NASA Wants To Bring Back Hunks of Mars In Future Unmanned Mission 82
coondoggie writes "The space missions to Mars have so far been one way — satellites and robotic rovers have all gone there to stay. NASA, as part a of a new, ambitious Mars visit, wants to change that by sending a rover to the surface of the Red Planet which can dig up chunks of the surface and send them back to Earth for highly detailed examination. These plans were laid out in a lengthy report outlining mission plans for Mars that will be acted upon over the next decade. It says a retrieval mission 'could occur as early as the mid-2020s or wait until the 2030s.'"
For the swimsuit calender? (Score:4, Funny)
Whaka Whaka
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
About it.
They should be planning and building toward a permanent scientific station on the surface.
Instead they just come up with these publicity stunts.
We should have had a permanent scientific station on the moon for the last decade.
If NASA isn't going to fish or cut bait, it is time to RIF the whole bunch.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, Hollywood should underwrite the venture. The payback dividends will be enormous!
Re: (Score:2)
... they should bring back the Amazon Women on the Moon.
No, women are from Venus.
Re: (Score:2)
... they should bring back the Amazon Women on the Moon.
No, women are from Venus.
That's what they want you to think...
Re: (Score:2)
No, women are from Venus.
You mean like these gals (actually I enjoyed watch Zsa Zsa), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052104/?ref_=sr_1 [imdb.com]
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
An instructional video [imdb.com].
Re: (Score:3)
Here's another "what can go wrong"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_II [wikipedia.org]
Mid 2020s or 2030s? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
That's not a bad plan. NASA could send food and stuff and then the people on Mars could fill the rocket with rocks to send back. Could be the first example of interplanetary commerce.
Re: (Score:2)
Rather than bringing the materials here we could send the lab there... oh wait: that's exactly what we did with Curiosity!
I'd also like a quote for how much it would cost to build a villa from this martian rock.
Re: (Score:3)
Launching a ship with enough fuel to get there is already expensive as fuck... but to also carry the fuel needed to also launch the ship from there back to here..
I'm thinking tens of billions of dollars easy... probably more in the range of hundreds of billions..
Re: (Score:3)
We could instead send small robots that can build anything on site when arrive, even self replicate themselves. We would call them 'replicators'.
What could go wrong?
Re: (Score:2)
As long as they don't have any rocket templates to replicate we should be safe... oh... never mind.
Re: (Score:2)
If we were able to manufacture the rocket propellant in space, from say water from the moon and split into H/O using solar power, it wouldn't be quite as bad. After all, only a small fraction of the rocket weight is the actual rocket, most is the fuel.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, because, you know... money is just going to be so useful on Mars,
Or, a Mars One ground-support fee ... The colonists will get supplies from Earth *and* money will probably still be useful Earth-side.
[ I considered mentioning that the OP, but didn't think it *actually* necessary. Never over-estimate people on /. ... ]
Phobos? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bringing back material from Mars's moons may be an easier first step.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just be careful of the Leather Goddesses.
Re: (Score:2)
Mod up for reference.
Not Mentioned in the Article (Score:2)
The Mars rocks will be brought back, at astronomical speeds, straight to the NASA budgeting subcommittee.
Good idea (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
And remember, never send any military surplus drones to Mars!
Why not? they very safe. Just be sure to set the 'KILL' switch to 'false'... And hope the programmers read the DailyWTF [thedailywtf.com] site. Hope real hard.
Re: (Score:2)
And reading today's news about the failure of Russia's Proton rocket, you have to hope the builders didn't put the KILL switch in upside down.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course they... wait a minute, false is upside down or upside up?
Bars of Mars? (Score:2)
That sounds like a satisfying project...
Re: (Score:2)
Killer microbes (Score:1, Interesting)
There is still risk of Martian microbes that Earth life has no immunity too. Sure, it's a very small chance, but one that has potentially apocalyptic consequences if it happens.
Perhaps the samples should be baked at an intermediate station.
Re: (Score:3)
There is still risk of Martian microbes that Earth life has no immunity too. Sure, it's a very small chance, but one that has potentially apocalyptic consequences if it happens.
Perhaps the samples should be baked at an intermediate station.
Naw, just build a sampling lab on the Moon and process them there. Hell, you could even teloperate it, it's only a 3 second lag, wouldn't even need to send any people up there, which would make the Congresscritters happy..
Re:Killer microbes (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost zero. Mars rocks have been hitting earth for some time and in any case microbes have to evolve to infect humans, it is not something likely to happen for a mars microbe. In any case they will use the same quarantine process they used for the moon rocks and in that case the microbes would have had to have been very hardy to survive vacuum and solar radiation, yet they still quarantined them. So you can be sure the risk is close to zero.
On the other hand we have enough risks here on earth that we don't jump up and down enough about. Still, the power of the unknown risk freaks people out more.
Re: (Score:3)
There is risk which is why they quarantine, but it is not something to lose much sleep over.
Re: (Score:1)
What do you mean by quarantine? Sit by themselves for a while? That may not be good enough.
Even if the risk of a surprise mass disease is 1 in 10,000, it's worth taking precautions against. If you do the risk/reward math, then very small risks (probabilities) with very large costs are roughly equivalent to a medium risk (medium probability with medium costs).
