Obama Sets Mars Goal For America

[All Seeing Eye]

>>>> CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY >>>>

Barack Obama says it should be possible to send astronauts to orbit the planet Mars by the mid-2030s and return them safely to Earth.

The US president made the claim in a major speech to staff and guests at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
He was laying out the details of his new policy for the US space agency.
Mr Obama said he was giving Nasa challenging goals and the funding needed to achieve them, including an extra $6bn over the next five years.

"By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space," he told his audience. "So we'll start - we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history."
And then he added: "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."

Mr Obama hopes his new timetable for action can win wide approval.

[snip]

Seems a little silly to me to send someone on a 6 month+ journey there then a 6 Month+ journey back just to put the people in orbit. Satellites are good for orbit, we wanna actually put people ON the planet otherwise it's a wasted journey.

 

[Trekker4747]

Apollo 11 was the first mission to the moon with a landing and people on the moon. The previous 11 trips were all trips desgined as "proof of concept" and to not put all of our eggs in one basket.

So an orbit trip around Mars makes sense in the respect of "baby steps" to build up to a landing mission.

 

[FordSVT]

>>>> CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY >>>>

Barack Obama says it should be possible to send astronauts to orbit the planet Mars by the mid-2030s and return them safely to Earth.

The US president made the claim in a major speech to staff and guests at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
He was laying out the details of his new policy for the US space agency.
Mr Obama said he was giving Nasa challenging goals and the funding needed to achieve them, including an extra $6bn over the next five years.

"By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space," he told his audience. "So we'll start - we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history."
And then he added: "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."

Mr Obama hopes his new timetable for action can win wide approval.

[snip]

Seems a little silly to me to send someone on a 6 month+ journey there then a 6 Month+ journey back just to put the people in orbit. Satellites are good for orbit, we wanna actually put people ON the planet otherwise it's a wasted journey.

I wouldn't bet on a Mars journey taking 6 months by the 2020s or 30s, there are already some really interesting propulsion systems in the works that might cut that time in half or even better.

 

[publiusr]

Nice to hear him talk about HLLV development--but he shouldn't have cancelled Ares V. He also promised to support Constellation, and his hand-picked panel he used to decapitate Constellation were composed of a USAF man that initially detested HLLV concepts as I learned from a contact. Greason was behind the laughable ROTON contraptions. None of these folks had griffins chops BTW.

This is just a make work program with nothing but ULA wish lists being fulfilled. Things were actually built under Griffin. HLLV will only exist as a study under this President.

I don't believe his speech one bit.

 

[John Picard]

>>>> CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY >>>>

Barack Obama says it should be possible to send astronauts to orbit the planet Mars by the mid-2030s and return them safely to Earth.

The US president made the claim in a major speech to staff and guests at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
He was laying out the details of his new policy for the US space agency.
Mr Obama said he was giving Nasa challenging goals and the funding needed to achieve them, including an extra $6bn over the next five years.

"By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space," he told his audience. "So we'll start - we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history."
And then he added: "By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."

Mr Obama hopes his new timetable for action can win wide approval.

[snip]

Seems a little silly to me to send someone on a 6 month+ journey there then a 6 Month+ journey back just to put the people in orbit. Satellites are good for orbit, we wanna actually put people ON the planet otherwise it's a wasted journey.

I wouldn't bet on a Mars journey taking 6 months by the 2020s or 30s, there are already some really interesting propulsion systems in the works that might cut that time in half or even better.

That's a big *maybe*. Seems a waste of money and resources to me, but the fanboys claims we just *have to* go to Mars. Probes are more cost effective and losing one, while painful, isn't nearly as bad as what losing a Mars bound ship will cost in terms of money, material, and lives.

 

[Lindley]

Seems a little silly to me to send someone on a 6 month+ journey there then a 6 Month+ journey back just to put the people in orbit. Satellites are good for orbit, we wanna actually put people ON the planet otherwise it's a wasted journey.

When people learn to fly, they start in a Cessna 172 or similar plane. They don't start in a Boeing 747. There are more than enough challenges just getting them there and back safely, without adding the whole problem of how to get back out of Mars' gravity well into the mix.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Seems a little silly to me to send someone on a 6 month+ journey there then a 6 Month+ journey back just to put the people in orbit. Satellites are good for orbit, we wanna actually put people ON the planet otherwise it's a wasted journey.

When people learn to fly, they start in a Cessna 172 or similar plane. They don't start in a Boeing 747. There are more than enough challenges just getting them there and back safely, without adding the whole problem of how to get back out of Mars' gravity well into the mix.

Yeh but it's a long journey and adding extra missions seems to just add to the cost of the endeavour to put a person on Mars.
To keep costs down and not mess around they could plan to put someone on Mars straight away.

It's not like they've never sent anything to Mars orbit before, that should be a piece of cake. They might aswell immediately concentrate on getting to the surface then back up.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Seems a little silly to me to send someone on a 6 month+ journey there then a 6 Month+ journey back just to put the people in orbit. Satellites are good for orbit, we wanna actually put people ON the planet otherwise it's a wasted journey.

Borman, Lovell and Anders, among others, will no doubt tell you that it is better to know how to walk before you can start to run.

 

[diankra]

Nice to hear him talk about HLLV development--but he shouldn't have cancelled Ares V. He also promised to support Constellation, and his hand-picked panel he used to decapitate Constellation were composed of a USAF man that initially detested HLLV concepts as I learned from a contact. Greason was behind the laughable ROTON contraptions. None of these folks had griffins chops BTW.

This is just a make work program with nothing but ULA wish lists being fulfilled. Things were actually built under Griffin. HLLV will only exist as a study under this President.

