NASA Wants Astronauts on Mars by 2010 713
FeloniousPunk writes "According to
this article
in the UK Guardian, NASA intends to send a manned mission to Mars by 2010, using nuclear propulsion. President Bush may announce this project, called Project Prometheus, at the State of the Union address." Here's
good background and context;
for technical background, I recommend
Zubrin
or
Stern.
The JPL will be involved in developing the nuclear propulsion tech, intended to cut the interplanetary trip from six months to two. Apparently the theory is that this proposal won't get shot down like the last Mars proposal because the shorter mission will save money. Here's hoping public response has progressed beyond "oh no! did he say nuclear?!"
In related news,
jkcity writes:
"according to this article by the BBC, the Chinese plan to have a man in space by October 2003."
So do I... (Score:2, Insightful)
Putting all your eggs in one basket, even if that basket is a planet, is a bad idea.
well.... (Score:3, Insightful)
How does nuclear power help? (Score:4, Insightful)
because (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we did learn *a whole bunch* by going to the moon, even if most of it wasn't evident until recently (technological gains).
By going to Mars, I'll be looking a few decades later for another kevlar, microchip, or similar coming out of it.
Really, what we learn from mars won't be so big. What we learn from the trip itself could be huge.
Re:why (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh no! Let's never explore! Let's never go anywhere! Why send people when we can just send PROBES! PROBES are CHEAPER! PROBES are SAFER!
Fuck that. That's just people speaking who are to self-concerned and scared to go. Part of exploration is to prove to yourself what you (as a person or society) can do. One of the hardest goals, undoubtedly, is to take a person to another planet over an immense distance and make sure they survive the trip there and back. Even better would be to have a permanent place there.
Of course if you don't think we should ever stick our heads outside the door, you are more than welcome to shut yourself in and look out only through your peephole.
Re:why (Score:5, Insightful)
Two words for those that say I am wrong. "Superconductor Supercollider".
Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as the US is concerned, if it doesn't pay for itself or get someone reelected, then it doesn't happen. A manned Mars flight does neither, therefore they are not going.
Those in charge of China have a different agenda and a different set of values. They have the basic makeup to succeed in this.
Yes, Mars will be red.
Hadn't Mr Bush (senior) promised Mars by 2019? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So do I... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm recalling them from memory from a long time ago - appologies if they are wrong.
Class 1 - Uses the energy of it's sun. Has expanded throughout it's solar system.
Class 2 - Uses the energy of many suns/black holes. Has expanded throughout it's galaxy.
Class 3 - I forget the energy source. Has expanded throughout the universe.
It's humbling to think even reaching class 1 won't happen for a long time yet.
Welfare for geologists and soil scientists. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:because (Score:3, Insightful)
While, on its face, this argument makes sense, in light of today's technology, not really.
Today, we have the ability to send unmanned probes that can give us detailed information about the various physical parameters of some uncharted frontier. Gone are the days when the only way you could explore something is via physically being there.
Also, while I realise you chose North Pole only for illustrative purposes, there's a difference between a group of 6-7 explorers backed by a 50-strong support crew and a project which requires billions of dollars of taxpayer's money and thousands of employees dedicated to the task.
Value of Inspiration (Score:4, Insightful)
Seeing dreams come true is highly motivational, and as such, well worth the expense.
Talisman
Re:How does nuclear power help? (Score:3, Insightful)
My guess is instead of using a single ion engine, ramp that up and use a bunch of larger ion engines, powered by the nuke. Also, since you have a lightweight nuke on board, your total weight goes down considerably compared to hauling cryo fuel, batts, and solar cells around...
Re:why (Score:3, Insightful)
In the end, at this poin it amounts to the same reason you'd climb a mountain, because it's there, but it does serve an important longer-term purpose.
