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I think that politcal pressures will keep the Russians behind the ISS in spite of their shaky financial situation. But, if the Russians do accomplish the unthinkable, one of the folowing might happen:
1) China will step up and ease the Russians' financial obligations.
2) A private firm will purchase a share in the ISS
3) The US and ESA will, yet again, bail out the Russians
4) The station will go from being permanantly-manned to intermittently-manned, just as the Salyut stations were.
Options 1 & 2 are both acceptable to me, while option 4 seems like a horrible waste of a multibillion dollar project. It would also mean disaster for the Shuttle, which exists solely to support the ISS. NASA would, under no circumstances, allow the ISS to burn up before the end of its useful life. Even then, it might be possible to detach the ISS core modules, refit them, and send them for a manned Mars flyby.
I'm impatiently waiting for SOMEBODY to win the x-prize, which might open the floodgates for space tourism. From a technical standpoint, this shouldn't be too difficult--the x-prize mission is essentially a repeat of the X-15 missions but with two passengers. The X-Prize foundation expects a winner by the end of 2003, although I think 2005 is more realistic based on estimates by some of the teams in the competition.
If I were a betting man, my money would be on Burt Rutan to win the prize. His company, Scaled Composites, is a fiscally-sound and experienced builder of radical aircraft designs. If Rutan doesn't win, the Cosmopolis team will probably accomplish the goal. Their Buran-inspired spaceplane looks really sharp, and it's one of the most visible contenders right now.
Can't say yet whether this new exploration roadmap will have the political support it needs. I think that the plan is the same as the "Bush Mars Initiative" that Richard Hoaglund was referring to over the summer. In that case, it will have the support of the president and the NASA chief, but findng support from congress will be much more difficult. The NExT roadmap sounds very similar to Rep. Lampson's Space Exploration Act of 2002, and perhaps his endorsement will cultivate bipartisan support for the measure.
Your theory sounds good to me. Of course, we'll need to put humans there to test it out.
In the "human missions" section, we have sparred many times over the issue of Moon vs. Mars. But the same debate has raged in the scientific community and it looks like the Moon has won. NASA has put a lunar sample return on its wish list, while Japan and the ESA have plans for more lunar probes. Space.com just ran an article that even mentions the possibility of a human lunar return (although it's been so long since Apollo that it will be just as hard to return as it was the first time around.)
I read the article and I'm quite intrigued. As you can probably tell, I'm enamored by all things nuclear, and this new theory is no exception. It leaves open the possibility, I guess, of using the earth's core to meet our future energy needs. It also does a lot to explain the nature of planetary magnetic fields (and why Mars is lacking one.)
It looks like Translife will be a free-flying bio-sat after all.
Space.com is reporting that the Beagle lander, originally a part of the ESA Mars Express mission, may not be completed in time, and Mars Express will launch without it. This comes just on the heels of speculation that the 2003 MER rovers will be delayed until 2008. This is all bad news for Mars exploration. I had particularly high hopes that the Beagle would give us some conclusive results about present microbial life on Mars.
The debate over Orion's efficiency rages. Over the years, bomb designers have worked on shaping the blast created by nuclear weapons, and I'm guessing that the Orion pulse units would throw the bulk of their force against the pusher plate.
Gas-core reactors have also been proposed for rockets. A Uranium-hydrogen plasma would be contained within a vortex, and the hydrogen would somehow be ejected while the Uranium plasma stayed contained within the reactor. It sounds like a far-term technology, but it promises an ISp greater than 5,000 seconds.
The article on the ISS is one of the headlines on Aviation Now
Sean O'Keefe announced today that the FY 2004 budget for NASA will include funds to move the ISS beyond core-complete, finally making it into a world class research facility with a crew of six.
The upgrades wouldn't happen until after 2006, but it gives us space-nuts hope that mankind will finally have a permanent foothold in space devoted to science. I'm guessing that the new habitat will be based on the Italian logistics module. The lifeboat will not be available until after 2009 (a derivative of the SLI crew module), but the lifeboat may not be necessary at all.
