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Space Science

US & Russia Pencil in Mars Launch by 2018 358

Posted by Hemos from the not-bloody-likely dept.
snilloc writes "The Washington Times is reporting that the US and Russia (and the Europeans are mentioned too) are planning for an eventual manned Mars trip. Suggested launch years are 2014 or 2018. The article discusses unmanned probes at greater length than the manned plans, but check out the Russian isolation experiment where 6 people will spend 500 days in a simulated spacecraft environment. (Sounds like a good reality TV show to me.)"
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US & Russia Pencil in Mars Launch by 2018 More

US & Russia Pencil in Mars Launch by 2018

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  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fritz Benwalla ( 539483 ) <randomregs@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:15AM (#5727623)

    What good is it sending a pencil to Mars?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)

      by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoo. c o m> on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:17AM (#5727637) Journal
      And how is it we have to go halfsies with Russia? We can't afford our own pencil?

      • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Funny)

        by akadruid ( 606405 )
        It's less embarassing than publicly admitting that your mission relies on a superior Russian pencil.

        Besides, after the war with Iraq, US financies are in a worse state than the Russian Space Programme.

        The UK isn't even able to contribute half a pencil to this venture...

        Besides wood is non-renewable resource. The environmentalists would be up in arms at the idea of two pencils.

        • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

          by hoggoth ( 414195 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @11:32AM (#5728800) Journal
          > Besides wood is non-renewable resource.

          Yeah, those wood drilling companies have to dig very deep into the Earth's crust to find new deposits of "wood".

          I have discovered a genetically enhanced form of houseplant that actually produces "wood". I call it "tree". I think it will revolutionize the wood drilling industry.

      • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

        by The Dobber ( 576407 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @11:23AM (#5728727)

        Are we inviting the French along. Cause with thier recent performance, they are bound to get homesick and want to quit within the first 15 minutes of the trip.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

      by julesh ( 229690 )
      And how many pencils have you come across that have dual nationality?

    • They're not putting a pencil on Mars. It's going in the Mars launch.

      It's also not any old pencil. It's a US & Russia pencil.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

      by arvindn ( 542080 )
      That was meant as a joke of course, but pencils are useful things in space flights.

      I don't know if this is an urban legend, but you can find it all over the web:

      When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freez

      • Space Pen Was:Huh? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Doug-less ( 611975 )
        A very amusing story. It not that unbelievable, but I don't think it is quite true. I recived a Fisher Space Pen for a gift and it had a short history in it. I belive it said that the pen and design was given to Nasa pretty much free of charge. Of course who knows what they paid for before this pen was created. This link will tell a bit of the history: http://spaceflightnow.com/store/collectibles/penas tro.html

      • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

        by xXunderdogXx ( 315464 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:43AM (#5727893) Homepage Journal

        Claim: NASA spent millions of dollars developing an "astronaut pen" that would work in outer space; the Soviets solved the same problem by simply using pencils.

        Status: False.

        Source: Snopes. [snopes.com]

        • Re:Huh? (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I don't care if it's false.
          I've decided it's too funny to be false!
          I will continue to iterate this as fact to everyone I know, just as I have always done!
      • It is indeed an urban legend. That pen was developed by the Fisher pen company, without NASA's funding.

        The pen is now used by the Russian and USian space programs.

        More info at snopes [snopes.com]
      • It's mostly an urban legend [snopes.com].

      • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Planesdragon ( 210349 )
        Confronted with the same problem, the Russians used a pencil.

        Which adds unnecessary free-floating dust to clog up the whole darn air filtration system.

        NASA didn't develop the space pen; IIRC, they used grease pencils for the first serveral missions. The pen was developed by a private inventor, who sold them to NASA at a rather reasonable price (far less than 12 billion) and the general public of space-geeks.

