NASA To Team Up With Russia For Future Mars Flight 318
xp65 writes "NASA has invited Russia to carry out a joint manned flight to Mars, the head of NASA's Moscow office said on Tuesday. Russia is currently planning to send its own expedition to Mars some time in the future. Marc Bowman told an international aviation and space conference in Moscow that the Mars mission should take advantage of the achievements made by the International Space Station and use a multinational crew."
Understanding (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Understanding (Score:4, Interesting)
I think your underestimating the importance of competition.
Russia going to Mars alone could motivate a second space race. The end result is someone standing on Mars in 10 years instead of 20. NASA is more likely to get funding and motivation if they are competing.
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We team up with Russia to get to Mars, meanwhile India and China work to do the same.
It's OK to not have to compete with EVERY other country out there. We don't always have to be THAT GUY.
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Nah, cause Russia is no longer the "Evil, Godless Soviet Union". China, on the other hand, might motivate us.
Re:Understanding (Score:5, Insightful)
In a speech [youtube.com] to the UN, Reagan once said:
"I couldn't help but say to him, just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held, if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We'd forget all the little local differences we've had between our countries and we'd find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together."
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Not that I don't agree with you on most of your points, but you really don't see much that we have to gain? If nothing else, we can stop wasting a trillion dollars a year on defense spending. Not to mention the opportunity to give other people the freedoms and opportunities that I enjoy, or the will to feed the 1 billion hungry people around the world, or the ability to trade efficiently without sabotaging each other's economies.
There's lots of things that a properly implemented world government could do
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Re:Understanding (Score:5, Insightful)
There's lots of things that a properly implemented world government could do that would be fantastic and in the long run would benefit everyone on the planet.
There are a lot of things that Santa Claus could do that would be fantastic and in the long run would benefit everyone on the planet too... they're about as likely to happen as a 'properly implemented world government'.
You seem to be under the impression that a 'world government' would be something other than a collection of psychopaths desperate to prey on the rest of us.
The odd thing is that I find the people who most promote 'world government' are also normally big promoters of 'diversity', and don't even see the blatant inconsistency between those position.
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I agree with you. Because the reality of the world is that there are many nations that are not willing to cooperate with many other nations. The US could easily reconcile with her enemies(Iran, Cuba, etc. well maybe not North Korea but that's not our fault). But will nations who have had 100s of years of violent history together come together easily. Human beings just plain suck. They are too territorial. Too bigoted. and too fervent about their various competing ideologies.
All things considered (Score:2, Interesting)
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I think you are projecting things a bit too fast, but yes—China is the next superpower, unless they screw up something bad time. They have an enormous population and a very well organised state, all things considered. I would say 50 years before the US become a has-been, like the UK and France. I would guess what will crack the US will ultimately be its disproportionate defence spending (where did I see this movie already?) and too much focus on unproductive sectors like pure finance. Who knows, maybe
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Historically, nations have no problem warring with themselves.
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Even in Star Trek you don't make alliances with everyone, only those that behave get to join the Federation. It's not like you need one global world order, I really don't think you can do it on a global scale as long as there's places people really want to get to and really want to get from but EU is fairly close in a mini-format. The germans can visit the french and vice versa but it's not like there are mass relocations, they have national laws but things still float fairly freely. The United States has 5
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>>What happens to your civil liberties under a unified global nation? Which model are you going to use? The US model? The EU model? The Chinese one? The Singaporean one? How do you run such a unified nation?
You just average them all together. You get the civil freedom of Singapore, the freedom of business of China, the education system of America, and the clear-headed sensibilities of the European Union.
It's win-win!
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I have always admired the American response to hate speech. "It may be harmful, it may be spiteful and untrue, but you can say whatever the fuck you want to say."*
They've fucked that up in Canada, and it makes me sad.
*except on TV.
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Monopolies are bad (Score:5, Insightful)
We've already seen what Globalization does when "the" economy has issues. A housing crisis in the USA doesn't cause issues in China without globalization.
The Free Trade advocates always sold the advantages, which were readily calculable; but ignored the disadvantages which are harder to measure until you actually experience them.
Only now are people beginning to realize something that should have been apparent right from the start: one single, massive economic system is inherently bad. It's like a monopoly. There's no backup.
It's even worse if you take this philosophy and duplicate it outside the financial realm. We already see this with the "war on drugs". Many countries that would like to legalize may not do so, not because of internal resistance; but because they've signed a UN convention.
Now take that, and apply it to ALL the laws. Yuck.
