Here’s a link to NASA’s page for the Planet Imager, where they talk about effective apertures of 6,000 miles. I don’t know that there is an effective limit, given enough money and computing power, to how big a telescope we could make.
Isn’t Long Base Line Interferomety already being implemented? Seems like I read about it back in the 90s in Sky & Telescope.
Besides, an array of Solar orbiting 'scopes copuld accomplish that. No need for a planet, right?
As far as a human presense on other planets, I think it’s bound to happen. But it would be more like Artic and Antartic bases or Mir. At least, to start. Heinlein’s Mars colonies are far, far in the future, IMHO.
But, of course, I am not a rocket scientist.
[Dale Gribble]Earth first! Make Mars our bitch![/DG]
I say we go, start terraforming, and start colonizing Mars as soon as possible! I don’t care if there’s microbes or giant sand worms running amok on Mars, if they can’t adapt, let 'em die!
It seems to me that the only reason people talk about Mars as the next goal of human space exploration is that there’s this general impression that since we we’ve already gone to the Moon, we have to go somewhere else next. Moon? Been there, done that.
This strikes me as idiotic, considering how much more severe are the obstacles to a Mars mission than a Moon mission. The Moon is three days away. A round trip to Mars is more than a year. One can conceive of solutions to many if not all of the problems, but the degree and number of them is so great that it would take an enormous amount of time and money to make the survival of the astronauts better than a 50-50 proposition. Zubrin’s $30 billion is strikes me as absurdly low, and probably intentionally so, to make the whole project seem possible.
The notion that Mars is the next logical step in space exploration is as sensible as if someone came up to the Wright Brothers the day after the Kitty Hawk flights and said, “Very nice. Now how about a plane that will carry 100 people at twice the speed of sound?”
Making that particular leap took more than 60 years of constant work and development by thousands of people, hundreds of companies, and dozens of countries (aided in no small part by the pressure of several wars). I conservatively estimate going to Mars to be about 3.46 gazillion times harder than that. It’s only been 30 years since we left the Moon, and in that time only two countries have been working on space travel, and rather half-heartedly at that, compared to the passion with which aviation was pursued.
It may be hard for those of us raised on Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Star Trek, and Star Wars to accept this, but there could be physical/technical obstacles that keep us from getting to the nearest planet for centuries. For example, no one here has mentioned the problem of deadly radiation exposure from solar flares, against which no protection (that could be carried on a practical space craft) has yet been conceived.
So why aren’t we talking about going back to the Moon and getting better at space travel while setting up a base there? It’s not as though we learned everything there is to know about the Moon or about space travel in the six missions that went there between 1969 and 1972. And the spacecraft we used, remarkable as they were, were barely more than chicken wire and duct tape.
I say, forget Mars. Let’s colonize the Moon. It’s a million times more realistic and practical than trying to send humans to Mars. Let’s fund lots of robotic exploration of all the planets and their moons, but as far as human missions, let’s figure out how to crawl around our backyard before trying to fly across the ocean.
What we really need to do is raid some of our retired nuclear subs and use the reactors and whatever other parts we need to make the spacecraft. If space is ever going to really be practical or profitable we must use nuclear power. Domes on the moon and mars would be fine to start with but for the long term, underground Asimov-type cities would be best for protection from solar radiation.
Automated probes could prepare the ground for a mission, and allow for a longer period of occupation.
If robotic mining equipment could extract water before the manned mission set off, this would mean much less to carry on the manned spacecraft.
Given a long period of development a little robotic farm could be (stocked with seeds from earth) inside an inflatable biosphere, and some, most or all of the food requirements could be catered for already.
This preparation might take decades or longer- but as long as the project to put humanity on Mars is not seen as a race, there is every chance of success.
Mars could hold a dense atmosphere for millions of years, no problem- look at Titan, which is smaller, but has an atmospheric pressure 1.5 x Earth’s.
There is a lack of nitrogen on Mars to bulk out the atmosphere, however- this might actually need to be purloined from Titan itself, or other outer solar system bodies.