    • Do not touch those pencils (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mohammed Al-Sahaf ( 665285 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:31AM (#5727788)
      Do not touch the pencils. It is a Zionist American trick. They are actually bombs.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

      by teamhasnoi ( 554944 )
      They are going to 'erase' their past mistakes.

      Did I really just hit submit?

    • What good is it sending a pencil to Mars?

      1. The astronauts use it to write in their notebooks.

      2. The notebooks sell at auction 30 years later.

      3. Profit!!

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Bodrius ( 191265 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @11:34AM (#5728814) Homepage
      Note that it is not just a pencil, it's a Russian pencil.

      And then note that it is not Russia, it's just the pencil.

      I'm having trouble imagining the negotiations:

      NASA: Okay, Mr. Pencil, when do you think we can send our boys to Mars?
      PENCIL: ...
      NASA: Hmmm... I see. I guess we'll have to keep a flexible schedule then. But I'm assuming you have the technology to contribute, right?
      PENCIL: ...
      NASA: Damn it, you're a harsh negotiator, Pencil! We'll put in the rockets and all that, then. What kind of crew were you planning to send? ...

      And then a couple of weeks later:

      NASA: We're proud to announce that we have reached an agreement with a pencil to send a manned mission to Mars! This is a great victory in both space exploration and international relations, and disproves the theory that the US is acting alone in the world.

      REPORTER: But what about the Europeans, or the Russians, or the Chinese? Why not join in a mission with them?

      NASA: We were unable to reach an agreement with those powers due to their anti-American attitude. But the Pencil IS Russian, so I guess that counts.

      REPORTER: What will be the composition of the crew?

      NASA: We're counting on 6 crew members. It is unclear how many will be US astronauts and how many will be pencils. We know for sure the Russian Pencil is in, but we are in negotiations to include as many as 2 other of his pencil friends, as long as they can complete the training and physical examination in time...

  • ahem... (Score:5, Informative)

    by gravelpup ( 305775 ) <rockdog@gma i l .com> on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:18AM (#5727648) Journal
    last line of the article:

    "NASA is engaged in small-scale studies on manned flight to Mars but has no plans for a mission."

    April Fool's was 2 weeks ago.

  • ESA anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rastakid ( 648791 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:18AM (#5727651) Homepage Journal
    I thought the ESA was going to do the same thing, around 2009? Why not co-operate a little, and share the costs?

    • Re:ESA anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah... like we "shared" the cost of the International Space Station? (ISS)

      or like we "share" the cost of the United Nations?

      It would be like leveraging Microsoft's Security Team on your next Linux project.

    • Re:ESA anyone? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by spot35 ( 644375 )
      That is a damn good idea. I'm not sure whether Mars is the right destination just yet though. An ore rich asteroid would be much more profitable. However, I guess you've got to walk before you can run and Mars is a much larger target to aim for than an asteroid. And I guess that the ores etc would be pretty abundant.

      What would be good would be to provide the mission with enough exit power to bring back enough ore to pay for a chunk of the return visits.

      • Re:ESA anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by sql*kitten ( 1359 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @10:54AM (#5728494)
        That is a damn good idea. I'm not sure whether Mars is the right destination just yet though. An ore rich asteroid would be much more profitable.

        The thing with Mars is, you can land on it. It has predictable motion, a well-photographed surface, and gravity. It has enough of an atmosphere and a magnetic field to shield you from radiation if you want to stay a while. You can very easily manufacture rocket fuel from the atmosphere itself, so you don't have to cart enough for a return trip with you (Zubrin IIRC suggests sending an automated fuel factory, then waiting 'til you were sure it worked before sending a manned mission). If you are willing to invest a little energy, Mars has plenty of ice that you can melt into water. If you have energy and water, you have oxygen. With water and various readily-available nitrogen compounds, you might even be able to grow plants in a greenhouse in Martian soil. Glass and steel will both be very simple to manufacture on Mars, the raw materials are abundant, you can "mine" them on the surface with a shovel! In short, Mars is a pretty good place, and if you were planning to establish a colony it would be a lot easier to do so on Mars than it would be on the moon.

