New Mars Forums

Yes and no.  Zubrin was refering to version three of the NASA Reference Mission, which you can read all about here.

It's been NASA's formal plan for manned exploration of mars for the last five years, but no one at NASA is actually working to make it happen.  This is because NASA has yet to receive any funds in the budget for it, which is not likely to happen until a) the ISS is complete, b) the space shuttle is upgraded, and c) hell freezes over*.

Not much can be done about (a) and (b), but the Mars Society is working on (c ).  But don't get too worried - if we make enough noise, and get the general population (a.k.a. voters) interested enough to make it a central issue, politicians will give in.  They are, after all, working for us.

* I'm not kidding.  Congress will kill anything related to humans-to-mars.  They're still scared of the $450 billion price tag associated with the original 90-day report.

Oh, and have a happy thanksgiving too! (and an early, but sill merry Christmass/Kwanzaa/Hanukkah/Solstice/Newtonmass to the rest of the world! )

Nida: That's what a black hole is.  A black hole is just a clump of matter so dense that nothing known to man can escape.  There's no implication of anything on the other side.

Well, when it comes to business and politics "nanotechnology" and "molecular nanotechnology" are two unrelated concepts.  "Nanotchnology," taken alone, is often used to mean the manufacturing objects on the nano-scale, and is quite different from "molecular nanotechnology," which implies atomic precision in the construction of these objects.

It is the former that receives most current funding, as it offers the quickest return on investment.  Once a technique is developed for mass productions of nano-scale, but atomically unprecise objects (using improved conventional techniques), one can expect products on the market within the year (smaller, faster, less power-hungry computer chips, and various medical tools and instruments are the most looked at possibilities).

Molecular nanotechnology, on the other hand, will require many years from first development (which is possible in a 3-year timeline) to it's predicted use in a "universal" assembler.  The ability to construct atomically precise structures may be just around the corner, but the ability to build macro-scale objects one atom at a time requires infrastructure that will take years to design and construct.

Anyway, the point is that most governments and businesses think of nanotechnology as a computer technology because that is exactly what they are funding.  Much like the development of space resources, until a profitable business plan can be written to design and develop molecular nanotechnology, or until the technology is developed by a more forward-thinking organization, molecular nanotechnology will remain in the background of business and politics.

There are already funded assembler projects in the private sector, Zyvex being the first that comes to mind.  They won't tell you how close they are (for obvious reasons), but they've been working on it for some years now, and their website shows constant progress.

http://www.zyvex.com/

Does the gender of the author really matter?  Here's a good resource: http://www.astronautix.com/astros/terhkova.htm.  Some quotes of interest:

"it was Korolev's idea just after Gagarin's flight to put a woman into space as yet another novelty"

and

"Korolev was unhappy with Tereshkova's performance in orbit and she was not permitted to take manual control of the spacecraft as had been planned. Mishin later claimed she was ?on the edge of psychological instability?"

From that point onward, woman cosmonauts in the program were supposed to be considered on an equal basis with the men cosmonauts in the program, but it wasn't until 1982, one year before Sally Ride, that any of them actually saw flight duty.