Visiting Our Red Space Neighbor 209
Enthusiasm for visiting our red space neighbor seems to be growing. m4dm4n writes "A study carried out by MIT's Aeronautics and Astronautics department has concluded that getting men to Mars in the 2020 timeframe is possible. The intelligent re-use of crew habitat modules, propulsion stages, and engines in various missions will enable NASA to significantly reduce their initial timeline which was well past 2030." Relatedly, ErikPeterson wrote to mention a Space.com article where Neil Armstrong says getting to Mars may be easier than getting to the Moon was back in the day, because of the hurdles they had to overcome. From the article: "It will be expensive, it will take a lot of energy and a complex spacecraft. But I suspect that even though the various questions are difficult and many, they are not as difficult and many as those we faced when we started the Apollo (space program) in 1961." We're starting to understand more about the red planet as well, as madstork2000 writes "The BBC is reporting on the possibility of active volcanoes on Mars. So now there is water, heat, and soon big business when 4Frontiers gets there. Hopefully we'll get a Google Mars soon to check it out up close."
Business on Mars (Score:2, Insightful)
What will they make and who are they going to sell it too? I'm open for making money on Mars, but I haven't read one proposal that looks like it would make money.
I can see why a country would want to go to Mars. There is always the national honor, staking territorial claims, etc. for a Mars landing. I just can't see spending billions of dollars for no financial return at all.
How much money has a business made from the US landing o
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2, Insightful)
About 16 billion? The company is known as Halliburton, aka Brown and Root.
See also Mohole, Vietnam, TVA nukes, Iraq...
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2)
Damn, that's fuckin' cool.
I wish I was a good enough businessman to make that sort of coin off of such a pointless project...
Holy shit, thank you for posting that... I now have a newfound respect for Halliburton.
Re:Business on Mars (Score:5, Insightful)
The most obvious is all of the tech that will be discovered along the way, which would be valuable both to private industry and the military. And that company would hold the patents. This would also establish that organization as the premier space exploration/transport company... Think what it would mean to their earth-based enterprises.
The second answer is marketing. This company would be in the news every day for years, and they would certainly be in every schoolchild's history books for centuries to come. Doesn't Coke have a roughly $1.5 billion advertising budget? Not saying they'd be the one to do it (though Virgin does have a cola, too...) Putting this kind of money into the greatest technological accomplishment in history may be worth it...
Re:Business on Mars (Score:5, Insightful)
You could do the same thing far more efficiently by directly funding research through the National Science Foundation. Unfortunately, the NSF has seen its budget cut while funding for NASA has been increased.
I think that NASA's unmanned programs do some valuable research and they should continue, or even be expanded, but the manned program is just a publicity stunt. I mean what did the Shuttle program ever discover, other than a bunch of science-fair projects along the lines of "does classical music make plants grow better... in SPACE?" Their biggest single contribution to research has been repairing a robot- the Hubble Space Telescope. I think that says something about where space exploration is going. The sooner we get humans out of space exploration entirely, the more progress we'll make. Likewise, if there really is any way to make money from going to Mars, it will doubtless be cheaper to send robots to do it, instead of sending humans.
Re:Business on Mars (Score:4, Funny)
Method for locking a door... IN SPACE!
Method for input of data... IN SPACE!
etc.
Then you have the meta-patents...
Method for input of data.. ON A COMPUTER! IN SPACE!
NSF (Score:2)
Do you know how many of those useless projects were paid for by the national science foundation?
Re:NSF (Score:3, Interesting)
But the thing is, the NSF is a bargain. It costs about 5.5 billion a year and funds things as diverse as biotech, computing, and fisheries management. It funds undergrads, graduate students, and professors, and it buys equipment and pays for research projects. In the process it cultivates basic research in the United States, in all areas of the sciences. Yet NASA gets over three times that- 16 billion t
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2)
Our problem isn't putting humans in space, our problem is attempting to put them in space without an efficient enough energy source to propel and sustain them for the long distances meaningful space travel requires. Our ships are too slow and our fuel doesn't last long enough and takes too much space to store. There's nothing wrong with putting humans in space, but we shouldn't be spending all the money to do so ri
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2)
Re:Business on Mars (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this is a very frequently overstated benefit of space projects for several reasons:
Surely there are serendipitous inventions that may reduce costs and increase reliability, but ideally you would want to avoid having to invent something to finish a project you are starting right now- newly created or discovered things are typically much more expensive, are diff
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2)
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2)
How much money has a business made from the US landing on the Moon?
