New Mars Forums

we'll see.  i too am skeptical.  if only the chinese had said they're going to MARS.  then W. would want to take us there.

the strategic interpretation of cislunar domination offered in this thread is, i think, as good an explanation as any for this upcoming announcement.  IMO it fits pretty well with the current administration's view of everything being tied in with the US having the upper hand on the world stage.  i just can't see this administration assuming any ideological burdens like space exploration for the sake of exploration.  they'll want some solid political payoff and i'm sure keeping them godless commies from pre-empting us fits the bill.  'noble' idealistic payoffs like scientific advancement and PR value are just icing on the cake.

while a commitment to mars would be nice, a lunar exploration initiative is better than what we've got right now.  i'd support it if it's forward-compatible with a future mars effort.

the bigger question is what other programs may be siphoned from to foot the bill for this.  hopefully the money will come solely from the manned spaceflight branch and won't draw away from any of the other cool stuff that's in the offing. (SIM, TPF, Pluto Express, etc. etc.)

cindy-  in answer to your question, the r/b/g mars trilogy had a subplot dealing with the environmental impact of the terraforming that was happening.  there were individuals in the main cast of characters who weren't gung-ho about it, and one in particular (i can't remember her name) embodied the extreme standpoint of no terraforming whatsoever.  she was overruled/marginalized, which was certainly helpful for the plot of the story.  i don't remember any of this character's arguments specifically as it's been several years since i read it.  i think one was that the terraformation would screw up a lot of the science going on, which is why i think if it's (terraforming) is done it should be longer-term, like on the order of thousands of years.  (the mars trilogy has it happening over several hundred years, which of course may not even be remotely possible anyway.)

oops!  dana's a man.  live n learn.

Nah.  I can only speak for myself, but I tend to be pretty receptive to criticism (constructive or otherwise) of things i hold dear, including the USA.  I'd even be willing to digest "vile USA hatred" even though I might not agree with it.  Extreme viewpoints are more likely to amuse me than enrage me.

As for "lefties" i get the impression your categorization (are you european?) is probably more 'left' than what we here in the US would use.  my views would probably be considered much more moderate in europe than they would here.  i generally support gov't regulation of business as well as some of the carefully-monitored social programs that our current leadership is trying to dismantle.  however, i've always suspected that most (american) liberals would have the space program demolished given the chance (although i have seen some circumstantial evidence lately that leads me to think i may be wrong), and i would rabidly oppose such a thing.

it's funny though, since nasa really is a socialist space venture i don't understand why the repubs aren't constantly trying to disembowel it.  it's no less socialist than medicaid or social security or food stamps.  maybe because the money winds up ultimately going to aerospace contractors instead of indigents?  it sure makes one wonder to hear that newt gingrich is pro-space.

your 'right-wing socialism' idea really made me laugh, though.  not because it's outlandish but because i couldn't help imagining how most conservatives here would react to what they'd consider to be an oxymoron.  socialists in the US are generally considered to be ultra-left traitors, in league with communists.  (and i'd bet that most americans couldn't tell you the difference between the two.)  in europe socialist parties are legitimate political entities; in america they are considered somewhere around the level of evil pond scum.  and as far as i can tell most of them (not all) are already 'cleansed from all religiously false pretentions about a Communist utopia and a coming liberation from 'evil' capitalism and civilization.'  from what you say it sounds like eurolefties are a lot more left than american lefties.

but to get back on-thread, it seems that it may be worthwhile to undertake some effort to convince the politically liberal that space is a good investment.  some kind of outreach program?  i dunno.  maybe we should get the mars society to infiltrate the democratic party.  if there really is no current gov't plan around the corner to go to mars then we may have nothing to lose by ousting the current regime.

hey, great links there.  that spaceref article had some good ideas.  and i definitely agree that it would be good to extend hubble's life beyond the advent of the Webb telescope for insurance in case Webb has a catastrophic malfunction.

unfortunately, both of those articles were a little vague as to timeframe and expense.  (spaceref mentioned '06).  and, i don't think the dutch tug would be compatible w/ HST unless they designed some kind of custom attachment.  i got the impression it plans on docking to telecom satellites using the fitting that mated them to their ariane launcher.  since HST wasn't launched by an ariane it won't have the fitting that the tug will have.

note that HST would be a juggernaut of astronomical science if it were moved to geostationary orbit.  it was put in LEO initially to allow servicing, but once the last servicing mission is over there's no need for it to be there.  HST's residence in LEO has been a huge impediment to its output; the earth tends to get in the way of what it's observing as it goes 'round.  also (this may have been fixed since '92), the day/night transition caused vibrations in the solar panels that necessitated a suspension of observations; so any observation lasting more than half an earth orbit always got interrupted.  but higher up in geo orbit it would have an almost unencumbered field of view, no day/night transition to deal with, and would be much more efficient in generating observational data until accumulating system failures finally doom it.