Most people don't like war, but if the alternative is a "one size fits all" solution, there will be times when it doesn't fit, and war becomes the only alternative. They just won't be wars between nation-states anymore. They'll all be civil wars, which are oftentimes far worse.
Also, what about refugees? Tell me, where do the boat people go when everywhere is Cuba?
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That's nice. But what about non-intensive purposes?
Re:Connect Four is bad (Score:3, Insightful)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares?"
That's nice. But what about non-intensive purposes?
DO NOT QUESTION the almighty misquoted idiom!
If The Average Idiot has decided that it is "for all intensive purposes" from now on, then THAT'S WHAT IT IS, because language evolves to fit the speaker! Those of us who do not accept this change are simply living in the past! Thus, there is no such thing as "correct" speech or writing!
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Considering we've had wars and genocides throughout human history and we're still here, did it ever occur to you that they might serve some biological function you're not aware of? The 20th century set a record for bloodbaths. We still started it with a world population of 1.6 billion, and ended it with a population of over 6.5 billion.
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Considering we've had wars and genocides throughout human history and we're still here, did it ever occur to you that they might serve some biological function you're not aware of? The 20th century set a record for bloodbaths. We still started it with a world population of 1.6 billion, and ended it with a population of over 6.5 billion.
If the "biological function" you're thinking of is population control, then you're contradicting yourself: clearly, the unparalleled bloodbaths of the 20th c. didn't do much
Re:Understanding (Score:4, Funny)
If it ends up anything like the Apollo 11 mission, the cake *and* the launch will be a lie.
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I've always thought that the only way for us as a race to become a unified nation is to simple explore space together. As soon as one nation decides to call Mars or whatever other celestial body their own, it will just be downhill from there.
Reminds me of the Robber's Cave [wikipedia.org] experiment that I actually read from someone posting here.
Would be interesting if we could get China involved in the venture.
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And why would we want a unified planet? I mean you can't even get to one p.o.v with all your friends, let alone a whole country, and you expect global lockstep?
There will always be differences and arguments. The point is that we will hopefully be able to solve them without ripping our heads off. But this does not mean we all have to live under the same rules. We can live happily side-by-side with differing view.
The only thing a global unity is absolutely guaranteed to bring, is the lack of any freedom of ch
In soviet russia... (Score:4, Funny)
it also defrays the expense of it all too... (Score:4, Insightful)
Will it? (Score:2)
Because if you look the on the ISS page of Wiki it shows the US as financing three of the four euro modules.
So who is going to save money? Can we realistically expect that nations contribute equally or of their means? With regards to that last part I don't see how we have means, unless we are totally accepting of the fact we can spend money we never had.
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More than that (Score:2)
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It does make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
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The station itself is the most massive spacecraft ever assembled
... by hoomans [wordpress.com].
success, but not efficient (Score:4, Insightful)
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You present the process of kludging together this boondoggle and spreading pork to different political centers as proof of its "success". You neglect to mention that it was so vastly over budget and behind schedule that they canceled most any of the "science" they planned to do on it. The main purpose of its remaining skeleton crew has been to try to keep it from falling out of orbit, as well as a feeble excuse to keep its sister boondoggle, the Space Shuttle, off of the scrap heap. This entire enterprise h
A multinational expedition is logical (Score:2, Insightful)
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sorry for sounding so new here, but what order of magnitude are you using? the average distance from earth to mars is around 78 million km, while the averge distance to the moon is around 384,000 km. how does that factor down to a magnitude of 2? honestly... not trying to be a pick, im just curious as from the earlier post i dont see how its even several magnitudes greater...
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oh wait, unless you're just going off the base magnitudes then a magnitude of 2 would be 100, so i'm guessing you're implying its 100 million... i think thats what you mean... arg, math, i hate math....
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Umm, no. The average distance from Earth to Mars is somewhere around 239 million km.
You can't determine average Earth-to-Mars distance by subtracting the average distance Earth is from the Sun from the average distance Mars is from the Sun.
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An order of magnitude is 10x and ignores the base units.
For example, 34 is one order of magnitude greater than 7. 340 is two orders of magnitude greater than 7.
In the case of the Moon -> Mars change, 78M / 384k = ~203. 200x is two orders of magnitude. You can also check this by putting the values into SI and comparing the exponent: 7.8 x 10^7 vs. 3.84 x 10 ^ 5. Since 7 - 5 = 2, the order of magnitude is 2.
So, the answer to your question of "but what order of magnitude are you using?" is "the standard def
Count Magnitudula (Score:2)
x,000,000 km (One! One order of magnitude larger... Ah! Ah! Ah!)
78,000,000 km (Two! Two orders of magnitude larger... Ah! Ah! Ah! (well, close to 3))
Order of Magnitude [wikipedia.org] (please click and read.)
The Count and Cooke Monster on cooperation [youtube.com]
share toilets this time (Score:3, Insightful)
Will each nation have to provide their own toilets?
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HAL runs the toilets too? I can see why they trimmed that from the flick.
Dave: "Open the flush valve, HAL. I've made a doogy."
HAL: "Sorry Dave, I cannot do that."
Dave: "HAL, you know it will smell like [bleep] in here if you don't open it."
HAL: "I'm sorry, Dave, but flushing would conflict with the mission objectives."
Dave: "HAL, the mission objectives are down the toilet right now."
HAL: "Was that meant as a pun, Dave? I find it low-quality humor.....Dave, what are you sco
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I approve (Score:5, Funny)
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Mrs Ivana Humapalot
Russian Reply (Score:4, Funny)
Unshackle Russian Engineers from Russian System (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the Russian system -- with its corruption and massive budget cuts (afte 1991) in government-funded research and development -- has hampered Russians scientists and engineers in their effort to produce breakthrough technology. NASA's collaboration with the Russian scientific community (and possible NASA funding for it) will help the Russians to achieve what they can not achieve in their own system.
If only President Dmitry Medvedev and Dictator Vladimir Putin created a Western society (with its intellectual freedom and clean government) in Russia and generously funded government research and development, then the Russians would likely dominate the winners of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences and of the Fields Medals in mathematics.
To hell with Mars, at least for now (Score:5, Insightful)
If we really want to do anything with space, we need to start doing things with economic significance. The moon trip should have been about pioneering the way towards moon habitats, moon industry. In that case it would have been money well-spent. All we really did was plant a flag and thumb our noses at the Soviets. Entertaining but of little real use. Sure, there was some spin-off technology but we threw it all away.
Planting a flag on Mars would end up being a similar waste of time, not if we weren't going to follow it up with anything else.
If we were really serious about it, we'd look into moving heavy industry offworld. Prospect our nearby apollo objects, see about mining them. Put manufacturing in Earth orbit. The only thing that comes down to Earth would be finished products in nice, simple, recyclable dropshells.
We might want to look into solar power sats while we're at it.
If nothing else, at least space exploration and living offers us an engineering challenge of figuring out how to live minimally with minimal resources. Our problem in this day and age is that resources are too cheap and there's little incentive to save. If gas were a nickel a gallon, the only selling point for fuel efficiency would be not having to stop for gas as often. Gas costs more than that, of course, but it still doesn't cost enough for us to take conservation and fuel efficiency seriously. And we don't. It's just like the buffet. If you go to one that charges by the pound, you're careful about what you take. If you go to one that doesn't charge by the pound, you take as much as you want and are casually wasteful about what you leave on the plate. Simple human nature.
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Considering the ROI of the moon landing, ti was WELL worth our investment.
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Virtually all the ROI of the moon landings was from the technology developed for the program, not from going to the moon itself.
I suppose the lesson is to develop the technology to go to Mars, but not actually go
Or go back to the moon; closer, cheaper, quicker.
Re:To hell with Mars, at least for now (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect that you are underestimating the costs involved traveling through Earth's gravity well. I've heard that if a rock of solid gold were orbiting Earth, it would not be economically viable to de-orbit it. Unless we discover something out there that is fantastically valuable, "industry" will not be the motivating factor for space travel.
Having self-sufficient off-world biospheres? That's a worthwhile endeavor simply because survival of the species is important; it's just not valuable to private industry (oh and suck it, libertarians).
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We can already manufacture these on earth with carbon vapor deposition. Not that I'm arguing against advancing spaceflight or mining asteroids, you just mine asteroids and use the materials to build stuff in space, not send it down to Earth.
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I wonder... (Score:2)
Where will the parts come from? (Score:5, Funny)
Strung out Russian Cosmonaut: American Parts, Russian Parts.... All Made in Taiwan.....
If you want to stay in space, ask the Russians (Score:4, Funny)
While the Russian(USSR) Space programme was certainly less sophisticated than the US one its also certainly true that the engineering efficiency of the Russian programme was based around long-life. This is why its a Soyuz capsule that works as the escape pod on the ISS and why the Russians have held the records around how long people stay in space.
Combining the electronic expertise of the US with the engineering expertise of the Russians sounds like an excellent thing to do. It also means that the US can learn from people who have experience of keeping individuals healthy in space for over a year which is what you will need to get to Mars and back.
The Best Space programme to Mars
Designed by Apple
Engineered by the Russians
Electronics by the Americans
Rockets by the Germans
Food by the French
The Worst Space programme to Mars
Designed by the US Senate
Engineered by Chrysler
Electronics by Alfa Romeo
Rockets by North Korea
Food by McDonalds
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The Best Space programme to Mars
Designed by Apple
As long as stylish, minimalistic interiors of ships that explode are your thing.
Old joke (Score:2)
"Heaven is where the Police are British, the Chefs are French, the Mechanics are German, the Lovers Italian and it's all organised by the Swiss.
Hell is where the Chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the Police are German and it's all organised by the Italians."
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>>Hell is where the Chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the Police are German and it's all organised by the Italians."
'I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse'
-Charles V, HRE
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food (Score:2)
I hope this happens in my lifetime. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Growing up in the 20th century the mission to mars was always just around the corner when presented in science books and media in general.
Actually, it could have been, it was within our grasp and we let it go.
Personally, I've always figured the day the US jumped the shark as a nation was 12/19/1972 - the day Apollo 17 returned to earth, and we never went back.
Somehow, I don't seriously think we ever will.
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Sheesh. Do we have to think for everybody?.
Now I can take (Score:3, Funny)
Maria Sharapova and Anna Kournikova with me to keep me company on the lengthy trip there.
Sky rockets in flight. Afternoon delightski!
Future Conflict? (Score:3, Interesting)
What if a new cold-war-style conflict arises during the mission? Or even a "hot" war? Nations may grow nationalistic and petty, harming the mission. Once it leaves the ground, a smooth divorce is not possible.
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Then the US team will go to Discovery, while the Russian team stays in Leonov.
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The mutual need for survival would probably cause the astronauts/cosmonauts to cooperate long enough to get back to Earth alive. Where they'd land would be an interesting question, of course.
Sparse details (Score:5, Informative)
Before everybody gets all crazy and excited about this, there doesn't seem to be any details about Marc Bowman's comments anywhere (not even NASA's site) except for a 5-sentence blurb from RIA Novosti (the Russian state-owned news agency). There was a cool article in IEEE Spectrum recently about Russia's Mars dreams [ieee.org], but they were along the lines of "here's some neat ideas, we need money."
My suspicion is that Marc Bowman said something generic like "it would be nice for Russia and NASA to work together more in the future on things like Mars missions," and RIA Novosti just decided to run with it.
NASA and Russia? (Score:2)
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Well, if NASA and Russia were in the back seat of the spaceship, and my father was driving, he would tell them both that they should have gone before they left. And that they'll both just have to shut up and hold it in until they get there.
Whoa, Clarke could see the future!?! (Score:2)
Ok, this is beyond strange. We know Arthur C Clarke predicted the creation of geo-stationary satellites - but predicting the name of the father of the first man to reach Mars too! Marc Bowman? Father of Dave Bowman by any chance (http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0002896/). That is a weird coincidence....
Anyway :) I'm sure he probably just changed his name to make history come true :)
History says this is a bad idea (Score:2)
Is Marc Bowman (Score:2)
Ah those crazy Russians! (Score:4, Interesting)
Just don't have any women on board, particularly Canadian women, otherwise the the Russians will kill each other trying to kiss her.
Mars Epic Fail (Didn't last even one month):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6955149/page/3/ [msn.com]
Mars Epic Win:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/07/15/after-three-months-in-a-tin-can-six-men-end-simulated-mars-mission/ [discovermagazine.com]
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Alternatively one could leave out the men from the mission. Women tend to weigh less than men, so you'll have room for more cargo. As they weigh less, they also eat less, which again allows you to either carry more cargo or have the food last longer.
In an environment where you either experience micro gravity or 1/3rd gravity you don't need the "big strong" physique that people tend to think is necessary for exploration. And women are generally better at multitasking than men, which is definitely an advantag
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"The Russians put our camera made by *our* German scientists and your film made by *your* German scientists into their satellite made by *their* German scientists."
-- "Ice Station Zebra"
A favorite film of Howard Hughes.
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Who got it from the Grays after they crash landed in Tunguska.
Not actually. (Score:3, Informative)
Who are you referring to? Some Germans (notably von Braun) worked on american rockets after world war 2. I'm not aware of any Russians who figured prominently.
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Robert H. Goddard (Score:3, Insightful)
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