        Asteroid mining isn't remotely feasible at the moment. You would have to arrive at an asteroid, which may be interacting with other nearby objects in hard-to-predict ways, then land on it and start drilling, or stand off from it and break it up with explosives then collect the pieces, then you have to ship it all the way back to Earth. Asteroid mining won't be feasible until there's a self-sustaining colony on Mars to act as an ore processing station, and refuelling and repairing (and most likely construction) facility for mining vehicles. Colonizing Mars in the 21st century is going to be like colonizing Antarctica in the 19th - but with the bonus that you will actually be allowed to extract minerals, which changes the game radically, both for construction/manufacturing on Mars itself, and for getting funding from Earth. There is no technological reason (as Zubrin demonstrates in The Case For Mars) tha there couldn't be a fully self-sustaining colony on Mars within 50-100 years.
  • Why not? It could help to fund the trip and maybe even get people interested in space again.

    • Re:Sounds like a good reality TV show to me... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Unfortunately there'll likely be an all male crew according to the article. This means less likelyhood of romance, sex, and the usual stuff that makes reality TV interesting. A bunch of stressed out military high-flyers trapped in a house sized environment for 500 days is probably going to be terribly boring.

      Having said that, it's a great experiment and I hope it goes well and they learn lots and repeat the experiment a couple of times to compare how a mixed sex crew or all female crew works in compariso
    • Wait, I have it all figured out. They are going to make a Reality based TV show out of it. This is how Lance Bass from N'Sync is going to pay for the trip, except the whole group is going to go. Every 9 to 13 year old girl will be glued to the TV for 500 days. Imagine the ratings.

      Even if the mission end in catastrophic failure, at least there will be one less boy band on this planet.
  • (Sounds like a good reality TV show to me.)"

    50 days, no - lets be honest FIVE days of something like Big Brother is enough for anyone - 500 days would be a fatal dose, surely!

    Just so long as there isnt a hot tub, and there are no women you'd like to see nekkid we'd be safe from having to view! But just one chick in there and you know we'd all be streaming this 24/7 until it came under the Real Gold Pass (or whatever they call it this week) around about day 480.

  • Yeah, Right... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cybrpnk2 ( 579066 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:21AM (#5727679) Homepage
    As somebody who has been in on the Space Station debacle from the beginning, let me just say that there's NO WAY that NASA could get to Mars by 2014, and trying to do it with the Russians only ADDS to the problem, not makes it easier. The most important thing the US can do to get to Mars is make it an American-only mission. The waste in effort to include other countries is phenomenal and unnecessary. The US space program has got to believe in itself instead of being a branch of the State Department if we are going to go anywhere.

    • Re:Yeah, Right... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SpinyNorman ( 33776 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:28AM (#5727745)
      You seem to forget that the US doesn't even have a reliable way of getting men into orbit right now, let alone anything more ambitious.

      The only thing from stopping the ISS from dropping out of orbit is Russian robot supply craft that are also nudging it higher, and the only way US astronauts will get to/from the ISS before the Shuttle design is fixed (without risking their lives) is via Russian spacecraft.
      • I'm not sure whether relying on the Russians (who do have good assets: Soyuz and heavy lifting capability we don't have) or developing it ourselves. It's a matter of relying on a flaky supplier or doing it in-house. I don't like the idea of having other interests tied or being tied to other interests in this regard. If it were Great Britain, that's one thing, but Russia is and always has been too much of a wild card for these kinds of long term relationships.
    • I agree. These guys are completely on drugs if they think that 2018 is a reasonable schedule for this to occur. Have they even been AROUND for the past two months? We can't even put a single human in space using our 20+ year old spacecraft! Needless to say, I think the guys proposing this are ALREADY on Mars :-)
    • Keep in mind that Russians have by far the best plasma-physicists in the world. While their craft may be inferior to the americans in aerodynamics and safety (2 catastrophes in entire project lifespan is good compared to the Russians), they beat the Americans and the Europeans all to hell in fuel efficiency - and where every pound costs thousands, fuel efficiency is key.

      • Re:Yeah, Right... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by johannesg ( 664142 )
        I'm not sure what you've been drinking, but the Russian safety record is far better than the American. They lost fewer astronauts and the Soyuz has a far lower failure rate than any American rocket.

  • Need some good old fashioned talking (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 0x00000dcc ( 614432 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:21AM (#5727680) Journal
    I think what we need, in addition to the usual "announcements", is a leader somewhere, presumable the president of the united states or russia, to just come out and tell the world it's gonna happen. People are held accountable when this happens (sometimes at least). Think about JFK's speech. People really latched on to that announcement. Bush/Putin or sucesssors should follow suit. It's time to put people on that frigging planet, people!

    • The only problem, of course, is that the timeline involved is far beyond the political lifetime of these leaders. What does it gain a current president to pump up a project that's at least 11 years out?

      Don't misunderstand, I think we definitely need strong backing from leadership to make space programs a higher priority. But I just don't see that happening...

    • Re:Need some good old fashioned talking (Score:4, Insightful)

      by FatherOfONe ( 515801 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:31AM (#5727789)
      While I would love to see someone land on Mars, I have to ask the questions.

      1. Who will pay for it? Look how much the moon landings cost the U.S.

      2. What will the benifit be?

      3. After Russia backstabbed the U.S. in the Iraq war, do you think that we will still work together?

      Given what is going on in the world I don't see Bush or anyone approving the HUGE budget needed to start this type of thing.

      Again, I would love to see this happen, but it all depends on the cost. ~60% of my income goes to taxes now, given that I have to compete with near slave labor from India and Russia for jobs, I don't want to see taxes go up at all. Well that isn't totally true, I think that there needs to be an import tax on all software development done outside the country! Perhaps that could help fund this thing!!!
      • Ad

        1. You'll pay for it with your 60% taxes (where did you get that figure from BTW?).

        2. What will the benefit be? Your grandchildren will grow up to be geeks in the same way you grew up to be a geeks. Except they'll be terraforming geeks instead of programming geeks. A push to Mars will require technological development. The thing you're writing (computer) on is a direct result of warfare and space research.

        3. They also had missiles pointed at your house for thirty years. doesn't mean you can't work with
    • Besides, anyone who thinks that a Mars mission is feasible hasn't really thought it through. Here's the deal - Mars is not like the Moon. It is much bigger and has atmosphere. It is also really, really far away.

      So there are several design challenges. First, lets imagine the smallest earth->orbit launch vehicle we can make. Shrink it down a bit to accomodate the Martian gravity and atmosphere. So, we have a decently small rocket. That rocket is still friggin' huge by any standards but its own.

      Now,
      • You don't do a Mars mission that way, assuming you're stuck with current rocket technology. What you do is send the return vehicle there, unfuelled, equipped with a nuclear reactor. You use the reactor to power a system to convert hydrogen (brought with you but it's really light) and carbon dioxide (from that abundant atmosphere) into methane and oxygen (reasonably high-quality rocket fuel). Then you send the crew along in a seperate vehicle. Given that, you need two launches of a Saturn V to do a Mars

  • Holy sacrifice Batman (Score:3, Funny)

    by SlashdotLemming ( 640272 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:21AM (#5727682)
    but check out the Russian isolation experiment where 6 people will spend 500 days in a simulated spacecraft environment.

    Jeez, and I bitch when I have to wear a tie to work.

  • Mars. (Score:4, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:23AM (#5727699) Homepage Journal

    Old hat. Douglas Quaid cleaned up Mars back in 1990 [imdb.com]. They have a thriving mining community, breathable atmosphere and leet alien artifacts.

