New Mars Forums

I assume the poll should be
'Will we beat China to Mars'

and I vote No
as long as George keep running up huge deficts, a civil war sees Arab people that keep dying for no reason and George keeps burning billions of dollars in his quest to bring democracy to places that have now fallen apart. Think about it, can Islam and Democracy really co-exist ?

Chinese have a very young space program but as long as GW Jnr keeps shooting himself in the foot, I think China has a got chance at turning Mars into a real Red-Planet.

Thanks for the news Ciclops

Here's more info

Exoplanet detection capability
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0305159
COROT has the capacity to detect numerous exoplanets, not only Jupiter and Uranus-class ones, but also hot terrestrial planets, if they exist. We show that small exoplanets should be mainly gathered around 14-15th magnitude K2-M2 dwarfs and giant exoplanets around 15-16th magnitude F7-G2 dwarfs.

Asian dictatorships on the Moon ?? What next ??
You're like a broken record with the repetitive Neocon partisan nonsense you constantly come out with, do you know that ? Having you got anything to say about your state of affairs about your OWN COUNTRY before you continue bashing France China, UK Canada, Russia
have you got anything to say about your beloved Republican admin - War vets without benefit, Katrina victims dying or that Bush Dynasty you've got Daddy under Ronnie, Jnr, and then Jeb ready for 2008. If America can't get to Mars before your feared 'Chicoms' do then Tuff Luck Texan - You've been beaten fair and square.

Bush Sets Defense As Space Priority
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co … 01484.html
U.S. Says Shift Is Not A Step Toward Arms; Experts Say It Could Be

Evidence of radiation from North Korea's claimed nuclear test has been found, a United States offical says.
Radioactivity from N Korea test 'found'
A preliminary US intelligence analysis has shown radioactivity in air samples collected near the suspected test site.

but now that they have forseen a potential problem don't they option to return to i.s.s and do EVA to repair on the shuttle ?

http://www.nationmaster.com/
Population below poverty line by country
#106    Jamaica       19.7       
#107       Kazakhstan     19      
#108       Morocco     19      
#109       Bermuda     19      
#110       Poland     18.4      
#111       Israel     18      
#112       Costa Rica     18      
#113       United Kingdom     17      
#114       Egypt     16.7      
#115       Bulgaria     13.4      
#116United  States of America  12   
#117       Croatia     11      
#118       Thailand     10      
#119       China     10      
#120       Mauritius     10      
#121       Ireland     10      
#122       Hungary     8.6      
#123       Malaysia     8      
#124       Tunisia     7.6

As for working with those 'commie Ruskies' I don't see what's the probelm as it was the Russians that kept US manned spaceflight alive these past few years, after the Columbia tragedy, the ISS has to depend on Russia's Soyuz transports or crew trips to space and back to Earth and it was the unmanned Progress taht were keeping the US manned space program afloat. Soyuz has built up a strong safety record its last fatal flight was in 1971 while the Space Shuttle has seen the loss of 14 astronauts and a near miss in 2005 when Andrew Thomas said "it's probably a bit dramatic to say that we dodged a bullet" piece of foam debris broke away from an aerodynamic ramp on the side of the ship's external fuel tank during launch 16 pieces of foam debris had tore off Discovery during launch

A lot of that doesn't really matter, the USA doesn't have the moral high ground over any nation when it comes to atomic weapons, The USA is the only nation to have used these Nuke weapons on people ( Hiroshima ). Some good came out of it but only because MacArthur was able to get Hirohito to admit defeat and turn him into a poodle, without that the Emperor would have continued to send Japanese to their deaths just like he did the kamikaze.

The problems with the Middle East is that the ayatollah's have never publicly admitted defeat unlike the Japanese Emperor and the USA the supporter of Israel probably hasn't fought a noble war since WW2 and there are no more simple good guys or simple bad guys, Israel might have the moral high ground over a few Arab terrorists and Muslim suicide bombers but it is also involved in crimes against humanity, Isreali leaders have been charged with warcrimes, in Israel there is a deliberate media coverup of the murders by IDFs, and they use cluster bombs to destroy residential buildings. I agree that the Iranian leaders are nuts and should not have these weapons but there are a lot more probelms in the Middle East than just one nation like Iran, the ragtag army of Iranians might be able to build a bomb someday. While the Isreaeli have a nuclear weapons programme but nobody ever asks them to disarm their Nukes even though they are a nation that is constantly killing Arabs every week.

