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#1 Re: Human missions » Getting there » 2002-10-07 19:21:34
Does anyone know if any of the Mars missions are planning on travelling to Mars through the paths where the gravity wells of the different planets cancel each other out.
Exactly what planets were you thinking of using, that would lie on a path between the Earth and Mars? There are no such planets.
There are places where the gravitational forces between two bodies balance (such as the Lagrange points between the Sun and the Earth), but they would not form "paths" that you could travel along.
#2 Re: Human missions » I give up.... - Manned mission to Mars. » 2002-09-27 23:25:47
NASA is never going to go anywhere until they are given a direct order from the President-i.e. JFK. IMO, Pres. Bush would support the manned missions to Mars and more space exploration if it wasn't for the war on terrorism.
What makes you think so? Has he said or done anything to suggest that he's a proponent of space exploration (say, pre-9/11)?
As a side note, everyone seems to assume that if the president calls for NASA to go to Mars, it will. Actually, President Bush Sr. *did* do this - he said, "NASA, design me a plan so we can go to Mars!" Unfortunately, the plan was very conservative and ended up being ~$10 billion (I think). Congress was horrified and nixed it from the start. But the point is that you need more than just a single person, even if it is the president, to make these things happen. JFK's endorsement of a trip to the moon was facilitated by a good political climate, the fact that he had already attained the support of Congress, and the national "race the Soviets" feeling. (I'm sure there were other factors, too - I don't want to oversimplify.)
#3 Re: Terraformation » on a smaller scale » 2002-09-26 21:45:58
> Also, Mars "floor" is comprised of super-oxidized dirt sterilized by cosmic radiation, a lack of nitrates, or any of bio-bits for soil.
Nothing a little soils engineering can't take care of.
Within limits. One of the biggest challenges to any plant life trying to take root in Martian soil is the lack of nitrogen in the soil. On Earth, you can compensate for that, but how will you do it on Mars? You'll need the nitrogen to come from *somewhere*.
Anyway, don't get the idea Martian soil is totally unsuitable for plants. It does contain a lot of the inorganic nutrients they need like sulfur, potassium, etc . We'll just have to treat it first.
Now I'm a big fan of Mars exploration, and perhaps eventual colonization. But I don't think this approach is feasible, unless there's some additional technology thrown into the mix (and some source of nitrogen). The other big problem, as has been mentioned, is the radiation. Sure, you could build a dome to block out the radiation - but it'd be several meters thick and no light would make it through. If you want sunlight (which you probably do for your plants), then designing glass that lets visible, IR, and some UV in but nothing else is what you want - I don't think we have anything like that currently (I'd love to hear otherwise).
Recycling organic matter really isn't enough, though it might help. We have a lot of desert land here on Earth. I've lived in southern Utah, where it's not even a full desert (rather, a "high desert", which gets just a bit more annual rainfall). The dirt is iron-rich, nitrate-poor, high in alkalides. It's a constant battle to get anything to grow there, no matter how much dead organic matter, water, nitrates, shade, and other treatments you throw at it. I can only imagine how many orders of magnitude worse it will be for Mars. 
#4 Re: Planetary transportation » Rover Navigation - How should it be done? » 2002-09-26 21:19:08
I think GPS will be pretty much the only way to go on Mars... From the first landing on, I think it'll be necessary to have at least 3 satellites in orbit for communication and navigation purposes.
This is particularly true when it comes to communication. Posting comm towers all over Mars is infeasible. Mars has the same land area as the Earth (since much of the Earth is covered by water). Worse, Mars doesn't have the ionosphere that the Earth does, which allows us to bounce radio signals over the horizon. On Mars, radio communication would basically be limited to line-of-sight. You'd need a staggeringly large number of land towers. Orbiting relay satellites would be the best bet.
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