If you count the techonology the US had to invent to get ther,e billions upon billions.
Real estate (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny or insightful? Your choice!
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2)
Re:Business on Mars (Score:4, Informative)
According to Wikipedia, "Teflon is the brand name of a polymer compound discovered by Roy J. Plunkett (1910-1994) of DuPont in 1938 and introduced as a commercial product in 1946." As for Velcro, "The hook and loop fastener was invented in 1948 by Georges de Mestral, a Swiss engineer. The idea came to him after he took a close look at the seed pod burrs which kept sticking to his dog on their daily walk in the Alps."
Re:Business on Mars (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Business on Mars (Score:5, Funny)
No it wasn't. It was sold to a businessman in a big city near Carbon Creek, Pennsylvania, by a strange woman with pointy ears [startrek.com] in the late 50's.
Yup, I know I'm going to get modded down for referencing that, but I've got karma to burn...
Invented by Vulcans (Score:2)
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2)
So you are claiming that, without the Moon landing, digital computers woudln't have been invented? [blinkenlights.com]
Re:Business on Mars (Score:4, Informative)
In the 60s though, there was a different necessity: Beat the soviets to the moon. It was very important to a lot of USians, and the Kennedy administration had made it a big focal point. Science of course, had a different aim, but the political and social pressures drove funding.
There was a big perceived problem at the time, though. The soviets had "won" every aspect of the race in 1960. And they had the N1 on the horizon, whose heavy lifting capability easily surpassed anything that NASA or the army (redstone, vanguard, etc) had on the drawing table. Nobody knew, of course (or at least the public didn't), that the N1 had some serious design flaws that would later result in the worst disasters in the history of manned space flight (and that includes the two lost orbiters).
The workload of actually performing a moon landing was so intesive that it wasn't thought possible for two or even three men to do it with any reasonable safety or confidence. They knew they were gonna to use those new-fangled digital computers for guidance systems, control, environment, etc. Problem is, of course, nobody had ever built a small computer that was up to the task and there was certainly no software capable of handling all the tasks (often more than one simultaneously). Keep in mind, the overwhelming engineering pressure at all times was payload mass. Every kg you take up is another kg of fuel you can't burn, plus you have to add fuel to push that kg, so dropping a kg of payload is worth more than its weight in fuel.
In 1961, NASA formally chose the MIT Instrumentation Lab to produce the AGC (apollo guidance computer). This is in an era before the term "software engineering" had been coined. Nobody had ever written a piece of software like this before, its scope, at the time, was literally inconceivable. The were no development procedures, testing models, best practices, etc. Everything had to be created from scratch.
It almost didn't happen. In 1964, NASA came close to pulling the plug on MIT, because MIT was behind schedule and beginning to fully understand that the details where much more sophisticated than they had originally thought.
During this project, the MIT Instrumentation Lab operated as nearly a pure research facility. They documented their procedures and they shared knowledge with other research facilities. It was there, in that lab, that software development as we know it today was born.
Would it have happened otherwise? Probably. Not in the same way of course, and not at the same speed. Some of the conceptual leaps that were made w.r.t. software development might never have happened, because they might not have been perceived as necessary. One thing is for sure, the apollo program did change the face of the world in an area not directly related to space-flight. Speculating what might or might not have happened without apollo seems largely pointless.
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2, Flamebait)
Many. But what evidence is there that digital computers would not exist in their current form without the Space Program? Roughly speaking, the "robustness" needs of spacecraft lead to the use of ancient, low performance, extraordinarily well understood, mature, technologies.
As prior comments have indicated, "teflon" and "velcro" were invented long before the Apollo program, and were invented to address very terrestrial applic
You know this was coming..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Inhibition of Mars will change the 2048 electoral map?
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2)
Well, Teflon, Velcro, and digital computers have been debunked as being spin offs of the Apollo mission. Perhaps you could itemize the "considerable" innovations from the moon landing.
Re:Business on Mars (Score:2)
You got me. I concede.
Re:Tourism (Score:2)
Once you've had your first three-breasted prostitute, it's just never the same anymore...
The real market is in the two-breasted "girl next door" types... Funny part is, the bio-engineering geeks don't "get" that....
