Get the Rover unstuck. 
You are mistaken. It is not politics stopping us from going, but lack of technology and the fact that a manned mars mission is simple not fiscally feasible. As far as politics go, I’m sure most of the politicians would love to recreate the feel goodie thing Kennedy did - but even they just are not stupid enough to do it except by paying it lip service or making projected timelines decades out with no short term budget.
The astronauts who would go would have a high chance of death from cosmic rays. This isn’t science fiction - you leave the earth’s magnetic field and you have nothing to protect you from the suns radiation. One solar flare during their year long flight and bye bye astronaut. With good luck, their lives will just be seriously shortened from the radiation. So we need to solve and properly test the solution for the cosmic ray problem before we send people. Shielding is the obvious answer but currently calculated estimates require many hundreds of metric tons for a reasonably-sized crew compartment. Not cost effective to say the least when we have to lift that shielding payload from earth and accelerate & decelerate it to Mars and back.
If the astronauts survive the cosmic rays they probably won’t have enough bone mass left to stand up on earth after spending several years in a zero to low gravity environment.
Simple survival will be foremost on the minds of the astronauts. Take several bags of weak flesh requiring constant nourishment and try to keep them alive in an extremely hostile environment from which is cannot be directly exposed for 3 or 4 years. No outside help of any kind is allowed. Good luck with that.
And you throw around a figure of this costing $100 billion like it is a fact. It is not. Other estimates range up to 1 Trillion dollars for a Mars Mission. It is all very speculative of course, because no one knows exactly how the mission would be done exactly. As I’ve mentioned, the technology to do it right isn’t even in place yet. Being that is the case I would expect the cost to rise well over 1 Trillion dollars.
You don’t send people out to do a robots job.
Seems like you’re comparing a human mission with an infinite budget, to the practical missions we’ve had. If we had the budget to send a whole, complete lab, it would still be tremendously cheaper to send it on a robotic mission than with humans. AND we’d be able to do it now, without having to wait 50 years for the technology and willpower to provide a fleet of gi-normous rockets to get humans there and back, with all the life support that entails.
The Apollo astronauts seem to believe that we would being going to Mars shortly after their program ended.
[QUOTE=CurtC]
I can’t accept that. If we had sent a human to Mars back in 2004 instead of Spirit and Opportunity, what could a human have done that the two rovers haven’t?
[/QUOTE]
::High fives::
If this is important to do, for a very small fraction of the cost we could sent a robot to get the Rover unstuck.
[QUOTE=CurtC]
Seems like you’re comparing a human mission with an infinite budget, to the practical missions we’ve had. If we had the budget to send a whole, complete lab, it would still be tremendously cheaper to send it on a robotic mission than with humans. AND we’d be able to do it now, without having to wait 50 years for the technology and willpower to provide a fleet of gi-normous rockets to get humans there and back, with all the life support that entails.
[/QUOTE]
No, not at all. I’ve freely acknowledged that unmanned missions are a fraction the cost. You don’t seem to be willing to acknowledge that they return a fraction of the data. You are one of the ones who keep bringing up a 1 for 1 comparison.
Bottom line is a manned mission would get more data. It would cost more as well. Given enough time and budget, I have no doubt that in a few decades unmanned missions would or will get all of the data we might have gotten from one manned mission. And it might even cost less, overall and all things considered, to do it the unmanned way. If we are willing to wait decades and decades for the answers.
-XT
Then what are you going on about? Seriously, we just don’t have the technology to do it right now. Unless someone has an answer for the cosmic rays, which is probably the most serious technical impediment, a manned mission isn’t even in the cards for the foreseeable future.
Lets go with what we can do and with what works.
[QUOTE=This_Just_In…]
You are mistaken. It is not politics stopping us from going, but lack of technology and the fact that a manned mars mission is simple not fiscally feasible. As far as politics go, I’m sure most of the politicians would love to recreate the feel goodie thing Kennedy did - but even they just are not stupid enough to do it except by paying it lip service or making projected timelines decades out with no short term budget.
[/QUOTE]
I’m sorry, but what data do you offer that a manned mission to Mars is technically and technologically impossible? And even at your overly (IMHO) inflated estimate of a trillion dollars, that it’s not fiscally feasible? Over a 10 year period, a trillion dollars breaks down to a hundred billion a year. That’s well within the ability of the US to pay for, if we were POLITICALLY WILLING to pay for it. Hell, even that is a fraction of our military or medicare/medicaid/social security spending.
It’s political will, not technology or money that has kept us from going.
Yeah, I think everyone in this thread is aware of radiation (but thanks for the helpful link), as well as the risks involved in going to Mars. No one, afaik, has said it would be risk free, so that’s kind of a strawman on your part. There were risks going to the Moon as well, and failure was always an option.
I’m sure NASA nor anyone in this thread ever thought of the possible effects of a prolonged zero gee environment…
Oh, wait…yeah, they did (and at a guess, most of the posters in this thread were aware of it as well…I was, curiously enough). There are ways to maintain bone and muscle mass in zero gee, which is why astronauts that go up on the ISS don’t fall apart as soon as they come back down. This isn’t exactly a subject that no one ever noticed in decades of manned space exploration.
Your link simply goes to Google (were you trying to link to something?), but I’ll assume you have some estimate of a trillion dollars there. Trouble is, I can find estimates of the costs of a Mars mission ranging from $20 billion to a few hundred billion to 1-2 trillion, and everywhere in-between. I seriously doubt it would cost a trillion dollars, however, not unless NASA bureaucrats take control and get to run it all their way, with all the fat and bells and whistles they want. :dubious:
Yeah, if you only care to send the second best, on a budget and you don’t really care how long it takes, robots are a perfect substitute.
-XT
You really can’t just gloss over the cosmic radition. Without the shielding it is potentially suicide. The astronauts may well arrive at Mars dead. It is hardly a strawman. Do some real research on this. It is a problem that needs to be solved prior to sending people out.
Here’s a study to get anyone interested started (pdf)
Sure I can…you just assume, smugly no doubt, that only you are aware of this important factoid, and the rest of us are ignorant. 
If you have a large solar flare then the astronauts are dead. By the same token, if the vehicle is hit by a micro-meteor shower, the astronauts are dead. If the rocket explodes on take off, the astronauts are dead.
All of these things have probabilities associated with them. If there isn’t a large solar flare, then the astronauts will be exposed to higher levels of radiation, which could lead to cancer down the line. The strawman is your (smug) assumption that no one else knows anything about this stuff but you in this thread, and that someone has said that such a mission would be risk free. Seriously…I was pretty plain there in what your strawman was. Are you not reading my posts, or are you deliberately trying to skew them?
-XT
smug: Having or showing an excessive pride in oneself or one’s achievements.
Yes - now that I’ve accomplished post 90 of this thread I’m ready to die happy. I’m so full of pride right now I could almost take a sip of the manned mars mission kool-aid.
Seriously - this site is about fighting ignorance. So, I am simply trying to draw some attention to what is probably the biggest technical hurdle to a manned mission to mars (cosmic radiation). You want to assert that we can start building the rocket today and launch it in 10 years. Where is your factual evidence?
I am pointing out that we really can’t - we still have at least this one major hurdle that needs to be resolved.
[QUOTE=This_Just_In…]
Yes - now that I’ve accomplished post 90 of this thread I’m ready to die happy. I’m so full of pride right now I could almost take a sip of the manned mars mission kool-aid.
[/QUOTE]
I’m happy for you then. 
And I’m simply trying to tell you that A) most of the folks participating in this thread are aware of this, and B) that NASA is certainly aware of it, and C) that no one in this thread has claimed that there aren’t risks, including cosmic background radiation and solar storm radiation, as well as myriad other risks involved in such a trip.
Those risks can be minimized in some cases (they would most likely use the water, both fresh and waste for the mission in the skin of the craft to protect somewhat against radiation, there are ‘storm shelters’ that can be engineered in various ways to help protect the crew, etc etc), but in the end there ARE risks. No one in this thread is saying otherwise.
Well, aside from the myriad links one could get for various ways to do this, there is the fact NASA has proposed several plans to do it…plans that weren’t dropped because they were technically or technologically unfeasible, but because they were politically (mostly due to cost) unfeasible. What factual evidence do you have to support your seeming assertion that it’s technically or technologically impossible? Not that it would cost too much, but that it’s flat out impossible…because afaik, that’s not a common argument used by the folks who don’t want to see manned missions to places like Mars.
Surly you know that Obama is actually directing NASA to look into going not to the Moon (as Bush was trying to get NASA to do) or Mars, but to land on an asteroid. Do you think that’s equally impossible from a technical/technological perspective, and if so, why do you suppose NASA is looking into the planning for such a mission? I’m honestly curious here…no snark intended.
But, you see, we really COULD…if we wanted to spend the money to do so. There is nothing fundamentally impossible. There are real risks, and even with careful planning shit could happen and crews could be killed. That’s a real possibility, and when you are looking at this stuff it’s something you have to take seriously. NASA does, since they have been working on mitigating those risks for decades now.
-XT
Yes. We should, and we probably will. Over a period of about 50 years.
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It should be a tiered and modular plan, that plays to the strengths and low cost of small missions like Curiosity: small to medium payloads and no need for life support.
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Over the course of decades — and accompanying any robotic probe mission — drop off cargo, supplies, habitation modules and resources (in piecemeal) for a long-term human presence in the future.
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This will offset the cost, while also setting up many on-earth jobs and institutions dedicated to such a long-term goal. It will continue to advance the tech in remote robotics, analyzation, computer autonomy, and research, meanwhile every mission brings with it a small piece of the final goal.
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Either nix the ISS or leverage it and the consortium to construct an LEO craft/port. Over decades, equipment, water, food, fuel, materials etc. could be accrued to prepare for an actual manned mission to Mars.
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On the ground, we’ll have plenty of time to plan and build the final multi-stage craft with most of the mass for life support for the voyage to, the extended stay, and trip back to earth already in orbit, or on Mars itself. Also, if planed smartly, the modular approach would be flexible enough to allow new or unforeseen technology to retrofit into any pre-existing stage.
NASA needs a laser focus on a long term strategy; something that will ensure its continued existence in state-of-the-art engineering, implementation and scientific prestige. It’ll pave a path that gets us there, allowing smaller missions to be bootstrapped to it, and thereby seeing faster progress in scientific exploration and testing new ideas along the way to actually bringing men and women to the planet to do the sort of things robots and computers just can’t.
So we build it in a year and sent it there in another year…and who is going to unstick it?
I will acknowledge that a robotic mission would return a fraction of the data. That fraction is more than 9/10.
A manned mission would get 10% more data while costing 1000x the price and taking 50 years longer.
The thing is, you are just making up arbitrary numbers to ‘prove’ your point there. My (wild ass) guess is a manned mission would get 90% more data, and cost about 10 times the costs of the various unmanned missions combined (since that’s what we are talking about here).
-XT
I think this is false. Being able to dig deeper than a few centimeters alone should be worth a huge amount of data. We don’t even know what’s under those first few centimeters, let alone a few meters deep.
Then they can make a robotic probe that digs deeper, at 0.1% the cost of having a human do it.
I am making up numbers, but these are my guesstimates and I haven’t seen any info yet that makes me modify them.
[ul]
[li]10% more data with a human - I still haven’t seen any good examples of what a human can do that a robot wouldn’t. Whatever kind of information we’re looking for is what we’re going to equip the mission to find, so the instrumentation we send is comparable for both the manned and the robotic missions. If you’re wanting to compare a manned mission with a complete laboratory stocked with all the tools, to a simple robotic probe like Spirit, Opportunity, or Curiosity, that’s not a valid comparison. If you want a complete lab, then send a robotic mission with a complete lab, and do it for a tiny fraction of the cost of a manned mission.[/li]
[li]1000x more expensive - I think this is a reasonable estimate. Just 100x would be on the extreme low end to such a degree that it’s delusional. If it’s a two-way trip, you have to not only get the humans there, but you have to get them there with a very large rocket that can get them home. Plus all the life support for the long trip. Plus the life support for however long they stay there. That’s not even including the laboratory instrumentation and tools. It would take literally a large fleet of giant rockets delivering all this to Mars.[/li]
[li]50 years - If we really put our minds, and fiscal resources to it, I think we could get this done in about 50 years. As a practical matter, I don’t think we could ever muster the political willpower to complete it, so even the 50 year number is making some unreasonable assumptions.[/li][/ul]