(by the way, tracer, I can conceive of many artificial structures around distant stars that would be even detectable today without interferometry)…
Sci-fi worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html
I recently read a SF short story about a mars trip were instead of a government funded mission the UN placed an award for the first successful return mars trip and allowed companys to complete for the prize, like the early flights over the Alantic.
Anyways once we have the techology for cheap launches and sustained human presence in space, why bother colonising Mars? Once its been explored, unless it yields some great surprises, its just going to be a cold and hostile desert. The Mars astroid belt seems to offer all the raw materials Humanity could want without the gravity well.
This month’s Discover lists the following proposed Mars missions:
Mars Express - ESA
Launch 6/03, ARR 12/03
Mars Exploration Rovers - NASA
Launch 5-7/03, ARR 1/04
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - NASA
Launch 05, ARR 06
Scout 1 - NASA
Launch 07, ARR 09
NetLander - France/NASA
Launch 07, ARR 08
Smart Lander/Long-Range Rover - NASA
Launch 09, ARR unk
Scout2 - NASA
Launch 11, ARR unk
Sample Return 1 - NASA/Italy/France
Launch 14, ARR unk
Sample Return 2 - NASA/Italy/France
Launch 16, ARR unk
Same issue has a brief piece on the need to replace the shuttle.
I am with those who suggested improving launch reliability, and colonizing the Moon first, with the goal of a lunar launch station for further travel. Would have provided far more bang for the buck than the ISS boondoggle.
Could we not transport all kinds of goodies up to the moon in unmanned launches, and have them waiting for the first guys who show up?
Yep. Zubrin even has similar plans for efforts to colonize Mars. I say we even build the ships which take the settlers to the Moon or Mars so that they can be easily dismantled when they get there for use as building materials in the colony. (Leaving one or two for return trips to Earth, of course.)
Sam’s right, the Jovian moons will get looked at first. However I see that as the first phase of a potential Mars program. Let the unmanned Jovian probe be the test bed for the nuclear thermal rocket. A NTR drastically reduces travel times and/or increase the amount of mass that can be transfer to Mars. We could do it with chemical rockets, but we’ll succeed with nuclear.
Secondly, the moon is a poor target. It lacks both water (aside from potential ice dust at the South Pole) and an atmosphere. Both are resources that could be used as leverage for a manned mission. Would you rather drag 10 tons of oxygen to Mars or have it pulled out of its atmosphere for you? The same can be said for water.
The moon is fine if you want to practice once or twice. The hardware needed to reach Mars and the Moon could have a common basis. Use the moon for preflight verification much like the Gemini project prepared the way for Apollo. If we can set us a small station at the South Pole and install observatories, even better.
Terraforming will happen once we are there, whether we like it or not. Our presence alone will alter the dynamics of the planet. The new martians will want a more hospitable environment if for no other reason than to expand. Whether or not Mars is at some tipping point, where a small change in temperature triggers a runaway heating through release of CO2 in the regolith and poles, is irrelevant. The people there will work the long haul.
Atmospheres do not have to last millions of years. They need only last hundreds or thousands. If you can build a new branch of humanity on the sterile plains of Mars, you can keep an atmosphere topped up through ice-teroids.
Actually the Paranal Observatory can theoretically see very small features on the Moons surface.
On this page Moon Shot there are some fairly high resolution (.07 arcsec) shots of the Moon.
While this would not be all that great when looking for structures, it must be taken into consideration that this was using just one telescope in the 4 telescope array. With all 4 telescopes working as an array it could be possible to view the remnants of the Apollo missions easily*. Why ESO does not do that is a question that Moon landing skeptics ought to ask.
- No cite…just from memory of a Paranal documentary
We aren’t talking about fully colonizing the moon, just establishing a single colony large enough to be self-sustaining in order to take over the role of NASA. The lack of air on the moon and it’s low gravity make it the ideal environment for astronomy and launching spacecraft.
The problem is you need people there, and people need food, water and air. The moon has none of those in any form that can be easily accessed. The expense to continually ship consumables to the colony would sap any income the colony could generate. And it would have to, to be self sufficient.
Plants need light but its dark 14 days at a time. You could use high powered lights but then you need a bigger power plant. You could get oxygen out of regolith but again its very energy intensive. All these thing would have to be shipped up.
The moon is ideal to practice with but Mars is the brass ring.
Mars doesn’t have food or air in any form that can be easily accessed, either. (It has a little bit of water, true, but not much.)
And you’d need a LOT of plants to provide for the oxygen and food needs of even a tiny colony. Most of your oxygen would have to be extracted from the iron oxide in the Martian soil, which is about as energy-intensive as extracting oxygen from Lunar regolith.
If we can’t colonize the moon, chances are we can’t colonize Mars either.
If we can’t survive on a frozen waste of a planet, we will never survive on a blasted rock. The following describes the process (Note that the mission includes 2 launches. The first to land a power source and seed stock of hydrogen, the second to send the crew) http://popularmechanics.com/science/space/1998/11/life_to_mars/print.phtml
Anything living on Mars is most likely no larger than a bacterium, which might get wiped out by germs from Earth.
but we must remember the Columbian Exchange: smallpox for syphilis.
I’m far less worried about what our germs could do to Mars than I am about what Mars germs could do if they got back here.
In terms of Long term colonization, the moon is a poor prospect. It’s an island in terms of every resource except rock. Everything needed for human support must be imported, and it has a very long term diurnal period. Being on the moon would feel very alien.
Mars has a 24.5 hour day, with it’s accompanying variations of sunlight (at one-fourth the brightness and a lot less heat. Anyone in favor of recruiting Inuit to be the Mars colonists?). There’s lots of water to tap, so it would be much easier to simulate an Earth existence there.
The moon, however, would make an excellent testing ground for all colonization technologies (the robot colony, etc.)
The moon would probably make a great base for launching rockets further out, especially if there is in fact water at the poles. Also, we should have scientific observatories and station there just like Antartica does…for the same reason. But for true colonization, I think that Mars is a better bet, at least initially. There is water there. Atmosphere (albiet pretty thin, but still there and usable to extract what we need from). Mineral resourses are there in more abundance than the moon. Higher gravity. Naked green women with three breasts and 4 arms. What more do we need??
I think that the best place to look for life outside of the earth would be Europa…but Mars MIGHT have some as well. It would be worth it to go, just to find that…
Isn’t NASA working on a way to use electro-magnetics to form a protective ‘bottle’ that would partially shield astronauts from solar flare radiation? I thought that I read that solving this problem is within our reach. Also…anyone know if its feasible to spin a potential space craft going to Mars for g (or at least to the Martian equivalent)? This would certainly make the trip a lot easier, but how practical is it??
-XT
Producing oxygen/food/fuel is going to be a bitch no matter where we go. It MAY or MAY NOT be any easier on Mars, considering that most of the frozen material at the polar caps is actually Frozen Carbon Dioxide. The moon however, is infinitely easier to resupply then Mars, and once the system is set in place, a biosphere of sorts can be established, needing no resupplying of Oxygen and such things.
Amazing how we forget so easily, that nature has figured out a way to deal with those same issues…
I personally am mixed on this issue… Mars would be a much grander statement… but the Moon seems more feasible, just by the distances involved. However, I think we can all agree here that Nuclear reactors are desperately needed to propel spaceships in the future. I read somewhere recently (Discover? Sci American?) that they had developed miniature nuclear reactors, that were small enough to fit onto current spaceships… Anyone else hear about this?
If we want to colonize Mars, the Moon would definitely be the right stepping stone, but we should start finding cheap and economical ways of pushing small comets and other “dirty snowballs” towards Mars and build up a supply of water and other desireable elements there. This will take centuries to do, but it will become much more feasible to sustain a colony there when we have a done this primary type of terraforming.
Also, Mars’ orbit is pretty elliptical, and the seasons tend to be more pronounced, adding to the problems of growing food there. I don’t know if tinkering with the orbit somehow would be wise, but the present orbit will create great swings in seasons.