So the big commission has released its report. At the presumed US$100 billion a year, we cannot go to Mars, we cannot even return to the moon. Damn.
Making the space program operate under a tight limit is a Good Thing. That is how we encourage new thinking. Further in this day and age I do not advocate spending the estimated US$130 billion per year need to even get back to the moon.
If you want to go to the moon, study Chinese.
Damn.
These things work in bursts.
The technology just isn’t there yet - we reached the moon despite the technology we had at the time, not because of it. 1, 5, 20 years from now someone will make a seemingly minor scientific breakthrough; 1, 5, 20 years after that, somebody will extrapolate this discovery into a method of bringing payload to orbit at 5% of current costs. We’ll reach Mars a few years later.
At least, I hope.
Link to the SUMMARY REPORT of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (pdf)
It found that
As far as I can tell the FY2010 Guidance for 2014 (for Human Spaceflight) was 6.2 Billion dollars up from 4.0 billion in 2010. The overall NASA budget for 2010 and 2014 seem to be set at 18.7 and 18.9. The ramp from 4 Billion to 6.2 comes from the winding down of Shuttle operations (~3 billion per year).
Too bad too. It’d be nice to implement the flexible approach the committee seems to recommend.
We are on Mars now - without the need for pesky oxygen, water, food, or shelter. Extending two 90 day missions to five years (and counting!) was simple, and did not require any re-supply missions.
IMO, until there are big breakthroughs in propulsion and life support, robotic expolrers are the way to go.
I don’t see much point in visiting Mars. A proper manned space exploration program will need to establish a working orbital base that can then shuttle to a working lunar base where anything ‘serious’ would be constructed. It’s getting off this planet that is the major problem and until we manage to fly out it is not really viable. You want the atmosphere to be a help instead of a hindrance and it can only be that if you start with an aircraft, not a rocket.
Sending test pilots to the moon was the dumbest stunt ever. I wish they had sent a hundred probes. And then said “You know, this whole thing has been a waste of time”
Isn’t there some sort of newfangled high-thrust engine on the drawing boards which promises a one month Mars trip (one way)? Air & Space Magazine has an article on it this month (left it at work-rrr). Life support issues may be the ultimate constraint, however-Star Trek-style deflector screens likely will remain a fantasy for a good many centuries, and the only other solution I’ve seen is to shield the crew compartment with a shell of water.
Why would you start with an orbital base and then go to a lunar base if you’re trying to get to Mars? The moon is not (usually) on the way there, and it’s just more gravity you need to get out of.
It was one of those “it seemed like a good idea at the time” things. To boil it down to it’s essence: in the early 1960s it was presumed that manned spaceflight would have an immediate and vital role in the strategic balance between the US and the Soviet Union. Turns out that wasn’t the case.
It all seemed so straightforward to the scifi writers of the 40s and 50s.
First we’d go to the Moon, 10/20 years later Mars, then the Outer Planets. Then some bright spark would invent an FTL drive in the 1990s and we’d be off colonising the stars. (Oh and we should have a world government by now too).
Damn you, Reality! Space travel is so bloody expensive.
Bahhh
You have to take a butt load of fuel, air, water, food, and equipment with you anyway. You use THAT for shielding since you have to take it with you.
My impression on the radiation issue is this :
On one extreme, virtually no shielding for a year or 3 is bad news.
Really good (and massive) shielding results in a tiny increase in cancer 20 to 40 years down the road.
Its the inbetween thats rather foggy science wise. Is a 10 to 20 percent chance of a fatal cancer in five/ten/xyz years an acceptable risk for the chance to go to mars?
Given that just going to mars and not making it back alive is certainly no better than 1 to a 100 odds, and more likely 1 in 10 at best, the cancer issue seems overblown to me, especially given it would be volunteers literally dieing to go there.
You could probably find enough astronauts today perfectly willing to go on a planned one way trip.
Yeah, that it is. But we’re going to have to send people to colonize Mars and various moons eventually. Best we start slow, we have (probably) a few thousand years before it becomes a necessity. Especially at these prices! :eek:
The US blew 80 Billion on the automakers. A 15% increase in funding of a small federal department which will primarily go to domestic engineers, universities and industry hardly seems like a wallet busting move.
‘Eventually’ is the real point. I reckon we need to have an established presence in near space and on the moon before we can seriously aim for anywhere else and ‘anywhere else’ will also be a matter of colonisation. It might even be better to build in orbit or on asteroids than to settle surface and to operate remote control mining from there.
In the New York Times last week, someone mentioned how simple getting to Mars is if you simply do not bring the astronauts back. There is something to the idea.
Well, from here, there is the Nuclear Thermal Rocket. It’s an expansion of the old NERVA program which was briefly considered for use on the Saturn V upper stages and would get you to Mars in about 2 months. And then there is VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) - which would get you to Mars in 1 month. Sounds pretty nice. Apparently a prototype has been successfully fired, and NASA is considering testing it on the International Space Station.
But for the astronaut who has everything - you really need a nuclear fusion rocket. Sure - we don’t know how to make one yet - but it would reduce the transit time to Mars down to about two weeks. Experts caution, however, that this would require one or two breakthroughs prior to construction.
Why will it become a necessity? Several thousand years from now, we’ll still have oxygen gas, liquid water, all sorts of biomass, and a magnetosphere that shields us from a lot of the nastier stuff the sun puts out. No matter how polluted (or nuked) this place gets, that’ll still make it infinitely more hospitable than Mars on its best day.
Any technology that could make Mars habitable for large-scale human communities could far more easily, and cheaply, make an environmentally damaged Earth (more) habitable. So why bother with Mars?
Sure, in a few billion years, the sun will turn into a red giant, then go nova, and Fry Earth Good. But at that point, it’s very unlikely that anything recognizably human will be living here anyway - will evolution really stand still for billions of years? And if there aren’t any humans here at that point, I don’t see why we should care.
But the whole point of the exercise is to build a spacecraft capable of bringing people to Mars and back. It’s an engineering challenge, just like the Apollo Program. We have to improve our spacecraft-building capabilities.
Ask for volunteers. 1/5 chance of fatal cancer in exchange for being the first person to stand on Mars. Hmmm …
I’m sure it would be tough to find anyone who’d want to do that…it’d be like trying to find people who enjoy risking their lives climbing on rocks or jumping out of airplanes. Hahaha! Good luck!
Are the 10/20% chance of cancer statements absolute or incremental numbers? Basically if there is a 1 in 100 chance of getting a terminal cancer and after flying to and from Mars you’ve upped that by 20% are you now 20 in 100 or 1.2 in 100?