New Discovery On Mars

[Kai Winn]

I don't think so. We lack the political will and interest to do it. I suspect that if we got off our asses and actually did the work, we could modify our existing technology and take humans to Mars. We created a lot of tech in a relatively short time once we got going in the moon race, we can do it again now.

Well, no. Mars is 1,000 times further away than the Moon, say 1,000 times the costs? Apollo was I believe $50 billion, so Mars would be to have for 50 trillion in 1960's $, several times the GDP of the whole world? No single nation can afford this. Probably rather more, to assemble the ISS took over a decade and dozends, if not hundreds of rocket launches from Earth, and a Mars craft would probably be larger than the space station. Can't be launched from the Earth's surface. What would be the benefits? To collect a couple of Mars rocks? You can buy them on ebay, lots of them are lying around on Earth.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Um, the price is anything but a linear function over the distance. The challenges are launching the return mission from the surface of Mars and providing food and life support without resupply for the whole trip. There are a lot of other issues regarding safety, radiation shielding, maintaining the systems for that long, but I think that our space technology has advanced enough that they we won't be that troubled by them. Oh, and if China launches they might be completely disregarded.

Launching the return mission is independent from the distance, it's more difficult only because Mars is more massive. Launch the parts for a return vehicle on a few one-way trips with a Falcon Heavy. Not easy, but it doesn't make the price 1000 higher.

Providing enough food on the mission is not that difficult, especially if you make a few tweaks, say before the launch park food in orbit for the return trip.

Life support is more difficult, but we've done it already. Sure, downscaling it for a small crew and a light enough capsule might be a completely new challenge, but it's not the hardest thing in the universe, and definitely not 1000 times more expensive.

 

[sojourner]

I don't think so. We lack the political will and interest to do it. I suspect that if we got off our asses and actually did the work, we could modify our existing technology and take humans to Mars. We created a lot of tech in a relatively short time once we got going in the moon race, we can do it again now.

Well, no. Mars is 1,000 times further away than the Moon, say 1,000 times the costs? Apollo was I believe $50 billion, so Mars would be to have for 50 trillion in 1960's $, several times the GDP of the whole world? No single nation can afford this. Probably rather more, to assemble the ISS took over a decade and dozends, if not hundreds of rocket launches from Earth, and a Mars craft would probably be larger than the space station. Can't be launched from the Earth's surface. What would be the benefits? To collect a couple of Mars rocks? You can buy them on ebay, lots of them are lying around on Earth.

So by your math, a trip across country is 1000 times more expensive than a trip across town?

Bad math is bad.

Also, Apollo only cost between 20 and 25 billion in 1969 dollars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

The ISS has taken about 40 launches to construct, not "hundreds".

 

[Deckerd]

It's less ruinously expensive to send exploratory technology to Mars that doesn't need to breathe air, eat fresh food and be protected from the atmosphere, not to mention the ruinously expensive matter of getting them out of that gravity well safely and returned to Earth. No wonder nobody's interested in doing it.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Unfortunately, that's ruinously unsatisfying. We should at least get some damn sample returns. Those robots are still limited in the laboratory equipment they can bring, and they can't replace humans either. Thankfully, the new one is better equipped, but it's nothing like having the samples here on Earth.

Send a rover to collect samples along a path until it reaches the point from which the return mission will be launched, load the return spacecraft with the samples and launch them.

It's also preferable if the missions leave Earth orbit.

 

[sojourner]

It's less ruinously expensive to send exploratory technology to Mars that doesn't need to breathe air, eat fresh food and be protected from the atmosphere, not to mention the ruinously expensive matter of getting them out of that gravity well safely and returned to Earth. No wonder nobody's interested in doing it.

The best part is that it's not "ruinously expensive". It just isn't a high enough priority right now based on how much it would cost..

 

[The Dominion]

Probably one of the biggest innovations that could give space exploration a boost is artificial gravity. If only we could get that, we could make far better space stations and better ships for long range voyages.

 

[sojourner]

Nah, propulsion, particularly to get off the planet economically, is the biggest innovation needed.

Anything can be spun to generate simulated gravity for the crew.

 

[The Dominion]

Well they need to get crackin' on that anyway. No one's going to be spending too much time in space without any Gs.

 

[sojourner]

Like I said, all you have to do is spin the ship. The details are just engineering.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Well... It also has to be big enough. Engineering a space station with artificial gravity is one thing, but a ship... It either has to be big, or has to have a counter-weight attached via a tether. Of course, if you fill the counter-weight with fuel/electricity, fluid supplies and some equipment and use the tether as an umbilical cord it might just work. But you still won't be able to reach the other half of the ship without a somewhat long EVA, so if there are people in both parts of the ship they will be somewhat isolated.

I do hope that the first Martian mission will be on a rotating ship. Not only it will be extremely cool and probably more comfortable to the crew, but we'll decrease the severity of bone loss, making it both easier to judge the bone loss in Martian gravity and removing one more obstacle for the mission to be extended in time.

 

[Deckerd]

In the Beeb's Space Odyssey Voyage to the Planets, they had a mighty big engine stuck on the end of a series of service modules and a cockpit. Spinning out from somewhere in the centre were two long arms which were the habitat modules. Each module was the other one's counterbalance.

 

[sojourner]

You only need a very large ship to simulate full gravity. In the near future any ship we build most likely will have less than 1g. Even if 1g were required studies have shown that people may be able to adjust to far higher Coriolis effects than previously thought, allowing the ship to be much smaller.

 

[scotthm]

And that's no real reason to go at all.

There currently is no reason to send men to Mars. There are still lots of things to be discovered remotely before we go to all that trouble and expense.

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[YellowSubmarine]

Yes, we shouldn't rush it. The natives are ready to fight our invasion force, and until we have discovered everything about their fleet locations and armaments we should be careful and stay back.

 

[sojourner]

And that's no real reason to go at all.

There currently is no reason to send men to Mars. There are still lots of things to be discovered remotely before we go to all that trouble and expense.

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Unless we want to find out more things at a faster rate. ^ Really, that's not a reason *not* to go.

 

[SeerSGB]

We're not ready.

We're never ready, so just do it anyway.

The only reason not to go is out of fear of the unknown.

And that's no real reason to go at all.

That's not what I mean.

We lack the technical ability to do it.

Oh come on don't you want NASA to half-@$$ a Mars mission just so we can say we did it? After all, it isn't like human lives would be at stake or anything...oh wait.

And how would you sell the budget needed in this economic climate? "We're allocating 3 trillion to NASA to put a man on the moon...hey put down those torches!"

 

[scotthm]

And that's no real reason to go at all.

There currently is no reason to send men to Mars. There are still lots of things to be discovered remotely before we go to all that trouble and expense.

Unless we want to find out more things at a faster rate. ^ Really, that's not a reason *not* to go.

The reason not to send men to Mars at this time is that it fails my cost/benefit analysis.

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[sojourner]

^Agreed.

 

[PurpleBuddha]

There currently is no reason to send men to Mars. There are still lots of things to be discovered remotely before we go to all that trouble and expense.

Unless we want to find out more things at a faster rate. ^ Really, that's not a reason *not* to go.

The reason not to send men to Mars at this time is that it fails my cost/benefit analysis.

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Those are always the barriers with space. Were cost not the issue, I would wager that within 10 years we could send people to Mars. Given that cost is the issue, I won't even try to predict when or if we will go.

As to benefits there certainly could be many, but there is a problem with the type of benefits space travel and exploration bring. They are not always apparent at the beginning, and hard to quantify before hand. As it turns out the benefits of going to the moon were tremendous in the technologies that eventually filtered down to every day life as I am sure most people on this board are aware. However, such benefits are never guaranteed. Thus, if you are trying to make a cost/benefits proposal to accountants, even high costs aside, you really cannot give them something to put on the spreadsheet to balance it out as a measurable and predictable benefit.

Stephen Hawking comes as close as we can by making the case that we will have leave this planet eventually or perish as a species. But you see the problem of course. That is far too abstract and too far away to be taken completely serious by the public at large or the people with the purse strings.

Our best hope is for a long era of prosperity to settle in where it is less important that the high costs are balanced with predictable benefits. Economic hardship often leads to such eras so we may enter one in the next decade or two. But as things currently stand we will have to wait.