New Mars Forums

From CNN:

?All fuel, water and other supplies would have to be carried along or sent ahead on robot craft. The crew size would have to be expanded to allow for sickness or death that is likely for such a risky expedition.? ?No firm cost estimates have been developed, but informal discussions have put the cost of a Mars expedition at nearly $1 trillion, depending on how ambitious the project was. The cost of a moon colony, again, would depend on what NASA wants to do on the lunar surface.? ?NASA's target for a moon mission is 2018, an official said.?

From the nonsense on CNN (above) and in my local paper you?d think it was pre-1989 with no lessons learned since then. ???  So expensive and slow! Are they trying to scare people away from any future in space? Why are there so few mentions of Mars Direct?I?d say this was meant to fail except the way Bush does things this ridiculous plan might even come to pass?

There's a lot of speculation (a trillion dollars!) but if the Bush administration puts forth a bloated ?Battlestar Galactica? plan, will the Dems back a competing (affordable, superior) Mars Direct type plan? Which Democratic candidate would be best for this ? and how do we get him involved?

In another thread sethmckiness said

We have to learn to crawl before we walk, and we have issues with even getting high enough to crawl...  Also...  I don't think we are ready for Mars yet.  Until we can get a 100% rate of getting probes there....   we can't even do that yet...  I think that makes any mission a bit of Russian roulette?We can find ways to maximize the commonality between the moon hardware and Mars hardware.

As the pundits keep saying we are more ready to go to Mars now than we were to go to the moon in the early 60s. As to 100% probe success that is impossible, we?d never go anywhere. And the way to maximize hardware commonality IMHO is to go with the more robust system (Mars Direct would do nicely) and then the lesser requirements (Moon) are a ?bonus? and can be dealt with simultaneously at whatever level is deemed appropriate.

The Moon has to be secondary. Mars hardware would have half a dozen uses, including making short work of the Moon. Two or three 27? diameter tuna cans would make a great moon base, they can do some geology, drop off one or two telescopes (possibly an interferometer) and perhaps a reactor for testing. We do not need a permanently manned moon base (can you say money pit) but an outpost to be occasionally manned might be a good idea ? if it didn?t distract too much from the real goal, Mars. The Moon is a bonus.

Bush?s plan does not seem to be too incompatible with mars Direct, too bad the timescale is so long. What are the chances of getting the Mars Direct ?tuna can? (possibly tweked) to be the CEV? I understand it would actually make an excellent hab, base, transfer vehicle, and cargo vehicle...could it do earth return?

Don?t retire the shuttle until something good replaces it! I would cry if we give it up and end up with nothing, lamenting the loss of our last real heavy booster, as we have lamented the Saturn 5 for so long now?

Mere Flyby of mars?probably a mistake. The fist Apollo was a flyby, but 2 years in space just to fly past for a couple days? If a dress rehearsal is required have one of the robotic vehicles be a scale model of the manned hardware. There's also the unmanned lander of similar design which would go first as a demonstrator; in addition to the shakedown on the moon, this should suffice. A flyby is a bit stupid, and a tease for really going to mars...

Killing all unrelated robotic programs would be a gross error. Robots return the most results for a fraction of the space budget. They were the only real explorers for the last 30 years. Imagine canceling them all only to have the moon-mars initiative fail - we might have nothing at all for a decade! Robots will always go farther, and work longer than people, without risking lives and for less cost?while they might be no substitute for sending people they make great advance troops. If this relatively small amount of money is that badly needed for the new initiative, i would grudgingly say to extend the program another year.

A thousand billion dollars would not be acceptable, 30 billion would be great. 30-40 years to mars is not acceptable, 9-12 years would be great. Teensy 25 tonne payloads are a poor way to do things, meaning space construction, cramped spaces and compromised capability, and ballooning costs (think ISS-like flying junkpile) ? really need a 120 tonne payload, such as a converted shuttle stack. As you can see I?m more or less a Zubrinophile.  :;):

This is roughly what I?d want to see:

Y1 design and review begins
Y3 ?Beach ball resolution? orbital mapping of entire mars surface for pinpoint landings
Y5 robotic in-situ fuel demonstation (and optional sample return)
Y7 CEV design finalized, first launch: skylab type mission
Y8 two missions to lunar surface for shakedown (geology, drop off lunar telescope)
Y11 launch hab to mars
Y12 first landing!