Europe Joins the Race to Put a Man on Mars

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - A European could step out onto the surface of Mars within three decades, under European Space Agency (ESA) plans spelled out on Tuesday.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...e=1&u=/nm/20040203/sc_nm/space_mars_europe_dc

 

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Hopefully, competition will get the Space Race going again.

 

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What huge waste of money. We could achieve so much more with the cash than sending a manned mission. Let probes go by all means, but humans going is just empty public relations, and does little to further science.

 

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not waste of money,

those recent wars were a waste of money, 1/100th of the cost could have funded an incredible assasination project

i think this race will spark the space industrie up the bum and get em going good

ps. who's your money on?
im with Europe on this one!

 

Do not presume that the only goal of space exploration is scientific discovery. A manned programme is admittedly more costly. but ultimately more beneficial toward the goal of improving our capabilities of putting men in space.

 

I hope it will be more of a joint knowhow and splitcost effort than a race this time, better for politics, better for economics, better for science and better for humanity....

 

Scientific discovery and advancement is THE ONLY reason to engage in such activity, as that actuallys stands a chance of improving the lives of the taxpayers that fund the mission.

Just doing it is not a good enough reason. Putting men is space needs a reason, We have no reason to send men to Mars, anything that men can do can be done much more cheaply with robots. We can put men in space on the ISS, for a lot less money and risk, and learn enough about humans in space.

Mars isn't just a red planet, it's a red herring.

 

Oh please, we've hardly scratched the surface of this planet. What's the deepest we've been down? 4 Kilometres in a mine, 15K drilling, and about 6k in submarines?

There are plenty of minerals to be mined right below our feet, so the economic incentives for exploring downwards are immediately tangible.

Going to Mars is a 'just 'cos' exercise, of no tangible benefit. Doing it for spinoffs is a waste of money, direct research is doing pretty well bringing us benefits.

 

Am listening to NASA Live TV right now to the conference on "To the moon and Mars." Apparently, thermal nuclear rockets are being considered seriously (having already been developed according to the current speaker). I think this whole idea is favorable to Bush because it has implicit military pork barrel abuse potentials. The DOD would have a large hand to play in the process. I do not believe that the furtherance of space exploration or facilitating human presence in space is the main thrust of this program. Instead, I surmise it is a thinly disguised ploy to launder more public dollars to the fat cats of the military industrial complex with little regard for efficiency, safety or long term sustainability or feasibility of the endeavor. It's development would facilitate more nuclear weapons production as a side line.

I believe there are some very worth while ways to get human presence into space that have been quite well developed and planned that are being basically ignored and shunned by the brute force mentality that is apparently all that our current social state can muster.

 

I see only thing more beneficial from manned mars missions opposed to large scale moon exploitation and that is you NEED to develope some fast vehicle to get to mars.

Question is, what will ultimately get human expansion into space into the highest gear, faster vehicle to remote destinations, or large colonies on nearby moon ?

 

Too bad that article didn't touch on the details of how they are currently planning to conduct the European bid. The comments about wanting to avoid contamination fo Mars are a nice heads up. "Four years?" I suppose they are talking about having a crew of astronauts cooped up for four years? I could imagine these folks would be very happy to get back if they did.

 

Large colonies at the Lagrange 4 and 5 points are what will get humanity into space in the fastest and biggest way. This will require a major base on the moon first from which most materials to build the factories at the Lagrange points that will build our nuclear rockets or satellites or colonies, etc. A manned mission to Mars, especially mainly as a pork barrel endeavor, would slow down our expanse into becoming a space based civilization.

 

This guy at NASA is saying conventional chemical fuels would require 240 days to travel one way to Mars. A thermal-nuclear rocket would shorten this to 140 days and an Ion propulsion system could further limit this time to 60 days. Looks like the European plans are considering chemical fuels.

They are getting into discussing acceptable risks now and I have to leave. Is there any way to record live RealPlayer Video streams?

 

Though I haven't been able to catch this whole conference, appears they have not mentioned supplemental or major use of solar sails at all. According to this site http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~diedrich/solarsails/types/3-axis.html the European manned flight to Mars plan that would involve four years might be using solar sails as the main propulsion system.

 

Four years is just down to orbital mechanics I'm afraid. We need to launch when Mars is in a favourable position, and return likewise when the earth presents itself. We can't just leave whenever we want and cross the entire solar system. Both planets have to be close, to minimise travel and fuel expenditure.

So this means waiting on the Martian Surface for 600+ days, for the earth and Mars to be on close enough proximity for a return.

Solar sails are too slow, and of course, would only work on the outward journey for the component of travel directly away from the sun, we still have to move around the sun, and that would take fuel, and is the largest part of the journey. Ion propulsion is very weak. Although very fuel efficient, we don't have powerful enough units yet to make them a viable.

Nuclear powered rockets could provide enough thrust, but here's the rub. So far, the amount of fissile material that can be launched on chemical rockets is very limited due to safety concerns, as rockets, even the most reliable ones, do fail. So a fully nuclear powered solution will have to attain pretty high reliability, before it would be certified for flight, and even more rigorous tests before certified for humans to ride. Or we could assemble a nuclear powered rocket piece by piece in orbit, but we still need to solve the safety issues surrounding launching fissile material on chemical rockets.

 

I wonder if we can get any fissile material from the moon?

 

Good question Mr Chips. That would provide a huge incentive to build a lunar base. Hell, a refueling station for chemical and nuclear vehicles, shipping nuclear fuel to vehicles still deep in earths gravity well...

Better than a gold mine!

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I concur that we have to work on LTO technology, working outwards from LEO, to the Moon and colonies, and then on to the asteroids. On that note, here's an article that goes more into the Mars vs space issue:

A Space Roadmap: Mine the Sky, Defend the Earth, Settle the Universe

We've lost what little ground we had when we abandoned the Moon, we've learned a bit on living in space, but only in LEO, and we seem to have fogotten the lesson of the moonshot: we have to have more than a goal of just getting there and planting flags, especially when we're talking the time and distances (and money!) involved. Instead of trying to build a bridge across the chasm, we're trying to jump across it. I'd love to go to Mars, but only when we're prepared for the challenges. We can't even get into LEO consistently. One step at a time. Besides, why go from one gravity well to another for permanent settlement?

(I say all this fully aware that Bush's announcement is pure politics, and nothing more. I wonder about the European one as well...as behind as we are, are they even more so?)