I don't believe his speech one bit.

Ares was an appalling idea: a way of doing it on the cheap by extending the life of the most awful parts of the shuttle system.
If it had gone ahead, then the next 30-odd years of US spaceflight would have been based around a system that was a budget-cutting compromise back in 1971.

I suspect that Obama's heavy lift vehicle won't happen, as Congress has spent the last 45 years sabotaging manned spaceflight by trimming a bit of the budget. But he's right to go for something that will show results in the long term if it happens, rather than a half-assed reuse of the shuttle SRBs.

 

[Trekker4747]

Seems a little silly to me to send someone on a 6 month+ journey there then a 6 Month+ journey back just to put the people in orbit. Satellites are good for orbit, we wanna actually put people ON the planet otherwise it's a wasted journey.

When people learn to fly, they start in a Cessna 172 or similar plane. They don't start in a Boeing 747. There are more than enough challenges just getting them there and back safely, without adding the whole problem of how to get back out of Mars' gravity well into the mix.

Yeh but it's a long journey and adding extra missions seems to just add to the cost of the endeavour to put a person on Mars.
To keep costs down and not mess around they could plan to put someone on Mars straight away.

It's not like they've never sent anything to Mars orbit before, that should be a piece of cake. They might aswell immediately concentrate on getting to the surface then back up.

Have you any idea how many probes and other things we've lost in Mars orbit? "Piece of cake" my aching ass.

 

[Lindley]

Yeh but it's a long journey and adding extra missions seems to just add to the cost of the endeavour to put a person on Mars.
To keep costs down and not mess around they could plan to put someone on Mars straight away.

It's not like they've never sent anything to Mars orbit before, that should be a piece of cake. They might aswell immediately concentrate on getting to the surface then back up.

Even if it were easy to get there, which it isn't, putting someone on Mars just for the sake of doing so would be pointless. It would be a repeat of the Moon. Get someone there, then get stuck in LEO for another 50 years.

No, the way forward is to build up our capability slowly but steadily. Keep pushing forward to the next milestone, but don't overreach, and don't go for something so showy that it leaves no obvious follow-up.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

It's not like they've never sent anything to Mars orbit before, that should be a piece of cake. They might aswell immediately concentrate on getting to the surface then back up.

Have you any idea how many probes and other things we've lost in Mars orbit? "Piece of cake" my aching ass.

Obviously they didn't do things by the book. When it comes to this sort of thing, you know you can't be lazy.

 

[Lindley]

ARRRRRGGHHHH NOW ITS IN MY HEAD

 

[John Picard]

Yeh but it's a long journey and adding extra missions seems to just add to the cost of the endeavour to put a person on Mars.
To keep costs down and not mess around they could plan to put someone on Mars straight away.

It's not like they've never sent anything to Mars orbit before, that should be a piece of cake. They might aswell immediately concentrate on getting to the surface then back up.

Even if it were easy to get there, which it isn't, putting someone on Mars just for the sake of doing so would be pointless. It would be a repeat of the Moon. Get someone there, then get stuck in LEO for another 50 years.

No, the way forward is to build up our capability slowly but steadily. Keep pushing forward to the next milestone, but don't overreach, and don't go for something so showy that it leaves no obvious follow-up.

Exactly. I've been advocating that every time the "WE HAS TO LAND ON MARS!!!!" threads hit this board, but the fanboys get irked. Apparently, the real world is supposed to match with the timeline of humanity's development Gee, if that were to be true, where is our nuclear power that was promised to be "too cheap to meter". Pardon me for living in reality.

 

[Deks]

Obviously they didn't do things by the book. When it comes to this sort of thing, you know you can't be lazy.

True ...
But one also has to wonder just how much did the use of outdated technology contribute to the failures in question.

 

[john titor]

Yeh but it's a long journey and adding extra missions seems to just add to the cost of the endeavour to put a person on Mars.
To keep costs down and not mess around they could plan to put someone on Mars straight away.

It's not like they've never sent anything to Mars orbit before, that should be a piece of cake. They might aswell immediately concentrate on getting to the surface then back up.

Even if it were easy to get there, which it isn't, putting someone on Mars just for the sake of doing so would be pointless. It would be a repeat of the Moon. Get someone there, then get stuck in LEO for another 50 years.

No, the way forward is to build up our capability slowly but steadily. Keep pushing forward to the next milestone, but don't overreach, and don't go for something so showy that it leaves no obvious follow-up.

Its all about overreaching and doing things quickly, thats how Kennedy got men on the moon. If you don't move fast then stagnation and boredom sets and nothing gets achieved. Besides America has to regain ground before its overtaken in space.

 

[Jax]

Its a romantic idea but America should sort out its money problems before even thinking about this journey. Even when the time comes it should be a joint worldwide effort involving as many nations as possible.

 

[SamuraiBlue]

I don't think we have a delivery system capable of taking a man to and back from mars.
Chemical rockets are just not fast enough and we still do not have enough experience in large scale Ion engines.
We also need to develop and train people the right skills to properly construct them in space.
2030?
Maybe if we start right now but we will need to construct a space dock first.

 

[sojourner]

^This isn't Star Trek. We don't need a "spacedock" in order to assemble ships in orbit.

 

[SamuraiBlue]

Actually we probably do since a voyage to mars and back would probably take two to three month and for that we will not be able to launch everything including the kitchen sink in one haul from earth so we will need to assemble it piece by piece in space.
To assemble something in space it's better to have it tethered and to keep the tools in one place.
The ISS may qualify but I heard it will not be in commission that long.