You are not logged in.
I' not optimistic about going to Mars by 2020. Although the extra $1 billion and the money for space nuclear power is great, Mars Sample Return has been delayed indefinitely. Until we accomplish MSR, we cannot begin to plan for a manned mission to Mars.
Hopefully more logical heads will prevail. MSR by 2011!
I' not optimistic about going to Mars by 2020. Although the extra $1 billion and the money for space nuclear power is great, Mars Sample Return has been delayed indefinitely. Until we accomplish MSR, we cannot begin to plan for a manned mission to Mars.
Hopefully more logical heads will prevail. MSR by 2011!
Vishal, I agree about the high fixed launch costs associated with current launch vehicles. Take the Shuttle for example. NASA operates the Shuttle in a horribly inefficient manner. Because the Agency is a federal jobs program, it has no incentive to streamline operations. It has been suggested that shuttle operating costs would be decreased by a factor of ten if it was operated by a private company. I believe that a next-genaeration shuttle, designed for quick turnarounds, automatic health monitoring, and full reusability, would cut costs by another factor of ten. Only then will space tourism become a reality, and not a dream, for the masses.
On the contrary, I believe that international cooperation has made space even more expensivve than each county doing things independently. The ISS has been delayed and gone over budget because the partners were unable to keep up their end of the agreement (Russia has no money to build modules on time, the U.S. will not pay for the Transhab, etc.)
I also think that conventional rockets will be prohibitively expensive. Most of the fuel weight (and thus cost) is liquid oxygen, which is carried insie of the rocket instead of being drawn from the atmosphere. Once we can create air breathing rockets like the National Aerospace Plane or the Andrews Alchemist, we can reduce the cost of space launch.
It's nigh-impossible to build a lunar elevator. Any space elevator would connect the earth's surface to a node in geosynchronous orbit. If you tried to construct a lunar elevator, the velocity of the moon would tear out the elevator cable.
Bill, you're right on target. Congress is not convinced that space is a priority (because it doesn't provide enough pork-barrel projects for states other than California and Florida.)
Once Congress is on our side, NASA will fall in line. I'm considering joining the National Space Society and taking part in their annual "March Storm" on Washington. An educated Congress will be a better Congress.
I think that people at NASA have that same fear. If a sample return mission is launched, it will probably be quarantined at White Sands rather than returning for an ocean or land recovery. Perhaps the people at NASA have taken "War of the Worlds" a bit too seriously. Still, too much precaution is better than no precaution.
Because space exploration has such high propaganda, I definitely think that we should be aware of the risk of military action against our spacecraft, both manned and unmanned. Ground-based defensive weapons might be an option. Buzz Aldrin's company has proposed the partially-reusable Starhawk for shooting down anti-satellite weapons. I do believe that offensive weapons should stay out of orbit because of the risk they pose to manned spacecraft.
NASA is unacceptably delaying the Mars sample return mission. It is not expected to launch until 2016, and it probably will not incorporate in-situ propellant production.
My suggestion to NASA is to get back on track, and launch not one but two MSR missions during the 2011 launch opportunity. One will use in-situ propellant production, granted that NASA will do enough ISPP research between now and then. The other will use ion propulsion with a small lander that will retrieve smples and return them. This mission could be built cheaply using an RTG from Cassini, an engine similar to the one used on Deep Space 1, and a lander based on the Mars Polar Lander with a small solid rocket to boost the return capsule.
Ion propulsion and ISPP will both be important to a manned trip to Mars. Teting both on MSR would be great, and it gives NASA two opportunities for success on the mission.
I see nuclear fission power as the key to opening the space frontier. A nuclear reactor is much lighter and more reliable than a solar array of equivalent output. Launching one would not be a big problem, either. If the rocket exploded, the reactor would be vaporized and would not cause a nuclear explosion. Once in space, the reactor would be kept a safe distance from the crew, and the ship's fuel would insulate the crew from the radiation. One demonstration reactor for space nuclear power was as large as a trash can, and it would require someone hugging it for at least a year to absorb a cancer dose of radiation.
I cannot think of any serious proposal for Mars exploaration that have not used nuclear power in some form. Even the chemically-propelled Mars Direct uses a nuclear reactor to produce the fuel for the earth return vehicle.