let's hope nasa becomes aware of the space tug option and takes it into consideration!

my thinking was that they could at least let the orbit decay enough to where it'll be in range of an antisatellite missile.  a bunch of little hubble crumbs would be less likely to make it thru re-entry than a big chunk.  surely this would be cheaper than $300M.  you'll remember that they let compton burn up, and that was about the same size as HST.  (it may have had some propellant to help control the reentry though, i can't remember.)

of course, salvage would be nice.  HST, in my biased opinion, is probably one of the more ambitious science/engineering projects ever undertaken.  but putting it in a parking orbit of some kind would require fitting a special propulsion unit to it.  the article mentioned this as a way of deorbiting it but NASA decided it was too risky.  (if the astronauts had to go up to fit this thing to it, they may as well go ahead and put it in the payload bay to bring it back).  plus this doesn't let NASA give as big of a nice porky contract to the aerospace industry.

in answer to your question, cindy, i was the guy that screwed up the mirror (just kidding).  i actually worked flight operations for 2 years at goddard.  basically looked at telemetry and kept things running.  i was one of the folks who monitored the pointing control system, which includes the gyros, reaction wheels & optical (star-based) pointing.

interesting... so i wonder if you'd see stratification in conjunction with a temperature gradient... maybe different metals at different altitudes depending on their condensation point.  maybe el dorado exists on venus-- not a mountain of gold but maybe just part of a mountain at a certain altitude frosted w/ gold.

i'd still rather visit mars.

they spin up the flywheels which exert a torque on the overall spacecraft, causing it to rotate.  it's a feedback loop where the gyros are the (coarse) sensors, the wheels are the actuators.  the pointing computer controls it all with further help from fine-tuning sensors which look thru the optics at guide stars.  they didn't put propellant on it because when spent it tends to hang around & could mess up the optical surfaces. 

i worked on the hubble project for a couple of years before the first servicing mission, so was kind of disappointed when they decided not to retrieve it when it retires.  sentimental attachment, etc.  but i think having to spend 300M just to burn it up is an outrage.  there has to be a better way. 

i'm not exactly fluent in the intricacies of orbital mechanics & spacecraft rendezvous, but it seems to me we may be able to bring the samples back to ISS and finally get some bona fide use out of the thing.  this would (er, could) isolate the samples from our biosphere and pacify the biological gloom-n-doom types, and the gov't gets to cover its ass, which is its raison d'etre anyway.

the question in my mind is whether the MSR will be an impediment to the advent of a humans-to-mars program.  there's been some mention of MSR as a stepping stone for doing proof-of-concept stuff, but i can't help but wonder if it might wind up being a substitute for crewed exploration, or at least delay it past the end of my life.  call me selfish, but i think we shouldn't lose sight of the grail-- human exploration.  the microbes await us.

interesting angle... if that's what it'll take to get to mars, i'm for it.  maybe appealing to the egos of those with the power/resources to make it happen is the way to go.  zubrin touches on this in 'entering space'- if politicians want to be remembered hundreds of years from now, laying the groundwork for colonizing the solar system is probably the best way.  in 300 years you can bet nobody is going to remember the war on terrorism.

so yeah, prestige could be the ticket.  i think folks like burt rutan are relying on this kind of egotism to provide the fledgling space tourism industry with the necessary cash.  the dennis titos et al.

as for me, the motivation is mostly selfish curiosity.  i wanna know what's out there and i want to be alive when it's discovered.  i wouldn't want to impose my will on the rest of the taxpayers, but i sure would like to infect them all with the same bug that i have for space exploration so they want to do it too.  if enough people in a society have the will to do this, the other justifications (spinoffs, science, new perspectives, etc.) are just the icing on the cake.  i think the goal in itself is worthy enough justification.

so there.

i also happen to buy into the other arguments, esp. having our eggs in more than one basket.  but here's another idea to chew on:  suppose earth really is special, a one-in-a-million (or billion) source of life.  shouldn't we, once we're able to do it, take off and leave the planet alone to evolve more intelligent species as it will?  a seriously long-term perspective, i know.  but there's plenty of time left before the sun starts swelling, and the universe itself has plenty of future ahead regardless of whether you're a big-bang/big-cruncher or a steady-stater.

doh!  i just now stumbled onto the clarke discussion in "research paper says..."  i shoulda familiarized myself more with what's here before making that post.

wait!  i have an idea.  on the next shuttle launched, we put britney spears in the payload and put her in LEO.  nude.  maybe that'd generate some interest...  of course, she wouldn't be a lander, so maybe not.