into space much cheaper than the US can (mostly 'cause labour is cheaper over there), and the shuttle is a shitty vehicle for launching bulk stuff into orbit (you have to cart people and all their life support equipment).

      Shit, for the purpose of the exercise we could build Saturn V's, or the Russians could build their 200-ton booster design they had on the drawing board.

      As for the minimum mass you need to do the mission, you're probably right, but even so the transportation costs with the shuttle are horribly inflated.

    • bad starting point (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jelle ( 14827 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @01:01AM (#3831445) Homepage
      First, the section of the flight from low earth orbit to mars most probably won't be on the same fuel as that used for launching from the ground, for the simple reason that it's not the most efficient way to do it.

      Second, the most cost-effective method of hauling heavy equipment into low earth orbit from the ground is not the space shuttle. Even the ISS gets resupplies in soyuz pods.

      If they launch to the ISS, then they don't always need to send a crew with it, becuase the ISS crew has a robotarm and can to spacewalks to assemble things in space.

      this company [ilslaunch.com] already launches commercially in both ksc in florida [nasa.gov] and in baikonur in russia [ilslaunch.com]. With the Proton K [ilslaunch.com] rocket and also with the largest version of the Atlas V [ilslaunch.com], they can launch over 45000 pounds into orbit, that's more than what the shuttle can, and I'm sure a protonk launch from baikonur is a lot cheaper than a shuttle launch from jfk. Maybe energia [energia.ru] can make bigger rockets for this, but I don't speak russian to the website is all 'chinese to me'.

      (of course this all assumes they're launching spaceship parts and fuel to the ISS and assemble there).

    • a mars mission is by no means 95% fuel unless youre looking at the design present to reagan in the early 80s. We now know we can get all the fuel we need and refine it and store it right on mars.

      It mentioned a two ship approach. Presumably the first ship leaves a couple of years earlier and starts filtering oxygen out of the atmosphere and hydrogen out of the ground water/ice and storing it before the manned mission even takes off. Once they know things are looking good they leave and find a fully fueled space ship for their ride back sitting on mars. Its been proposed by Robert Zubrin a thousand times over (though he didnt even assume the hydrogen could be extracted on site, which we now know is possible)

      Its not at all unreasonable and its very refreshing to see the Russians having balls where our leaders havent.
    • Buy this book [amazon.com].

      Or go to this site [marssociety.org].

      It's all been costed. You CANNOT compare the shuttle. But if you want to, the Shuttle is a 100 tonne launch platform, that brings 90 tonnes back in the shape of the orbiter. It's stupidly inefficient. You could launch the whole ISS with ONE Saturn V. Now do your maths based on 100 tonnes to LEO. Better still, do your math on the 140 tonne to LEO booster you could get if you stripped the Shuttle off the STS and re-configured it slightly.

      Bottom Line: $20 billion is real. The numbers have been done by experts, not back of the napkin stuff like the ISS. And $20 Billion buys you a ten year program with 3 shots to Mars, crew of four each shot, total of 18 Man-Years on the surface. Woohoo! Let's go!

  • Russian space program == Tourist financed.

    Let's all vote for who we want to send to Mars!

    One of these days, Alice, Pow! Straight to the Moon^h^h^hars...

    • Well, given NASA's track record at actually getting something to Mars and/or not losing it once it's there, let me be the first to vote that we should send 'N Sync (sp?), 98 Degrees, and a variety of other boy pop bands... at least the female pop singers are sexy. :)

      • we should send 'N Sync (sp?), 98 Degrees, and a variety of other boy pop bands...

        Just keep my favorites [geocities.com] here on earth!

        at least the female pop singers are sexy.

        STILL not worth keeping around. At least in space no one can hear you sing.

    • Actually, this is plausible.

      Look at lotteries here in America. They can give out 160 million (in a single state, a single time!) and still make a profit margin (which i'm sure is quite a good margin... at least several million. I can't imagine many people would care if the prize is 150 or 160 million... so that's 10 million right there)

      So have a deal. Lottery ticket -- 10 bucks. Person chosen gets to have a trip to mars & training. have some other prizes as well. (just training. the next trip to the ISS, etc)

      really. it won't raise 20 billion, but it would be a nice bit of money to buffer the over-budget woes.

      I'd buy the ticket. Hell, I'd buy 100.

      But then again, i guess they'd have to have some deal (if you're a 500 pound, illiterate ignoramus who can't even stand up on your own, we have the right to choose the next guy.)

      sucks for me. :(
      • But then again, i guess they'd have to have some deal (if you're a 500 pound, illiterate ignoramus who can't even stand up on your own, we have the right to choose the next guy.)

        Good idea, I like it. :^) I suggest that if the winner can't go (for whatever reason), s/he gets to nominate another person to go in his/her place.

  • Useful space travel may take a while. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:14AM (#3831261) Homepage
    Columbus did his thing in 1492, yet colonization didn't really get going until the 1600s. Even then, there wasn't much settlement in North America outside of a strip about 100 miles from the ocean until after 1800.
    • After invention of the wheel, it took humanity thousands of years to built a car. Yet after that, it was less than a century until they built airplanes and rockets, and flew to the moon.

      Things go faster now, and they are speedier too...

  • Lofty goals... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...for an agency that can't afford to even built COMPONENTS of the International Space Station without resorting to selling seats to tourists.

    Talk is cheap. This isn't going to happen.

  • if anyone should do it... (Score:3, Funny)

    by gol64738 ( 225528 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:25AM (#3831314)
    the russians have a better chance at this project than the americans. why? because safety america wouldn't allow a NASA ship to go to mars without backup systems backing up other systems backing up other systems, which costs a LOT of money for all that redundancy.

    the russians have a less altrusitic attitude towards their cosmonauts; perhaps a bit like their military personnel.

    i mean, when the russians are ready to launch this mission, and it blows up on the pad, their attitude is like, 'whelp, that sucks. here, stick 6 more guys in that other rocket and lets try it again'.
    • Hmmm, then how come the Russian rockets had an ejection module? It was actually used at some point, I believe. Rocket was blowing up beneath them, and they ejected and landed safely miles away.

      Kinda makes you wonder if we had the same for Challenger, eh?

      The Russian's mistake through the space race was underestimating our stupidity. They should have just stuck to their technology instead of copying what ended up being a loser (shuttle).
    • A NASA engineer and his manager were asked to estimate the chances of failure of a critical component in the shuttle engine. This was a component that could cause loss of vessel and crew if it failed.

      The engineer and manager's estimates differed by two orders of magnitude.

      You're right. There is a difference in the approach to risk between NASA and the russians. I believe their managers are not that far out of touch with reality. They accept the fact that space exploration is dangerous and spend more of their time preventing the next disaster than covering their asses. I am sure that russian engineers and managers have just as much respect for human life as americans and they do their best to ensure the safety of their cosmonauts within the costraints imposed by physics, engineering and, let's face it, budgets.

      Safety reports spanning millions of pages printed on tons of dead trees do not make a system safe. They just help managers to live in denial.
  • The Maimi Herald

    I ma os glda thta slashdto finalyl catesr to my spellign disabiliyt.

  • history channel show (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NovaX ( 37364 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:27AM (#3831327)
    There was some show on the history channel today, taped before Bush was elected, that talked about exploring mars. It said that a method to do it would be to send a lander with 2 boosters that would go to Mars without passengers and instead mix with the Martian atmosphere to create fuel for the returning trip. Then a similar flight would occur with people on board. The idea was that thus we could save from having a huge expensive mission that had to go both ways and have two relatively cheap flights. It could be done for by 2015 if Nasa was given the go-ahead.

    They then went on to talking about instead teraphorming Mars making it suitable for man-kind. That might be the answer, though they readily admitted that our technology and patience are lacking for such a feat.

    It ended there and if I missed anything earlier they may have talked about. It just seemed ironic since I turned on the news 5 minutes after and heard of Russia's purposal.