Kuato (Score:2, Funny)
Sure, if they get the budget (Score:5, Insightful)
Education is almost always at the front, and I'd say that NASA is second in line for the big axe.
Re:Sure, if they get the budget (Score:2, Informative)
The tax cuts enabled economic growth, which put people to work which allowed.....more incomes to be taxed!
Tax cuts are actually, at certain taxation levels, a way to INCREASE net income. It has been made clear that the Bush tax cuts were made at this level.
Then (Score:2)
Re:Sure, if they get the budget (Score:2)
Total income at the federal level is up, yes. Total spending at the federal level is up much much more, and this is what I would credit with the increase in tax revenues.
If we simply paid the additional spending to someone, and taxed them, we would realize a bigger increase in net income than we have. Of course, we'd still have this completely unsustainable, crushing debt that we're running up just stupidly fast, but hey, net income is up! Want to increase your net income? I'll pay you five bucks if yo
Re:Sure, if they get the budget (Score:2)
Revenue is up spending (in keeping with republican ideals) is down, great. Perhaps you could return that 5 billion you stole from us (illegal softwood lumber tariffs)
That would be odd given the NASA budget increased (Score:2)
Are you also of the mind that little girls selling lemonade on a corner for $20 a dixie cup will make more than ones selling cups at $.25C each? But one clearly is collecting more money!
Re:Sure, if they get the budget (Score:2)
You must already be on our "red planet neighbor". Here on Earth (well, in the US, anyway), Education funding has doubled in real terms over the last thirty years, although there hasn't been any appreciable increase in test scores to justify it. It's gone up 50% since Bush (damn liberal) took office.
Red Space Neigbor? (Score:5, Funny)
"Excuse me honey. I have to go to the big toilet room neighbor."
Re:Red Space Neigbor? (Score:2)
Re:Red Space Neigbor? (Score:2)
Re:Red Space Neigbor? (Score:2)
Face on Mars? Heh. Those
Mars, shmars (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mars, shmars (Score:2)
Re:Mars, shmars (Score:2)
They can onyl kill you if they have some way to itteract with you. The reason why most plant diseases don't harm people is because they have no significant way to interact with our biological systems.
Re:Mars, shmars (Score:2)
Re:Mars, shmars (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Mars, shmars (Score:2)
Which Europa would that be? Are these things that might be swimming in it alive? Do they know they are swimming? Are they wearing swimming trunks, and if so where did they get them? What are they bigger than? Are they bigger than Europa? Or just bigger than each other? Are there more than two of them?
I'd love to reply, but your post brings so many questions to mind, I don't know where to start--or rather,
Efficiency (Score:5, Interesting)
This conclusion is probably 100% accurate. Direct shots are, in general, probably more efficient. Efficiency, however, is not the only criteria.
Griffin's plans involve launching large interplanetary payloads into LEO to which a manned CEVs are docked prior to interplanetary injection. The very large benefit of this design is crew safety. The mass goes up using immense, dripping wet, snarling 100t+ boosters. People go up in small, simple, reliable systems.
Rockets fail frequently. Dramatic detonations on the pad, missed orbits due to failed stages, etc. Why are most people oblivious to this? Because there are no people on board when it happens.
NASA has got to stop killing astronauts. Griffin intends to launch people using the simplest, safest system he can come up with. That intention will probably lead to something other than enormous non-stop direct flight vehicles.
would actually increase mission safety, by decreasing the number of critical maneuvers required, such as orbital rendezvous and docking
There have been a lot of rendezvous and docking maneuvers in space and no one has yet been killed as a result. Mir was almost lost due to a fender bender with a Soyuz, but that's as close as it has gotten. I question the risk value assigned to these events in this analysis.
Re:Efficiency (Score:2)
They do so about .1% of the time - which is not 'frequently' except in the most extreme mis-use of the term.
Because almost none of them make CNN.
Armstrong is wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
And this talk of "the" CEV is disturbing. Sounds like the same "let's-make-one-spaceship-that-can-do-it-all" approach that gave us the Shuttle.
PS - Am I the only person in this country who thinks putting a manned spacecraft (the new CEV) atop a solid rocket (Thiokol SRB; as used by Shuttle) is a really bad idea?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Armstrong is wrong (Score:2)
You do realize that Apollo was the first US space program that didn't use a stock ICBM from those "greedy defense contractors," right?
Look, a blimp! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Look, a blimp! (Score:3, Funny)
You raise an interesting point, but- Hey, look! Bigfoot riding a unicorn!
Re:Look, a blimp! (Score:2)
Fair enough, but hey look an intelligent rationale comment on
Spacecraft (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Spacecraft (Score:2)
Google Mars is Now! (Score:4, Informative)
we need a spaceship (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:we need a spaceship (Score:2)
Thanks to advances in very small (and very safe!) pebble-bed nuclear reactor technology in the last 20 years, with a concerted multinational effort we could build a spacecraft powered by descendants of the NERVA nuclear rocket engine tested during the 19
Huge waste of money. (Score:2)
I would only agree with it if it were permanent . That's right . Build a station with robots first and then send people to live there for 5 or 10 years.
That would make sense. A short term trip is stupid and just flag waving , index finger pointing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingoism [wikipedia.org] .
Real science please.
Re:Huge waste of money. (Score:2)
Perhaps we'll be able to count you onboard then. Look here [cleveland.com]:
"The NASA brass is considering reworking the Prometheus program to develop a nuclear reactor to serve those purposes."
That "NASA brass" bit is Griffin. The existing Prometheus program is an attempt to design a nuclear propulsion system. Griffin is, right now, redirecting funds for Prometheus to the US Navy. Why the Navy? Because they are really good at building and operating small nuclear power pl
Re:Huge waste of money. (Score:2)
Robots do a better job driving around on the terrain collecting samples, but I haven't seen any examples of robots doing a better job constructing or repairing any type of physical structure. The latency alone would be a serious challenge to overcome for anything other than a mostly autonomous building robot(s).
I frankly think the whole thing is a big waste of money, unless we're tapping into the innovations that these big relatively useless challenges p
Re:Huge waste of money. (Score:2)
I would only agree with it if it were permanent . That's right . Build a station with robots first and then send people to live there for 5 or 10 years.
That would make sense. A short term trip is stupid and just flag waving , index finger pointing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingoism [wikipedia.org]
Real science please.
Expendable and capable robots will require 20 to 50 years of reserach, but expendable people are here now! lets start shipping l
Re:Huge waste of money. (Score:2)
Only half the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I can imagine the public response: "It costs a billion dollars, and we've had people already spend a year there. Why spend any more?"
I personally don't think it is worth the effort to go to Mars unless we already have the technology and infrastructure in place to maintain a permament settlement. Otherwise it will be the Moon program all over again: Plant the flag, hit some golf balls, come home, cancel the follow-up missions.
Re:Only half the problem (Score:2)
Why we need China to get to Mars (Score:2)
It wasn't just American ingenuity and willpower that got us to the moon. It was the threat of the Soviet Union beating us to the punch. The Soviets had already beaten us into orbit with Sputnik (a secret development project) and to put a human in space.
All that is necessary for our mission to Mars to happen in record time is the threat of China getting there first.
Hell... since I'd love to see us get to Mars in my lifetime... I suggest we all start the rumour that China is working on a secret Mars project
Re:Why we need China to get to Mars (Score:2)
Actually, we've just outsourced our program to them... much cheaper you know.
Mars pathfinder (Score:2)
Google Mars in 2010ish (Score:3, Informative)
What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
All the money spent on making Mars spaceships and reasearching how to protect the astronauts, etc, would be better spent on improving our earthships (cars) and figuring out ways to make civilization much more energy efficient. This HAS to get done in the near future with Peak Oil and the end of cheap energy approaching. Unfortunately, we definately don't have enough money to do both types of research. With the current trends, we could be even a lot worse off by 2030.
Breeder reactors (Score:2)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
That is a gross oversimplification of the reasons behind exploring other worlds.
"Mars is an inhospitable desert."
So is the moon. So are several areas on our own planet. That doesn't mean it's worthless to go there and explore. Or even live.
"We can't do much research there that wouldn't be better done here, except for investigating Mars itself."
Not true. Mars has about a 1/4 of Earth's gravity. That makes doing a bunch of sustained low g research extremely easy
But... (Score:2)
Yes, but how do we get there? (Score:3, Informative)
One possible solution is to use nuclear rockets to get there and back. For sheer power they leave chemical rockets in the dust. A nuclear powered rocket would enable "point and shoot" missions, essentially aiming at the spot in the sky where the destination will be in a few months, overcoming planetary gravity by brute force. Here's an interesting article [nuclearspace.com] about a design for a fully reusable, non-polluting nuclear rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, that could lift one thousand tons of payload into Earth orbit and return intact to a powered landing. No solid fuel boosters, no jettisoned fuel tanks. Just a big rocket that takes off and comes back.
So thats the time frame for sending men to Mars. (Score:2)
Going to Mars now would be stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
I submit that sending people to Mars at this point in time would be a most illogical thing to do. Here are some reasons:
Re:Getting men to Mars by 2020 ? (Score:5, Funny)
Geeks can't get women here, so isn't that a rhetorical question?
Re:Getting men to Mars by 2020 ? (Score:2, Funny)
> Geeks can't get women here, so isn't that a rhetorical question?
You shouldn't reply if you think it's a rhetorical question.
Re:Getting men to Mars by 2020 ? (Score:2)
I wasn't sure it was rhetorical, but you are correct.
Re:Getting men to Mars by 2020 ? (Score:2)
Shit! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to step on your line.
CRAP!!! I think I just did it again!
Re:Getting men to Mars by 2020 ? (Score:2)
Because, as we learned early in the space program, Mars Needs Women [bmoviecentral.com]...
Re:Getting men to Mars by 2020 ? (Score:2)
Re:.sig (Score:2)
Although you are right that there are such people I doubt it is the case here; some simply get modded down because they're stupid.
A woman being stupid is no different from a man being stupid, it's still stupid, and thinking it is not sexist. And just how are we meant to be sure the poster was a woman? Trust the posters name? Who cares? It might just as well be a pimply teenage loser getting his kicks out of trolling people.
Yes I think the grandparent was stupid to the point of being a troll, there are f
Re:a question of priorities (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Internet on mars (Score:5, Informative)
This is all actually important for if we ever want to actually send astronauts there.
Re:Internet on mars (Score:3, Informative)
"...Depending on Mars's distance from Earth, which can vary by as much as 200 million mi. (322 km), radio signals from the planet can take anywhere from 4 minutes to 21 minutes to reach Earth...."
YMMV I guess.
Re:Armstrongs comments sounded familiar (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Armstrongs comments sounded familiar (Score:2)
Neil Armstrong says a manned mission to Mars will be easier than his mission to the moon, which in his day was uphill both ways, through six feet of snow, barefoot.
Re:Why is the return trip always ignored? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why is the return trip always ignored? (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting off mars is harder than getting off the moon, but it's a lot easier than getting off earth. Like any other part of a mars mission, it presents tec
Re:Why is the return trip always ignored? (Score:2)
Um, can you say portable space elevator?
Re:Excuse me for being skeptic... (Score:2)
Re:Excuse me for being skeptic... (Score:2)
Re:CowboyNeil (Score:2)
Re:Fossils (Score:4, Insightful)
The only "fossils" we're likely to find on Mars are microbes, and even those are probably rare which means w need every advantage in finding them. Humans simply increase the risk of contamination orders of magnitude which makes finding such microbe remains a much greater challenge.
Re:Fossils (Score:2)
The only "fossils" we're likely to find on Mars are microbes, and even those are probably rare which means w need every advantage in finding them. Humans simply increase the risk of contami
Re:Fossils (Score:2)
Finding fossils of organism which evolved on Mars, or better yet living specimens, could provide some rather interesting biological insight. This is also what the original poster seems to be wanting in terms of human exploration. It's kind of hard to find byproducts of Martian life when you're dropping byproducts of Earth life wherever you go. As I said, if a mai
Re:How soon until this happens? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know it sounds crazy. But to walk just once under an alien sky...darnit, our children deserve the stars, and someone needs to claim that inheritance for them. IMO, if you've never looked up at the sky and wondered why we're stuck here, well, call God and see if you can get a refund or warranty repair job on your soul.
Re:How soon until this happens? (Score:2)
Once they're on their way.
Re:How soon until this happens? (Score:2)
ppl here seem to always forget that Greenland was colonized by the vikings. They went there on their first mission and stayed. Likewise, ppl came to America and stayed. If you send ppl to Mars on a one-way mission (or least with out a planned way back), you will still find millions of ppl who are willing to go. That is the pioneer spirit that settled America. That is the same spirit that is needed to go to Mars and the stars. It wi
Re:plenty of people would take that (Score:2)
How many of you know Grissom, Chaffe, and White are? Many here will.
But do you know who Gunny Tom Welch? I did somewhat, but I would be shocked if anybody here did.