Returning To Sample Mars

At the recent Viking thirtieth anniversary celebration, Noel Hinners championed what could be the next great challenge for planetary science: a Mars Sample Return mission. Hinners pointed out that, like Viking, Mars Sample Return will prove to be extremely difficult but immeasurably rewarding.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Retur … s_999.html

...Competition played a role at the time of the Viking program. Prior to Viking, there were only four successes out of the six U.S. Mars missions: Mariner 4, 6, 7 and 9. Part of the support for Viking which made it "affordable" and sustainable was that we were in the space race with the Soviet Union, which had a vigorous Mars program. Today, we don't have that competition, although some people are trying to drum up the Chinese as a competitor to worry about today.

But I think we are now in an era of cooperation. We should cooperate on Mars Sample Return -- it will cost a lot to do it, so if we could bring in partners who could shoulder a significant part of the science and technology engineering and budget, that helps us get this mission into the U.S. space science budget. It also could provide a model for international cooperation. We have failed gloriously with our cooperation on shuttle and Space Station. We have tended to design a mission, find out that we can't afford it, and then go hat in hand to our friends and say, "Please come help us; we'd really like you to join us." There's nothing wrong with wanting their money, but let's bring them in early.

The European Space Agency is very interested in Mars Sample Return. In fact, their Aurora human spaceflight program has Mars Sample Return as a key component. It's only in a study phase at this point, but the interest is there, so the potential for having them as a partner is there, along with other countries. Other countries are showing that they can now accomplish many things which we used to think only we could do. ESA has Mars Express, and the Japanese recently did land on an asteroid. Although they had some problems, we think maybe they're bringing samples back. The capability is all over the world now. I say, let's bring them in early during the conceptual stage, and make them true partners.

The Viking heritage story is telling. In all the systems and subsystems, there was mostly new technology. Some technology existed but wasn't used, like solar arrays, because we didn't think solar arrays would survive the dust problem on Mars. So instead we used RTGs that had to be adapted for the Mars environment. All the new technology, for the most part, worked.

The lesson learned is that new technology is not something to be afraid of; new technology is to be embraced. You test the bejeebers out of it, and do everything you can to understand it. One of the most frightening things in our business is heritage technology, which frequently is misapplied. So let's bring on the new technology for Mars Sample Return.

some Western fiction
http://www.strangewords.com/archive/reddust.html
http://www.moria.co.nz/sf/redplanetmars.htm
the reality
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl? … 25/1340221
"China and Russia are planning a joint mission to Mars"

Write it off as a loss,
the Middle East venture has been nothing but a big failure...the U.N, USA, Italy, UK and so on such spend their time and money some place else where it won't waste their time and cost thousands upon thousands of lives.

There are planety of other good people that need help and money, people in poverty in South.America, victims of Katrina hurricane, thousands of family that are hurt after the Asia Tsunami
Yet all this time and effort goes into the Middle East maybe because of oil prices or perhaps due to America's jewish lobby, or because Israel is constantly bombing its neighbors and Arab zealots are keen on blowing themselves up.

Back to the space side of things -if the Chinese get to the Red planet first I hope they install a good system to govern our new colony and perhaps ban certain groups of people such as preventing religious crackpots from ever going near Mars.

Musk says: $8 million for a trip to the red Planet ?
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/682/1
Or was he just blowing hot air to make an impression at the Mars Society Conference ?
“I think there’s some number of people in the US and other countries that would pay to move to Mars,” he claimed. “They would sell everything that they’ve got, and they would move to Mars.” If the cost of a one-way journey to Mars could be lowered to the “single-digit millions” of dollars, he said, “I think enough people would pay that to actually make the business plan quite viable. I think thousands of people a year would pay that.”...“Next year SpaceX will manufacture more rocket booster engines than the entire rest of the US industry combined,” Musk claimed.
He admitted later in the talk, though, that to some people such a vision “sort of sounds like a ludicrous aspiration. So, if we can lay a few stones on that road, then I’ll be pretty happy.”