The idea is sound, but batteries are heavy and would be too costly to ship from earth. If you could build batteries from raw materials on the moon, you'd be in business.
Rob, you are totally right about the difficulties of using the moon to end our energy needs. However, "when there's a will, there's a way." Once we start facing petroleum shortages, we will get serious about getting power from space.
I really can't speculate as to when China will go to the moon. Their manned flight is expected in 2003, with a 1st-generation space station to follow possibly as soon as 2005. Some boastful scientists claimed that there'd be a Taikonaut on the moon by 2010, but I think that 2015 is much more realistic. China does have plans to send probes to the moon in a few years. But a manned flight will have to wait until China develops a true heavy-lift launcher.
China clearly has its sights set on the moon. I hope that the upstart Chinese space program forces NASA to make amends for its "One step forward, two steps back" approach to planetary exploration. Perhaps we will put together a program that will at least give China a challenge on the way back to the moon.
Any lunar return should be aimed at establishing a lasting human presence. Perhaps a tether transport system, or an oxygen plant on the lunar surface, could be used for the American lunar return. But the moon holds the key to solving our energy problems. Solar panels could be created from lunar materials, and the microwave energy could be beamed from the bright side of the moon to the earth. Later on, Helium-3 could be mined from the surface and shipped to fusion reactors on earth. However, we should view the moon as a cosmic strip mine, rather than a potential homeworld like Mars could be.
I'm pretty sure that the exploding warhead would be some distance away from the spacecraft before it would be detonated. I'm not aware of any material that can withstand a nuclear blast. Nuclear weapons have always been proposed as weapons that could destroy the most hardened bunkers, caverns, and missile silos.
Like Aaron, I believe in privatizing space transportation. However, I feel that the industry is too timid to challenge the NASA bureaucracy right now, and all of the small space startups like Beal Aerospace and Roton do not have the resources to go through with it.
On the subject of heavy lifters:
The Saturn V tooling is history, but NASA has the plans safely locked up. It would not be practical to build a new Saturn V, but an upgraded Saturn V would be feasible. NASA proposed the Saturn V-derived "Comet" for the First Lunar Outpost program. It would use uprated Saturn engines with stretched 1st and second stages, strap-on liquid boosters, and a 10m diameter third stage.
Our best bet for building a heavy lifter is the same method Lockheed and Boeing have used for their EELVs: just cluster more core booster stages together. With a new upper stage, a cluster of seven booster cores can probably do the job.
First off, I just want to say that Buzz Aldrin still has "the right stuff." His promotion of flyback boosters and Mars cyclers just might lead to another golden age of exploration.
The best part about the cycler idea is that it provides an infrastructure for continuous trips to Mars. Although I like Mars Direct or something similar for an initial Mars mission, cyclers will keep the people and cargo moving between earth and Mars. If we stay the "Mars Direct" route, we will just end up with another Apollo dead end.
And the cycler doesn't have to be expensive. In one scenario, a shuttle can carry it's ET to orbit and then snare it with the Canadarm. Astronauts would then outfit the empty ET with life support systems, electrical systems, and all the amenities a cycler should have. A second flight can add a nuclear reactor and plasma engines for the cycler's course corrections.
We currently have thousands of nuclear warheads sitting in our stockpiles that will probably (and hopefully) never be used in times of war. Why don't we put them to good use and launch a "Mini-Orion" to land five people and their supplies on the moon or Mars? The idea makes too much sense to be taken seriously in this illogical world. But it would accelerate our growth as a spacefaring society, and it would prevent us from wasting time on ideas like solar sails and fusion rockets that will probably not lead to fruition.
The current shuttle is not capable of the flight rates needed to support an outpost on the moon, let alone Mars. It could, however, be used as part of the first Mars mission, as it is in the Borowski nuclear-thermal plan that I am partial to.
However, Shuttle ETs could be boosted into orbit and used as habitats for cycler spacecraft on the way to Mars. Shuttle tanks and boosters can also be used to build a heavy-lift launcher for moon and Mars missions, as Dr. Zubrin suggests.
My suggestion to NASA is to design the next-generation RLV for a flight rate which is at least twice that of the existing shuttle (currently, a maximum of eight per year.) It should also be able to launch on time without all of the delays and maintenance associated with the space shuttle.