    • That's Mars Direct (Score:3, Informative)

      by Goonie ( 8651 )
      As will undoubtedly be mentioned multiple times on this discussion, that's Robert Zubrin's Mars Direct plan, and the concept of making the fuel there for the return trip seems to be the only vaguely sane way to do things.
      • Actually, with the fact there is plenty of water under the surface of Mars itself, this means the very possibility of making liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen and liquid methane for rocket fuel cheaply at Mars becomes a reality. That could mean the Mars Direct space vehicles could become larger than originally envisioned at least for the return vehicles.
    • This is essentially the Robert Zubrin plan for travel to Mars. You send a ship in advance that is the return vehical. It sits there with cargo (Rovers, living utilities, whatever) producing rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere for the Astronauts to use to explore the planet and get home. We launch the Astronauts a couple of years later (So we know the thing has made fuel) and get them within rover range of the return vehical. His plan calls for a permanent settlement, so when we send the first team of Astronauts we also send another return vehical around the same time to a different spot of the planet (for maximum exploration) and repeat the process until we come up with habitats on the planet itself. In the event that the first return vehical does not function for some reason, the second one is driven to and used instead (the astronauts carry the fuel or wait until the next one produces more).

      You can check out this plan in detail in his book The Case For Mars [amazon.com]

      It's also interesting to note that this Russian plan calls for an orbiting ship of astronauts to remain in space for the duration of the time. This seems unnecessary and possibly dangerous for whoever has to sit in low gravity with poor radiation shielding for the couple of years it takes to get there, explore, and come back. Zubrin also calls for a different crew make-up, including removing the "doctor" and having the crew trained in basic field medicine. If there is something drastic that far from home it's doubtful a doctor could heal them anyway, better to save weight and not include too many people.

      This whole style of mission has been on the table for a while now (using existing technology), so it's just a matter of getting people to actually want to explore what humanity can become. A tough task no doubt.

      Charlie

  • Mars Direct (Score:3, Informative)

    by cybrpnk2 ( 579066 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:28AM (#3831332) Homepage
    Anybody interested in a Mars mission would do well to use as a starting point Zubrin's Mars Direct [nw.net] plan...
    • I'm pretty sure they do. That's why their estimate is closer to Zubrin's estimates ($20-$30 billion) than to NASA's ($450 billion).
  • I don't think the current political climate in the US would allow any such mission to take place. People are not interested in space exploration right now. I don't think it's beyond technical abilities, but as soon as you start talking about tens of billions of dollars, it turns people off.

    A sensible approach to space exploration might be to set up a moon base near the south pole. It would be a fantastic research, mining, and launch platform for future space missions (actually, it might be better to launch from elsewhere on the Moon, but the availability of fuel could be a more important consideration than simple location). Fuel could be mined from water there, and it would be easier and less expensive than a jump straight to Mars. A permanent moon base would be the first step for humanity in to the rest of the solar system.

    Of course, even this is would require more political capital than we'll be able to dig up in the US in the forseable future. There is an end to America's myopic vision!

    As for the article, it is pointed out this isn't a formal proposal. The article takes a negative tone on the whole thing, going to great pains to gratuitously mention an ancient Soviet launch failure which resulted in "contamination." I suppose it's not safe to let preexisting negative sentiment work by itself -- better rub in past failures!

    That's all aside to the ludicrous notion that Russia could provide 30% of the funding. Note to Russians: it'll be harder to get NASA to agree on a tourist package for a Mars mission...

    I do, however, remain hopeful that someday we'll recognize that promise of opening a frontier in to space...but I doubt I'll ever get to see that day.

    • I quoted this book about the Japanese "cool stuff" story. [slashdot.org]

      Space could provide a new rain of resources, or it could bankrupt us. But its habitation does offer two other advantages.
      The first: internation cooperation. No single nation can afford the price of extraterrestial development. To turn the wastelands of asteroids and planets into lands of plenty would involve consortia including Russia, Europe, and Japan. Those partnerships are already under development, though too often we are not involved in them. ... ... ...
      -Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle (Chapter:Tennis Time And The Mental Clock)


      We are already getting behind, and space could be the one thing that would bring this planet's superpowers together.

      Another quote:

      The second, and perhaps more important advantage of following in the footsteps of Captain Kirk: man has as yet invented no way to prevent war. We have found no method for shaking the consequences of our biological curse, our animal brain's addiction to violence. We cannot free ourselves from our nature as cells in a superorganismic beast constantly driven to pecking order tournaments with its neighbors. We have found no technique for evading the fact that those competitions are all too often deadly."
      -Howard Bloom, The Lucifer Principle (Chapter:Tennis Time And The Mental Clock)


      Either a threat of thermonuclear war (as Sagan, Erhard, B.Fuller thought) will bring us together or space exploration will.

      Simply the bigger picture is that this is the bigger picture.

      It is our destiny to return to space, the place from which we came when we were just particles....

  • They're going to need all the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, et al, to sign up for trips to the space station before they can afford that

  • Insert Obligatory *NSYNC Space Reference Here... (Score:3, Funny)

    by gdyas ( 240438 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:34AM (#3831350) Homepage

    Maybe it could just be like taking that millionaire sponsorship thing to another level. Get Pepsi to chip in as well, to have their logo on everything.

    I vote for Britney to go along as fuck toy / mascot.

  • Space race part 2 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by incom ( 570967 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:36AM (#3831360)
    It may even actually get done if America steps up and announces plans of their own.
  • The best way to do this is to make it a one-way trip. Anyone who gets on the ship should be well aware they're not coming back. That'd cut costs significantly. Look at it this way: if we send old people, depressed people, whatever, people predisposed to not living for many more years, well, what's the loss? For the old folks it'll be the greatest time of their lives. For the depressed, hell it may even cheer them up but they'll get depressed when they realize they're never coming back and probably off themselves.

    The trick is guaranteeing the depressed people don't kill themselves too soon and get some research work done. The old folks will probably feel better in zero G (arthritis may not bother your without gravity) and I believe their hearts will do well also. No worries there.

    "Mommy where's grampa?"

    "He went to Mars honey, he won't be coming back."

    "Where's Mars?"

    "It's that reddish star right-over-there."
    Beats the hell out of saying grampa went to heaven, after all.

  • Why not be positive about this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @12:50AM (#3831412) Journal
    Why is it that whenever there's a story mentioning Russia on /. that every patronising, xenophobic AC thinks that it's his patriotic duty to post some negative "reds-under-the-bed, they're-still-commie-bastards, huh-they're-all-drunk-on-vodka" comment?

    Some simple facts for the uneducated:

    1. Russia has the know-how.

    Russia still has more experience of manned space flight than everyone else put together, in terms of both man hours and missions. During the 80's and 90's, when NASA shuttle launches were red letter days, the Russian space agency was putting up cosmonauts as often as they wanted to.

    2. Mir, the Russian space station, was the best permenant orbiting platform ever built.

    Laugh all you want, but it was a damn sight more sucessful than Skylab, NASA's 70's project. Yes, Mir's final few years were dogged by near-disasters but virtually all of those could be traced back to some bean counter cutting back the budget here and there - the technology, engineering and science wasn't to blame.

    Mir was in use way past it's planned retirement date, and was the first true permenantly manned space station. A great deal of the ISS's design is based on the lessons (good and bad) learnt from Mir.

    3. Going to the moon was a competitive race. Going to Mars will be a collective journey.

    This isn't a road trip we're talking about. It's a voyage.

    NASA can't afford to go to Mars single-handed. Neither can ESA. And neither can the Russians. The only way this is going to get done soon is through cooperation.

    Yeah, cooperation. That dirty "c" word. Sometimes, you can't do everything yourself so you call in someone else, pooling resources and talent to get the job done as best as possible.

    Politically, economically and scientifically, there are many reasons why such an endeavour will be one of cooperation rather than competition. As much as anything else, a Mars mission will be used to foster closer relationships between the US, Europe and Russia.

    (And, before you mod this down as a troll, re-read what I've written. It makes sense. Which is more than can be said about many of the posts so far.)

    • Re:Why not be positive about this? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ArsSineArtificio ( 150115 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @02:15AM (#3831648) Homepage
      Caveat: Your fundamental point that the Russians rule utterly is well taken. They do indeed so rule. Look at the Trans-Siberian Railway, for Pete's sake. Makes the mighty Union Pacific look like HO.

      Anyway...

      NASA can't afford to go to Mars single-handed. Neither can ESA. And neither can the Russians. The only way this is going to get done soon is through cooperation.
      Yeah, cooperation. That dirty "c" word. Sometimes, you can't do everything yourself so you call in someone else, pooling resources and talent to get the job done as best as possible.

      Isn't the fact that no single nation on Earth can afford to develop a Mars mission a strong indication that it is massively impractical? Supposing it could be done, but it would take 5% of the world's GDP for 10 years. At what point do we say, "actually, never mind, let's check back in 2050 to see if it makes sense then"?

    • I agree with your conclusions, but I question some of your statements.

      Russia has the know-how.

      While not necessarily incorrect on its face, the exclusive connotations of this statement just don't stand up to the facts. Your following comments seemed to suggest that you equated this to man-hours in space, but there's more to space travel than humans in pressurized capsules for extended periods of time. The United States has always had the technological edge in virtually every element of spacecraft design, construction, and operation. The United States has also been the only nation to successfully navigate a manned spacecraft beyond the orbit of the Earth. I know the "but we landed on the moon" argument has been probably heard so much that the actual technical details of that acheivement are lost, but the fact remains that it was an amazing accomplishment which did in fact far exceed the capabilities of the Soviet space program. The Russians will be bringing knowledge and experience, no doubt, but to suggest that "they have the know-how", as if this were an exclusionary state, is a disservice to what NASA has accomplished.

      I do agree, however, that the Russian contribution to the project is pivotal. The Russians have always excelled at solving complex problems with simple, cheap, and reliable solutions. The famous "write with pencils in zero G" thing is a good example (we spent millions coming up with pens which could write in a microgravity environment). In the days of decreasing budgets we now face, such simple ingenuity could make the difference between whether or not we ever make the attempt, but we won't be getting there with the N1 or Buran.

  • A properly done Mars Mission... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by trims ( 10010 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @01:13AM (#3831482) Homepage

    .. is exactly what NASA needs to revitalize it. Right now, NASA is a massive beauracracy that does everything over-budget, late, and overtly-cautious. It's a typical agency that has outlived it's usefulness, and lost sight of its mission.

    Together, Russia and NASA can come up with a good design for a Mars-mission vehicle. Unlike the Space Station (ISS), there are a huge number of unknowns which would have to be dealt with, and consequently, novel innovations for them cooked up (we got a huge amount of cool stuff out of the space program from the 60s, but nothing really interesting in the 80s and 90s). Here's a short list of totally new problems which would need to be solved:

    • Cheap (i.e. less than $10 / lbs payload cost) Earth-to-Low-Orbit lift capability (may rockets aren't the right thing here... Maybe giant sling shots, high-speed train jumps, etc).
    • Long-term space survial without resupply. Even Mir got a shipment of food/air/spare parts evey month or so. Given that a Earth-Mars mission is about a year or so, we'd need to figure out how to make such a spaceship almost totally self-sufficient.
    • Micro-meteoroid and radiation protection. Unlike earth-orbiting stuff and even the Moon mission, a trip to Mars is outside the Van Allen belts, and also away from the Earth's protective Solar Wind profile. Protecting a ship is a whole new ballpark.
    • Long-term reliable energy production. Would it be nuclear? Some sort of solar sail? Or what? I'd imagine such a ship would require a substantial fraction of a MegaWatt of electrical power. Where is that coming from?
    • Long-term human psychological studies - your crew is away for at least a year. Do you use women? What about personality conflicts? Interpersonal relationships? Dating? Only married couples? The shrinks would love this.

    NASA really needs a kick in the pants. Unfortunately, that requires some leadership and real vision from the President, and we haven't had that kind in awhile. They really should relegate the lift capability to private industry and just concentrate on making the Mars ship.

    Oh well. Maybe someday...

    -Erik

  • Not because of any paranoid mistrust of the Russians. Not because of any BS about spending the money on the earthbound poor. Simply because we don't know if there is life on Mars yet. A Manned mission will "contaminate" Mars with our micro-organisims making it very difficult to discover any native Martian microbes unless they are very different from the mundane Earth microbes that would arrive as colonists with the manned crew. If unmanned exploration fails to discover any native life on Mars Then I'll be one of the biggest supporters of Manned exploration. If there are "natives" on Mars their existance will have to be protected from the contamination that would go with a manned mission. Life that evolved off Earth could provide us with many answers about the evoulation of life and of how common life may be in the Cosmos. It would be a far more valuable resource than any bennifits that could be gained from a Mars Mission.
    • We've alreadt sent plenty of probes to the planet. Surely we've already contaminated it. I don't see how humans in hermetically sealed space suits would cause any more contamination than the eqipment we've already dumped on Mars.

      It's like saying you won't shake someone's hand because they're sick, but you'll take the dollar bill they hand you to get them a cup of coffee. Same germs either way.

      • Up to now a lot of care has gone into decontaminating Martian probes. Humans on the other hand harbor many more microbes than the small number that might surrive our decontamination procedures and durring the flight will contaminate everything in the spacecraft including the outside of the space suits they will wear on the surface. Don't get me wrong, I strongly favor the concept of Martian exploration, it's just a matter of making damn sure that we don't blow the chance to discover life on a nearby planet. While we wait for the results from the unmanned probes we can develop the technology needed for a manned outpost by working on a Moon Base that would be manned for the same time periods as would be required for the time periods that the Astronauts/Cosmonauts would be on the Martian surface.
  • Apparently, Russia thought of a plan back in 1989, proposed by NPO Energia. It was to be 716 days in length, with a crew of 4 (only 2 would go to the surface for 7 days). The craft that would go to mars would be constructed in space, and 5 Energia [attbi.com]-class heavy-lift boosters would take it up there. Read about the plan here [astronautix.com]. Apparently, the project never got off the ground, so to speak.

  • the money (Score:2, Insightful)

    by loz ( 64114 )
    How can Russia afford to spend $20 billion on a stupid trip to mars, when at the moment most western societies are funding poor Russia with billions of dollars to demantle their nuclear warheads, clear up all the mess surrounding all that scary biotech-shit they created in the 70s and 80s which is now easily falling in the hands of terrorists, etc., etc.?

  • Get off this stupid planet for a while, with all of it's fighting, wars, and terrorist bullshit...

  • Go Russia! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JimPooley ( 150814 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @05:17AM (#3832008) Homepage
    Let's face it, the Russians have a major advantage over the Americans in this.
    They have the best expertise on not just the physical effects of long-term space flight, but they're also experts on the psychological effects of being cooped up in a big space can for a long time. You need to know all that for this trip.
    They're also the only nation with the big dumb boosters you need for a trip like this. Their hardware is pretty bulletproof as they use tried and trusted hardware rather than going for the most high-tech option.
    And at the moment Russia is the only nation on earth with manned spaceflight capability. All Shuttles are grounded, and who knows whether they'll ever fly again?

  • what a colossal waste of money (Score:3, Insightful)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Saturday July 06, 2002 @06:38AM (#3832148)
    I think sending people to Mars serves no purpose whatsoever. Whether it's $20 billion or $20 trillion, for the cost of sending 6 people to Mars, we could send probably a hundred unmanned one-way missions, or even several unmanned return missions. Those would yield much more scientific data.

    If, on the other hand, the goal is public relations and media coverage, then let the entertainment and media businesses pay for it.

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