New Mars Forums

Reduce the crew to 3. -All problems solved. 

I fear a manned lunar program might kill any future mars program, not because it will steal resources from the mars effort, but because the space program itself must start showing returns on investment if it is to be fully funded in the future. And Mars, in my mind, is the only hope we have of showing enough return on those investments. I fear a renewed lunar program, after some initial excitement, will settle into being another Space Shuttle: A big dumb liability, and a bad advertisement for the space program in general.

I'm tired of hearing 'Let's do this first, let's do that first'. How about: 'Let's just do it and see what happens.' It might end up being a lot easier than you think. :;):

http://www.space.com/news/moon_mars_040729.html]NASA Issues Call For Moon, Mars And Beyond Technologies. Looks like NASA is starting to think reallisticly again, prompted by the budget cuts, no doubt. Sounds like they're calling for Mars Direct, except with an inflatable hab and stuffed in an Atlas (where will the astronauts fit? ) Can't find much more info on the NASA link. Please discuss.

Y'know what? I agree with the guy. We have been sending men to LEO for nearly half of a century, and for what purpose? Okay, now that sounds pretty shocking coming from me, but let's look at this thing logically. I'm too lazy to go into exact figures, but haven't we spent something like upwards of 90% of space funds on human flights? What if we could have spent that money on robotic missions instead? Think about what we could have done with NASA's full budget from 1970 to today, if it hadn't been wasted on the Space Shuttle and ISS. Perhaps 20 rovers to Mars by now, a few sample returns included. Marsian balloons that could have mapped the entire planet to the centimeter; artificially intelligent UAV's buzzing around near the surface, sending incredible snapshots from deep in the mariner valley, etc. etc. Robotic explorers on Titan, Callisto, Io... High resolution maps of Pluto, Sedna...
Imagine what might have been if Van Allen had his way...
Okay, if that's my view, what am I doing here at Newmars.com? Well, I'm an explorer too, and I'm all for the 'human experience', but giving hundreds of billions of dollars to NASA so they can send a few characterless astronauts up to the International Space Station, having only time to look out of their window as they float between endless maintenance chores, is not my idea of adventure. We need astronauts on Mars to do the science, but we don't need them in leo fulfilling Arthur C. Clarks 1950's vision of vacuum tube replacement men!  :down:

They're both crap, IMO (How did this happen? :hm: ). But atleast we know how crap Bush is, so my vote goes to Kerry 100%.

*Yay go Kerry!* 

Im going out on a limb here, but I tend to agree with a lot of what DeagleNinja is saying. I fear the US is slowly alienating itself from the rest of the world, and the political climate of today has only served to make this worse. What will become of the future, when the growing economies of the EU and China may (will!) become a major economic threat to the US?

I suspect the stress on the vehicle at maximum dynamic pressure (Max-Q) would be too great. Unless the extra SRB's can be staged; lit after the first two SRB's have been spent? Perhaps longer-burning 6,7 or 8 segment SRB's are the better route?

Whats interesting here is the development timetable on page 14. The CEV is developed first (flight-ready by 2008, as Bush demanded), but the infrastructure required to make it useful are developed later. Odd... In my opinion, the CEV should either be an orbital space plane, or a genuine lunar exploration vehicle. NASA needs to decide which; an OSP should not be built presuming it can be later adapted for future lunar exploration. Though they don't explore the SDV option in detail, it is shown on the timetable to be a much quicker route to Mars, and therefore any real science payoff (BTW, what is 'Sustained Earth Neighborhood Access", for what other than the moon is in earths neighborhood?). An HLLV, whether shuttle derived, or all-new, is shown to be required for any Manned Mars mission. When will we see official documents exploring the SDV option? Why should we scrap our perfectly good Shuttle infrastructure (Remember, it is the Orbiter which plagues us), only to re-develop the infrastruture for a clean-sheet HLLV (all at considerable cost) only 10 years later? These preliminary plans seem much too complex, considering we will only gain the capability to send people to the moon (albeit on extended stays; but why...?), a feat which nearly became routine 3 decades ago. And when we finally get there, Apollo will be half-a-century behind us...

The last question asks: What Could the Future Look Like?

A lot like 1969, actually.

Does Zubrin publish his books in russian? 

NASA has no hope left for RLV's. Pity, as the failure of Lockheeds design was a result of being overly ambitious and underfunded, rather than a fundamental oversight of RLV performance. My hope is that NASA will cease operation of the shuttle much sooner than 2010, perhaps selling the ISS to the Russians (or even perhaps the Chinese?) for a reduced price (thereby avoiding the potential for international ridicule, as an alternative to leaving the station out to dry). NASA should then focus solely on its primary objective: Exploration. Forget the CEV or any other set plans and goals, just ask this question:

'Whats the most effective way to explore, and how cheap can we make it?'.

Put another way: Whats the biggest bang for the buck? We shouldn't try to emulate Apollo, and we're not moving forward under the present NASA administration. It frustrates me to hear NASA's many critics babbling about this thing and that... And yes, I am one of them. But I cannot continue citing their specific faults, as my mind insists their must be something fundamentally upside-down in their logic somewhere.

I don't care how, NASA, just go damn forth! 

:bars:

Looks like NASA and the government have given up all hope for anything less than $10,000/kg  launch costs. Aww man... This is crap. I can't help but worry if this new program is going to slow down space travel, rather than get on with it. Let's hope the private industry develops $100/kg boosters in the 25 tonne class... Remember Zubrins comments about the management at Lockheed?