  • Good idea, bad company? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Trevalyx ( 627273 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:24AM (#5727702) Homepage
    I am all for space exploration, and taking a closer look at Mars is wonderful and all, I'm glad someone is scouting out area for my future apartment, but don't we remember what happened LAST time we partnered with Russia on something outside of our atmosphere? The wretched travesty of the ISS is now loping along in a slowly descending orbit, is years and years behind what it was supposed to be, and will, more than likely, never live up to the high aspirations that were originally held for the Freedom, the space station that the United States planned for years before the global consortium got together on the ISS.
    Russia is simply not a viable partner, not due to their science (they were in the cold war too, after all) but their financial instability. It's not their fault, but it shouldn't become our space program's problem (again).

  • Just remember (Score:3, Funny)

    by ReidMaynard ( 161608 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:24AM (#5727705) Homepage
    to leave AMIE at home.

  • 2 light seconds.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by asmithmd1 ( 239950 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:25AM (#5727717) Homepage Journal
    The size of our own galaxy is measured in hundreds of light years and the farthest we have gone off this little rock is the far side of the Moon, just a little over 2 light seconds away. It is embarrasing
    • Um, the size of our galaxy is measured in whatever units you'd like, so why not hundreds of light years? However, if that's our unit u, the diameter of the galaxy is on the order of 1000 u, not 1 u.
    • Actually, our galaxy is a tens of thousands of light years across, and the moon is a little over 1 light-second away. Which makes it even more embarrassing.

    • Re:2 light seconds.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LMCBoy ( 185365 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @10:25AM (#5728236) Homepage Journal
      Why is it embarassing to live in a vast Galaxy? I could understand your embarassment if we had the capability to travel 70,000 light-years (diameter of Milky Way) and simply chose not to. However, since it's physically impossible for us to do it, why should we feel embarassed that we haven't?

      Besides, why stop at the scale of the Galaxy? The Local Group is a mere megaparsec across, yet we've never traversed it! For crying out loud, that's our galactic backyard. And how can we know for sure if that redshift=6 quasar is really a supermassive black hole, if we haven't actually gone to check it out? It's only a few billion light-years away. Come on, mankind, get on it already!
      [/sarcasm]

      It's a triumph that we have traveled 1 light-second from Earth. 1 light-second is a very long distance, on the scale of human endeavors.

  • Career plan (Score:2, Funny)

    by kaamos ( 647337 )
    Let's see... I want to finish my engeneering university clsses in physics 5 years from now, which is 2008, give 2 years get into NASA and 4-8 years of training and that would put me in the sweet spot for this, beeing 28 at that time

    ME WANTEE!

  • Gutsy timing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mattygfunk1 ( 596840 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:25AM (#5727725)
    This is a gutsy move in relation to the timing with Columbia and the war.

    People are viewing human life as more sacred than they normally do, and know the risks of this ambitious project. It also comes during a serious global depression of the economy, and will of course cost a sh*tload.

    That said, I hope it goes ahead and proves more successful than we could imagine.

    __
    cheap web site hosting [cheap-web-...ing.com.au] from just $3 in change a month.

    • It also comes during a serious global depression of the economy

      People don't seem to understand that when you hear reports about 1-3% real economic growth rates, this does not indicate a "depression". It indicates continued exponential growth.
  • Seriously, apart from the bragging rights to say "We put the first man on Mars", what benefit is there to having the US, Russia, ESA and Britain all working independently towards sending probes/manned trips to Mars? If a team made up of the best minds from each of those agencies were to work together, they'd not only be ready to land on Mars sooner, but they'd save billions in the process.

    • What makes you think that will work?

      NASA claims to have the best people in the country. While I dispute this to some extent, they still have a good number of top quality people. In spite of this they haven't even been able to create a successor to the shuttle. Perhaps it's because they are putting all their eggs in one basket.

      Putting all the best people (even if it can be done) in one group can have negative consequences. You can get a group think phenomenon where everyone starts to think the same w

  • Generate oxygen on their own?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by pphrdza ( 635063 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:29AM (#5727757)
    From the article:

    The participants, who will be given 3 tons of water and 5 tons of food, will undergo training on how to act in hazardous situations, the official said. Water and oxygen for the "flight" will be generated by means of the participants' own life processes.

    I don't think I want to watch...

  • Gee I thought it was 2010 last week (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HanzoSan ( 251665 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:29AM (#5727759) Homepage Journal
    And before that it was 2008, now its 2018? Just face it, we will never go to Mars in our lifetime, and why? Because the government doesnt want to give NASA the money to go.

  • MARS NEEDS WOMEN! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Guano_Jim ( 157555 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:31AM (#5727782)
    From the article:


    The six participants have not yet been chosen, and the selection process will be rigorous, Mr. Malashenkov went on, saying an all-male crew was likely.


    Why not an all female crew? You could save a couple of kilos on the launch, and their energy requirements (i.e. food) are likely to be lower over the course of a long-term trip, since they don't have to maintain as much body mass.


    Of course there's that whole Men are From Mars thing...

  • Well now... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mister Black ( 265849 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:31AM (#5727784)
    Suggested launch years are 2014 or 2018.

    I've checked my calendar and I'm free then. Sign me up.

  • 500 days? The Mars Society beat them to it... (Score:4, Informative)

    by I'm a racist. ( 631537 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:33AM (#5727802) Homepage Journal
    Check it out, it's rather cool (still pretty geeky though).

    The Flasline Mars Arctic Research Station [marssociety.org]

    The Mars Desert Research Station [marssociety.org]

    If you get a chance to go to one of these, take it.

  • Don't get too excited... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CommieLib ( 468883 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:33AM (#5727807) Homepage
    Fifteen years may as well be fifty in terms of Russian economic and political stability, not to mention international relations.

    The article is light on logistical details, but assuming that we're more Robert Zubrin [amazon.com] than we are BattleStar Galactica, the mission will involve a long period of technological development followed by deployments of resources in advance of human explorers. That's a long time for a lot of factors to remain "in the window", IMHO. Even the ISS didn't manage to remain entirely in that window, and that was far more flexible in terms of planets lining up and such.

    I'm pleased at least to see that it's on the TODO list at NASA, but I don't take this too seriously.
  • (Sounds like a good reality TV show to me.)

    Yeah, until everybody gets sick of the reporter and they steal the video-headset.

    That said, I can't wait :)

  • Actually (Score:5, Informative)

    by ethnocidal ( 606830 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:39AM (#5727842) Homepage
    If you read the article, the US has 'no plans' for a manned mission to Mars. The Russians are planning to do this off their own back.

    It makes sense. Combining two different nations in a space program might look good for the media, but from an efficiency and productivity point of view, it's very poor. You end up with compromises at every stage of the process, with the result that noone is truly satisfied with the outcome.

    Bear in mind Russia has a huge advantage over the US in both long term space missions (Cosmonauts in Mir hold the endurance record for space 'flight'), and it also has far superior heavy lift capabilities. The Energia launch vehicle is capable of orbiting a payload of 100 tons - far more than than the 30 tons capable of being lifted by the shuttle. While there have been plans for US heavy lift systems (cf. the 'Shuttle-C' cargo container, or the Ares booster) which could increase payload weight to 121 tons, the Russians designed a system (Volcano) derived from Energia which could loft over 200 tons of cargo!

    NASA is at serious risk of falling further and further behind, and becoming largely irrelevant in space exploration. Mars Express (from the ESA) is a clear example of how quality research can be performed at a fraction of the cost of a typical NASA mission. Pathfinder cost 'just' $200M - compare this to the British built 'Beagle' rover, which is more capable, and cost just £10M (~ $16M) to develop! Mars Express, the overall project of which Beagle is part, cost just 203M. Compare this to the $800M cost of the latest US mission to Mars.

    If NASA is to succeed in the long term, and to shine at research, it has to learn hard lessons from several sources. Satellites can be optimally placed with cheap boosters, not expensive manned shuttle missions. Productivity needs to get back, at the very least, to Pathfinder mission standards. Using proven engineering, and modularity of design, you can massively reduce failures, and costs.

    For more information on Mars Express, check here [spacedaily.com] and the official ESA project page here [esa.int].

  • If its on Fox, are they going to call it who wants to marry a martian?

  • The russian space training reality show: (Score:5, Funny)

    by pibare ( 628270 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:40AM (#5727861) Journal
    Trainee: "Ivan ate all the sqeeze cheese
    again!!!! ARggh!!"

    Mission Control: "Comrades, comrades, keep
    in mind, when you are in orbit of mars, we will
    not be able to resupply you with
    constant 'squeeze cheese'"

    *dramatic music*

    Voice Over: Next week find out who gets
    voted out of the training pod and thrown out of
    the air lock. Will it be Ivan with his insatiable
    appetite for squeezable cheese? or will it be
    Ivana and her insistance on leaving tampons in
    the engineering section???

  • Breaking news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Znonymous Coward ( 615009 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:43AM (#5727888) Journal
    From the office of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (aka Baghdad Bob):

    "There is no Mars! The red plannet does not exist! It is a trick by the coalition forces!"

    More at 11.

    • Re:Breaking news... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by swordgeek ( 112599 )
      And on CNN:

      "Our noble and beloved US military has begun the process of liberating the poor downtrodden martians from their fascist oppressors. Casualties are in the tens of thousands, but they're only poor third-planet non-Americans who don't even speak english, so they don't really count."

  • What? No volunteers? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jtheory ( 626492 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:48AM (#5727937) Homepage Journal
    I think it would be very difficult to live in tight quarters with 5 other people for almost a year and a half, floating through space on a mission that would bring back all kinds of info that will be useful for humankind. "Just another few months with these freaks", you could think, "and we'll have accomplished something great. When we get home I'll be famous, and I'll have a pickup line that no one else in the bar can hope to match!" Besides, once you've launched, you can't really change your mind, so you just focus on managing the stress.

    Now imagine you're just one of the guinea pigs in the 500-day test. You're not going to be famous. You aren't exploring new frontiers. You're like a kid camping out in his backyard... except you promised your parent (Dr. and Mrs. Skinner?) that you wouldn't come inside for FIVE HUNDRED DAYS, even though you know that some days it's sunny outside the tent and you can hear the other kids playing in the park across the street. Sometimes a dog wanders by and urinates on the corner of the tent (days 3, 5, 16, 21, 23-twice, 28, 29...). Twice a day a scientist peers in through a porthole to see if you've cracked up yet. Can you imagine it? Wouldn't you just feel like you were pissing away a chunk of your life?

    And just think -- to be realistic, their connection to the internet would start broadband, then go gradually down to dial-up and worse.... :)
  • I thought it was recently announced there were deadly levels of radiation on Mars? That it was determined (wo)man could not go to Mars for these reasons?

    How do we plan to get around this problem? Or are we expecting a group of mutan X-men to return?

    • Re:Radiation (Score:5, Informative)

      by DrinkDr.Pepper ( 620053 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @10:10AM (#5728090)
      Um, the AP [cnn.com] over exaggerated or misunderstood what the scientists said. Imagine that.
      This one makes more sense. [space.com]

      by the way, that's my boss in the picture from the CNN article.
    • Here's some of the detail from the Mars Society page [marssociety.org] about this -- apparently the radiation level on the surface would be only slightly risky:

      The Associated Press yesterday issued a wire article claiming that "the radiation on the surface of Mars is so intense that it could endanger astronauts sent to explore the Red Planet." The AP claimed that these were the findings of the MARIE instrument currently operating on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, and ascribed the view that such radiation doses were too high

  • Somewhat overoptimistic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PhysicsExpert ( 665793 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @09:53AM (#5727973) Homepage Journal
    The simple fact is that we're probably not going to get to Mars in the next 20 years, it simply isn't as simple as people would like to think. Most of the problems revolve around the fact that any expedition to mars would last up to 3 years(apollo 11 took around a week) and for the great majority of this the team would have to cope with problems unaided. Consider this: The CLOSEST that mars gets to earth is 86.5 million KM which means that any communication with the earth is going to take 5 minutes to get there and the response 5 minutes to get back. That means that for any problem that can't be solved in 10 minutes you're completely on your own. The astronauts on Apollo 13 would have been doomed had they had a 10 minute communication lag with ground control. other problems include sickness (its going to happen if you're away for months and illness that are trivial to cure on earth would be major problems halfway to mars, not to mention the degeneration of muscles, bones and the heart caused by being weightless for long periods of time), nutrition(how do we keep our astronauts in tip top shape for months on end when we have no way of getting food to them), radiation and pyschological problems (think being couped up in a space the size of your living room with 5 people for a couple of years). Yes, most of these problems are solvable (especially if we develop a technology considerably faster than chemically fuelled rockets) but the fact is almost everything that a manned mission would achieve can be done for less money and risk by robots. Its just not going to happen.

    • If by sickness, you mean disease, then yes, the chance of little green men infecting the crew with the Jovian Flu halfway through the mission is high.

      Think! 5 men in isolation will not have a lot of opertunities to catch a disease.

    • I feel like exercising some physics knowledge, so here we go....

      Most of the problems revolve around the fact that any expedition to mars would last up to 3 years(apollo 11 took around a week) [...]

      Sure, 3 years with shite technology.

      Consider this: The CLOSEST that mars gets to earth is 86.5 million KM [...]

      Without bothering to check that figure, let's assume you're correct. Solving some basic mechanics equations, we see that assuming a constant acceleration, we will need a time t=sqrt(x / a) to trav

  • Another planetary mission is needed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by derbs ( 563933 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @10:01AM (#5728024)
    I hope this happens. No-one under 40 has had the privilege of living through an actual planetary space mission. Mars would be the biggest TV event ever. Imagine it, humans landing on an actual solar system planet, not just a satellite.

    It would certainly get the 'new' generation interested in space once again, and hopefully would go someway to open peoples' eyes as to what's out there beyond our tiny little planet

  • If you're interested in Mars-Exploration, but "NASA estimated 300 billion dollars to do it" got you thinking, you might want to read these, as they come to a quite different estimate:
    - The Mars-Society... [marssociety.org]
    - ...and its german branch [marssociety.de]
    - Robert Zubrin & Mars Direct [nw.net]
    - Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars" [amazon.com], a book I can absolutely recommend
    - The german link again [amazon.de] (I'm a german, so please bear with me, ok? :-)
    I hope these may be of help...

    PS: At least I wouldn't be wondering if Europe and Russia we

  • Venus? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sploxx ( 622853 ) on Monday April 14, 2003 @10:40AM (#5728368)
    Why not venus?
    Some scientists say it is as probable as on mars to find life there...
    Admitted, the surface of venus is just too hot, but wouldn't a balloon floating through venus' athmosphere (at temperatures comparable to earth's) an idea?
    I often thought about that, I just don't know why noone is considering it yet. Seems to be an easier goal for human space travel.
    And, venus is nearer to earth than mars.
    First of all, we could send unmanned balloons.
  • One summer, years ago now, maybe 10 or more, I worked at a research lab at Brandeis Univesity (high school summer program). They did research into the perception of motion and had a grant from NASA. They had a large room, about 10' in diameter that rotated. At the time I left, they were planning an experiment that would put several people into this room for something like 100 or more days while it rotated contantly to see what the long term effect of this would be for a trip to Mars. I have not idea of

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