And keep in mind that it's not just risk to humans, it could be risk to other life-forms that we depend on. For this reason, an isolated human colony
Re: (Score:3)
So if you are concerned about a risks as low as 1 in 10,000, which btw, i think is much lower than that, then you think we should invest in much higher risk items that are more certain to kill lots of us off. Threats such as Global Warming (almost 1 in 1 risk), Major Pandemics from earth based diseases (possibly 1 in 10 to 1 in 100), declining fresh water, energy, overpopulation and many other threats that are much higher risk and likely to happen if we don't do anything about them.
It is fine to imagine thr
Re: (Score:2)
I agree those other things are threats, but those are messy political issues that NASA has no control over. They DO have control over "Mars rock" missions. Just because Group A takes stupid risks does not mean Group B should do the same.
I am NOT "throwing science out the window". We have had one and only one planet's life to study so far. We know zippity squat about life on other planets. Extrapolating based on our existing k
Re: (Score:2)
The moon rocks were stored in vacuum and were in quarantine until deemed safe. The same would happen with Mars rocks though perhaps they might store them in "Mars atmosphere".
It is reasonable to be careful with the unknown but building a moon base stocked with humans in case there is some unknown dangerous virus is perhaps a little extreme.
My point on the other risks but just to say that people are not good at assessing relative risk. Mars rocks pose little or no risk yet we have known risks that could wip
Re: (Score:2)
There is a very, very slim chance that we may all be descendants of martian microbes. Mars would have cooled a lot earlier than earth, favorable conditions may have manifested earlier, and something could have evolved there and gotten stuck in a rock that was later ejected from mars by some collision and made its way to earth, ultimately landing in earths primordial soup and seeding the planet.
Very slim chance, but I like the thought that we may all be martians.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
But you are just speculating. I generally agree that there is "probably" no risk, but "probably" is not good enough in this case.
Re: (Score:2)
True, but there are rational basis behind the speculation. Take earth's extremophiles that live in near boiling water. Their biological structures have evolved to stand the heat, but in a way that makes them unable to operate at room temperature. To give a broad idea, everything is so much hardened that it needs high temperature to be mobile.
Then you can imagine an extremophile will adapt to live in your guts, lungs or skin, but the fact is that it will encounter many other microbes already adapted there, a
Re: (Score:1)
"Invasive" species from across continents often out-compete the native life because their predators have not fully adapted to them yet. Something similar may be at play with Mars microbes.
And again, I agree you are probably right, but probably is not good enough in this case.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a difference between moving across continents and planets : the invasive species find a biotope similar from one continent to the other, they do not have to adapt. The only barrier may be a predator. Moving across planets, microbes find a very different biotope to which they have to adapt.
Red Rover (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Gimme a hug!
Commercial Venture (Score:1)
I will pay for a piece of Mars. Git'r Done.
Mars will bring back hunks of NASA (Score:2)
in a future unmartianed mission.
do it before I'm dead of old age (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer a mission to Europa that includes a submarine to go into the water below the ice to take pics of the little fishies (if any). Yes, Europa is ****far more difficult**** than Mars. But a Mars sample would be cool, will provide excellent comparison to Martian meteoroids from Antartica. Now if we can also send somebody beyond LEO, then we can say (in the words of one of controllers at Houston MOCR after Apollo 8 TLI), "Finally we get to go someplace!"
I prefer building a base on the Moon, then Mars and then we can jump to Europa.
Re: (Score:2)
You know perfectly well we're not permitted to land on Europa, or even to attempt it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer a mission to Europa that includes a submarine to go into the water below the ice to take pics of the little fishies (if any).
Sounds like an indie movie [wikipedia.org] coming up. Preview looks pretty good, but the jiggly camera work may detract from the story. Not sure yet. Good trailer available online.
Re: (Score:2)
We'll just kidnap Dejah Thoris and demand his surrender... mwwahhhahahahahaha
Re: (Score:2)
Comparatively, Mars is much smaller than earth. A mere 40% of the gravity (or so). Admittedly, that's more than double the moons gravity, but certainly a lot easier to do than escaping earths gravity twice....
Technically, this type of return trip has been worked out for years, but not been implemented yet: The majority of a spaceship is the booster rocket. By using a lander (some sort of VTOL device, similar to the moon lander) module, no (or only a small) booster would be required for the take off from mar
Re: (Score:2)
From what I understand the issue with Mars isn't so much the gravity, as it is only 2.2 times that of the Moon. Its the combination of the lower gravity with just enough atmosphere to make landing and takeoff a pain. The advantage with the moon is that there is really no atmosphere, so a craft doesn't experience drag and doesn't require atmospheric considerations in its design (and the added weight of those considerations). There is at least some possibility that disadvantage could be turned into an adva
Is this the pitch for a really bad horror movie? (Score:1)
5.- Profit! (Score:2)
I wonder if there'd be a profitable market for chunks of Mars. Perhaps it could help fund further exploration.
China will probably do it (Score:2)
China has had five manned space mission now. Even though they are doing things the US & Russia did in the mid 1970s, the are making about four years of progress for every two years of work. Their next space station circa 2015 will be larger than the largest Mir, but still smaller than the ISS. China has the advantage of current technology, $money$, and learning from the past.
How many people watched their two week, three [wo]man space station mission lat mon