Blogger Rand Simberg, a "recovering aerospace engineer," argues that such a vehicle isn't necessary. If there is a medical emergency, a single Soyuz could evacuate the injured crew plus two astronauts to pilot the ship during reentry. If the station needed to be evacuated completely, two Soyuz would do the job.
This kind of power is what Eisenhower tried to warn America about as he left office at the end of 1959. He expressed concern at the burgeoning influence of what he coined "the military-industrial complex", which was rapidly, even then, rising above the law. ... Something he saw as potentially capable of ultimately undermining the fabric and freedoms of American society.
Although Eisenhower was the first to use the term "military industrial complex," during his 1961 farewell address, he did not categorize it as inherently evil. Instead he noted that it was a unique institution in American history, because America had traditionally kept small armies and turned to the draft and ramped-up production in the event of war.
The MAC was the result of the United States taking Britain's role as a world superpower. The world expects America to fight for the rights of the oppressed at a moment's notice, and only a large standing army can do that.
The MAC doesn't have to be a bad thing. Keeping a large, standing army keeps the defense contractors happy, and it diminishes the economic incentives to declaring war.
Just a minor digression from the topic...
After the rotation has gone through several times, and each partner has landed several times on Mars, there should be a sufficient infrastructure to start a colony. A one-way, multi-national mission could then be sent to reactivate the base and continue with the exploration. Occasional resupply would be necessary, but the base is designed to have enough supplies to last for two resupply periods.
Eventually cyclers will take large numbers of people to Mars, and new engines (ion, plasma, and nuclear pulse) will make it easier and faster to send supplies to Mars. Mankind is capable of starting anew on Mars. It's just a matter of mustering the will to do it.
I think that's one of the biggest evils that has happened since 9-11, how these barbarian terrorists have caused grief to come upon so many Arabs and middle of the road Muslims. A few bad apples are giving the whole group a bad name. And like you said, it's hard to find your enemy when they're just loose knit groups of fanatics with no national boundaries.
9/11 was an allegory for the fate that Islam has suffered since that infamous date. The Wahhabi terrorists hijacked the faith and did their best to destroy it. And, I'm ashamed to say, some Americans turned their anger into blind rage against Muslims, Arabs, and anybody from that general area of the world (including Indians, who have their own battle to fight against the Wahhabis.) But looking back over the past year, I think that Americans in general have gained a better understanding of Islam. Although some highly-visible Muslims have embraced teachings like "kill the infidel," more people are finally observing those who emphasize teachings like "make a pilgrimmage to Mecca" and "give alms to the poor."
First, Turbo, I must send my congratulations upon your graduation.
Why a nuclear-powered ship? In the Sea Dragon proposal, the ship's reactor would operate an electrolysis plant. Sea water would be turned into hydrogen and oxygen propellants for the rocket.
The most likely means of obtaining the ship is trough the U.S. Navy. A recently-retired submarine would do the job for a smaller rocket. Larger rockets will need the U.S.S. Enterprise, which is scheduled for decommissioning in about a decade.
I agree that sea launch is the best option for launching a large ELV. In the near term, this can be accomplished with a converted oil rig or barge, as Boeing has done with Sea Launch. In the future, the rocket can be towed to sea by a nuclear powered ship and launched from a water-filled pad (like Sea Dragon.) Sea launch allows the rocket to move directly from the factory (or payload integration facility) to a point near the equator. The result: a larger initial velocity and a safe distance from population centers in the event of a catastrophe.
MarsNews.com should be applauded for not following the space.com tactic of repeating NASA's official statements as objective fact. The story actually has a pro-Hoaglund slant to it. But the Sept. 10 update to the article shows that the reporter has done his homework into image processing and manipulation, something that the NASA PR machine hasn't counted on.
The only way to get to the bottom of the mystery is for Hoaglund to sue NASA. He should unveil his best evidence in a court of law and allow NASA to make a logical defense of their data. "BAMF" Noel Gorelick should be subpoenaed and forced to come clean. Only then can an objective body (a jury) determine whether NASA is defrauding the taxpayers. This betrayal of trust should not be allowed to continue.