JFK explained it best (Score:1, Insightful)
We choose to go to Mars (Score:2, Insightful)
An excerpt:
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
Full text [rice.edu]
Wishful thinking? (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, in order to send people, the whole 'going there and coming back' routine needs to be run a few times without a hiccup. I mean, this was done for the Moon, and a Mars mission would be far more risky.
Finally, I have no doubt that if the engineers are given sufficient resources, all of this can be done by, say, 2015. I do not think that this will simply happen, however, especially given the political situation and current fiscal policy that implies huge deficits well into the future. In fact, 2020 seems far more reasonable given the current situation.
Re:There is use in it (Score:4, Insightful)
Reagan's SotU Speech 1986 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:because (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how you stated this as if there is some official book on how technology based societies are supposed to act. I'm guessing that you either got this idea from Star Trek or from the Civilization games.
Defensive concerns beyond the hype. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want a decisive advantage in any conflict, or even if you just want to intimidate somebody, you control the high ground. Space is the ultimate high ground. It allows you to spy with impunity. Deploy weapons without fear of retaliation. once the infra-structure is in place, it will be an excellent natural resource base (on the moon, asteroid belts, etc). Putting aside all the Star Trek 'space is for exploration' idealist, space is a tactical advantage you simply can't ignore, especially if you potential advesaries are looking at it.
Now I'm not so sure about Mars. I figure, like the Chinese, the moon would be a much better and profitable first target. Unless they know something we dont.... In any case, Consider the US space program alive again, if for no other reason than because Bush doesn't like the Chinese.
Re:It's a ploy (Score:5, Insightful)
Who, the Democrats? Let me show you a quote from a town hall meeting with Al Gore in '99That right there is why I didn't vote for Gore. Bush has essentially been mute on the top of space exploration to this day.
"Think of it as a distraction from the pending war,"
The same could be said about the Apollo program (Vietnam). Does that make it any less signifigant?
"Some of GW's closest friends and allies are going to reap billions from the program."
By all accounts, GW's "closest friends and allies" are in the oil industry (where he's originally from). But he seems to be pusing a nuclear solution, and nuclear power is oil's greatest foe.
"Defense companies love space projects"
They're already quite happy with the current missile defense program. A Mars mission has little (if any) defense-related spin-offs. At the very least, none of the spin-offs will be defense-only. We'll see things like more efficient nuclear reactor designs, faster/smaller computers, and other things that benefit not only the military but the private sector and consumers as well.
The only way there could possibly be military-only spin-offs from a Mars mission is if we have to fight a bunch of Martians in the near future.
"good for the local economy for years after he's out of office."
Name one president that has gone into state government after having served as president.
"There's no way that the program can be finished before 2010 (we'll be VERY lucky to get it by then)"
"There's no way that the program can be finished before 1970..."
And the nay-sayers then had better reasons to nay-say as well. Unlike the NASA of the early 1960's, we can reach LEO.
Re:why (Score:3, Insightful)
think of it this way (perhaps some of the details are wrong, but the theory is sound). there is a limit to the amount of information a single person can successfully employ in life. there may not be an apparent limit to what the amount of knowledge they can have, but there is one concerning the amount they can regularly use. we see this in the continued specialization of professions. you used to have just a 'doctor'... and now that medical knowledge has increased, you have a brain surgeon, a family practitioner, a podiatrist, etc. all current knowledge builds on prior knowledge, so you have a continual stacking of information upon information without ever being able to get rid of any previous; therefore, you have continued specialization in all fields; therefore, it requires more people in each field to utilize all of the knowledge available.
likewise, there is a limit on the number of people the planet can support. we haven't reached that limit yet, and there's no way for us to reasonably determine exactly what the limit is, nor when we would reach it... yet it follows logically that there is a limit.
here's what will happen when that limit is reached:
the planet will reach the point at which it can sustain no more human life. after that point, knowledge will continue to grow until there are no more people to specialize in the various fields. once you reach that point, human advancement will stop. if we haven't managed to expand off of the planet by that point, we won't be able to.
goddamn, i probably sound like a complete kook. lol. if i do, feel free to comment.
No nook-you-lers (Score:4, Insightful)
2. The U.S. has no nuclear (nook-you-ler, if you're a C-grade fratboy from Texas) rocket program.
3. Nook-you-ler rockets are illegal under current treaties -- I think. Not that that would stop Bush -- treaties are for the evil, not the good.
4. 8 years is not enough time. The U.S. doesn't have the infrastructure to mount a mission.
5. The U.S. is going into debt at the rate of 1.3 billion dollars a day. We're spending ourselves utterly broke while cutting taxes. I don't think even the current regime is stupid enough to go to Mars when schools are setting up two daily shifts to save money. Or are they?
6. Politically impossible -- tho I qualify this in saying that this is the first marketing-driven administration in U.S. history. They've sold us on the idea that Saddam mounted the 9-11 attacks. I may be underestimating their maniuplative abilities.
7. This story is based on the world of one, count 'em, ONE "NASA administrator". The threshold used to be at least two believeable sources. The collapse of standards in the '90's set us up for any clown to float a story now -- bubonic plague vials on the loose! News at 11!
8. As an old space junkie, I wish the story was true -- sort of. I'd have preferred an ion drive, which is easier to maintain, ulimately faster, and doesn't carry the nuke label for marketing reasons.
9. If the story is true, why do I sense that the speculative capitalists that are now in charge of the guvmint (as opposed to businessmen -- the difference between Enronomics and the local Chamber of Commerce) would be trying to wring even more tax money out of us all? That would be on top of the 100-200 billion that the current contracts to attack/rebuild Iraq are going to cost the U.S. We are getting robbed here. NASA did the moon landings on the cheap -- I don't think the prvate equity managers will be as motivated to keep costs down.
Re:Wishful thinking? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"Did he say neclear?" (Score:2, Insightful)
Ummm....first of all, "colour" is still spelled "colour" (at least where I live) and how does Nuculer make anymore sense than Nuclear? When people say nuclear, I think of nucleus. Should we change the spelling of nucleus to nuculus as well?
Repost (Score:5, Insightful)
Mars is our destiny. That is, outward. The possibilities for new expressions of freedom and humanity, and economic systems, lie in building new civilizations. On earth there is a gigantic infrastructure of economic powers that RESIST change. The best ideas are not readily implemented, or are practically impossible to implement.
America became, in some sense, what it was BECAUSE we had a frontier early in its career. That frontier, and the spirit it developed among its settlers gave America its sense of independence, innovation and a GREAT sense of self-empowerment.
To the point, a paucity of western infrastructure westward of this expanding America better empowered the formation of a culture radically different than its predecessors. Not wholly, of course, as old money still existed.
But now, America has few or no frontiers within its borders. America's infrastructure has become stiff in every corner. The people at Slashdot.org know this. Microsoft's infrastructure is outstanding. Oil industries pull our strings. We cannot fundamentally change what America is, how it conducts its economics, without a fight. The root is dug in and will not give up its space as long as it lives.
Mars has no infrastructure and therefore new social, economic, and political ideas implemented by colonists there are more apt to emerge into their natural designs undistorted by the effects of competing institutions.
Like the original colonists of America, cultural artifacts, physical and ideational, brought over to the frontier will be freely reinterpreted without undue outside influence. However, the opportunity of social self-determination on Mars is unparalleled by any in history, for none has had at its disposal the vast library of knowledge and technology available today. The coupling of knowledge and self-reliance will allow the best ideas to flourish. The culture of the second and third Martian generations has the potential of being truer to the ideals of social justice, equality, and
Re:The question will not be (Score:2, Insightful)
He brought the fire to mankind. Against the orders of the gods. Making mankind raise from their "animal" lives. Ascending from apes to men.
For that crime he was chained to the rock. Becasue teh gods where jealeaus
What a better name as Prometheus can you give a spacecraft/project going to change mans history?
angel'o'sphere
What good is Mars? (Score:3, Insightful)
We should plan missions to the asteroids. Everything we will need is in the asteroids, and the asteroids are the place to colonize someday. (How much energy would it take to move Cruithne into Earth orbit?)
Planets, pfft. Traps. They'll all still be there if somebody ever figures out a good use for them. They don't even make very good nuke-waste dumps. (Earth excepted, of course.)
Re:There is use in it (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahh yes, because we all know that that's all the military does, and we've never gone as a presence for peaceful observation, we never delivered food to Haiti and other countries, and we never cleaned up after Hurricane Andrew, Ice Storm 98, and other natural disasters. The National Guard never helped out with the relief efforts for any earthquake in California, and we all know that only civilians cleaned up the rubble and looked for survivors in the World Trade Center wreckage.
Maybe while I was doing some of the above, I was really in some Army experimental brain-stimulation gear where they fed me a computer generated world, in which I did all those things. Maybe I should think about it. I might have met Keanu Reeves there.
I spent 8 years in the Army, both active duty and reserve, and I saved more lives than I took. As a matter of fact, I didn't have to kill a single person that entire time.
I would have, but that's not the "sole purpose" of the military, and I'm really fed up with people like you who don't bother to point out that the military has plenty of other jobs besides killing people.
You are one of the same kinds of people like the lady who had the nerve to insult me and the U.S. Army less than a month after we cleaned up their entire town after a huge storm went through and killed a bunch of people, wiped out most of the electrical infrastructure, and put thousands of people out of their homes.
We provided shelter, cut down and disposed of trees, provided food, brough out a ton of 60Kw generators so that farmers and hospitals would have electricity, and saved a few lives.
The day that woman insulted me and my friends as we stood in line to buy some food by saying "Well, gee, you can tell it's Army payday today" in that patronizing tone of voice with the sour expression on her face, as soon as she walked in the door, told me everything I needed to know about the people I'd been giving up sleep and doing hard work for.
You're welcome.
Political analysis faulty... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:There is use in it (Score:2, Insightful)
Same goes to the soldiers of NATO, Japanese Self-Defence forces, the RoK, Oz, NZ, Russia, Fiji, IDF, Kuwait, and everyone else that sacrifices for the good of everyone in thier nation and other nations.
Yes, you do (Score:2, Insightful)
Think about it, man. If you built a nuclear weapon, you'd ship it on a 80ft yacht into {Insert US Harbor} and detonate it. Untraceable (mostly), and fewer points of failure. Even if we were to build a missle defense program, it would be much wiser to wait four to six years and develop it with newly advanced solid-state lasers. You only have x missles, but a laser is only limited in fire rate and energy available. And light travels a hell of a lot faster then a rocket, so it's much harder to miss. And it can be used for other purposes (have an aircraft on a collision course with a building...?)
Re:I'm not holding my breath. (Score:3, Insightful)
Apollo astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969. The first American to make a suborbital, 15-minute flight was only 8 years prior. If the scientists and engineers of the 60s could make that kind of a leap in 8 years, I think those of today should be capable of even more.
Re:Good for you... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree though that missile interception is a worthy project (with nifty spinoffs), but it's too much of a fuck'n wasteful porkbarrel as it is!
I think they'd have better luck selling a missile "shield" to the public if the shield also included funding for more and better radiation-detection at ports & in cities around the country, AND they sent more of that pork towards alternative energy projects that reduce the cause of the conflict, rather than defending against the symptoms.
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Space Elevator (Score:5, Insightful)
The only other reasonable thing you could do in space would be to mine asteroids and start building things in orbit and on the moon. But going to Mars at this point doesn't make sense. It's going to cost too much. I am all behind nuclear rockets but I think going to mars is premature. Let's put a city on the moon, and start sending politicians there.
I'll start voting republican if republicans start putting money into space research. I shit you not.