The best way to divide the crew assignments on an international Mars Direct is not to use multi-national crews during the initial landings, which form the building phase of the base. Instead, the country that acts as "prime integrator" will launch Mars Direct 1. The other countries involved will launch Mars Direct 2, Mars Direct 3, etc. Each space agency would pay for its own mission, but the hardware development and mission control would be centralized. This avoids the ISS situation of one country not meeting the schedule expectations of the others, and it divides the hardware costs evenly. If one country misses its launch opportunity, then the next country in the rotation gets a turn in two years. Each mission can stand independent of the others, although the final base will depend on all of the missions.
I've been doing some thinking about Mars Direct and how to avoid becoming another "flags-and-footprints" expedition.
As I've said before, America has the resources to "go it alone" on Mars Direct. What it doesn't have, however, is the resources (or political will) to launch SUSTAINED expeditions to Mars. Remember that the goal of Mars Direct is to build a base by landing subsequent missions in the same area and drawing upon the accomplishments of the previous missions.
International support is crucial for sustained space exploration. It provides a redundancy that any national space program would not have. If a particular launch system was grounded, or if Kennedy Space Center was attacked by terrorists, we would always have another launch system to fall back on. It is in the best interests of the human species to not put all of its eggs in the basket of one nation.
All space efforts until Apollo 11 were driven by a Khrushchev-Kennedy spirit of national competition and prestige. The subsequent Apollo missions, Skylab, STS, and ISS were all driven by science instead of national pride. The problem is that science is not a funding priority for most governments. It remains to be seen whether these governments will change and support more space science, of if we will need to move to a corporate-driven motvation for exploring space.
About the space.com image--I did a search on their site but couldn't find it. As I remember it, the top half of the image, which should have contained the face, was completely lopped off the picture.
I'm a bit skeptical about the underground cities on Cydonia. The regular, geometric pattern is mesmerizing, but it might be what the soil naturally looks like under the imaging conditions that Hoaglund and company used.
I'll reserve any verdict until all of the THEMIS data has been analyzed under the same conditions with the ENVI program. Hopefully other researchers will come up with other methods for looking at the data and alternate computer programs. If all the images show the geometric pattern, it would damage the "underground city" theory. But if these patterns could be found in isolated areas all over Mars, it would DRAMATICALLY alter the way we look at Mars, the earth, and ourselves.
Things just got a little more interesting.
The plot thickens...
Head over to www.enterprisemission.com for Hoaglund's latest claims regarding the IR data of Cydonia. Analysis of the "real" images with the ENVI multi-spectral imaging program reveal geometric patterns underneath the Martian regolith.
The question we face is whether Hoaglund's "real" image is the real McCoy. If that's true, then NASA is covering something up. At the risk of sounding like Fox Mulder, I can say that I have seen some evidence of a cover-up. When space.com ran the article about the release of the Cydonia IR, it claimed that the face was "just another wind-swept mesa in the Cydonia region." However, the face was CROPPED OUT of the image posted on space.com. There is a conspiracy at space.com aimed at preventing readers from drawing their own conclusions.
Mars Direct is supposed to lead to a permanent settlement on Mars after enough habitats and ERVs have been landed and linked. In some ways, Zubrin's idea is better than using cyclers to establish a base on Mars. The cycler provides life support for travelers on the trip between earth and Mars, but it never stops at either planet. The people and cargo that hitch a ride on the cycler still need to expend the same amount of energy to get on the cycler. Wouldn't it make sense to just send the cargo elements directly to Mars?
As long as we can fabricate cheap cargo elements (like habitats) and big dumb boosters, it doesn't make sense to use cyclers for anything other than human transport. Just launch everything the simplest and best way---
Mars Direct!
An international commission is looking at a fourth-generation nuclear reactor system. The new reactor design would be a sodium-cooled "fast reactor," much like previous breeders. The plant would also have a reprocessing facility where fissionable elements and U-238 would be extracted from the waste. These reactors won't come around until the 2030 time period, but they will work to eliminate much of the waste at Yucca Mountain and the excess nuclear weapons in the U.S. and Russia.
Three cheers for France's nuclear power program!
At least there is one country that builds breeder reactors and reprocesses spent fuel. I wait anxiously for the day when the United States adopts breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing.