New Mars Forums

Spacedaily article
We all know things didn't turn out very well with the poor thing, it lost it's power, missed a rendezvous etc... With a lot of wriggling an Mc Gyvering of the Japanese controllers it's finally approaching the red planet.
But... the crippled craft is currently on an *impact trajectory* with Mars and there's no guarantee groundcontrollers will be able in time to start it's engine to go into  orbit...
Since Nozomi was to be an orbiter, there was virtually no sterilizing done on the craft. It is potentially at risk to contaminate Mars.

Hmmm... with a bit of 'luck,' terraforming might take place a bit earlier than envisioned...

Thanks for the link, Free Spirit, i installed it right away on my old Palm, at last something interesting to read on my daily train rides

BTW, this might also be of interest to people: Design study of a primitive Nanofactory
85 pages study, peer-reviewed, pretty awesome results: factory could be possible in 10 years time, no real obstacles theoretically... once the first nano-scale 'assembler' is built, it could spawn a macro-sized nanofactory in a matter of weeks. Possible applications are quite mind-blowing. (read the end of the article if you can't be bothered reading the whole stuff...)
The paper raised a lot of eyebrows in the nanotech community, it's bein' taken quite  serious.

  Cheer up, people... Though i must admit myself feeling more than a bit disappointed, if the moon-base plan goes forward (we don't know that yet, of course, but the encouraging "the focus seems to be coalescing around sending humans back to the Moon and to the establishment of a inner solar system infrastructure that would allow decisions to where to go next (e.g. Mars, asteroids, etc.) to be made once certain technological and operational unknowns are better understood. " keep a bit of space for hoping.. ) it looks like 'they' *did* listen to Dr Zubrins remarks.
Building hardware to go to the moon, but in the mean time doing a partial shake-down on that hardware for an eventual mission to Mars is still a possibility. Building the OSP in a way so that it can fulfill several operations, not just a glorified life-boat... etc.
Of course, if they start throwing bucketloads of good money to the big companies as they used to do, it'll sizzle out quite fast. But as the article points out, it is conceivable NASA will have to do it in another way, exactly the way Zubrin proposed to the hearings... (start with low-budget, 50mil... planning stage, let the big AND smaller  boys compete to come up with a GOOD plan...)
And if there would be a base being built, commercial launches could get a much-needed marketboost, for there'll be more stuff to deliver... Think XCOR and other entrepreneurs that have the low price-rockets in development...
I'm rather pessimistc, frankly, betting they'll go for a bland OSP and call it a day. NASA has become quite a dinosaur, lately.
But you never know, the overall accepted feeling in congress finally looks to be that NASA *really* needs a kick in the pants, so hopefully GWB puts on his steel-tipped-oil rig boots and gives them a smarting kick in the right direction!
Keep hoping. All is no lost, yet.

The New Scientist Article What bothers me is the fact that there is talk of 'no hick ice sheets' NOBODY thought there would be thick ice sheets. What bothers me even more is the timing of the article, it couldn't come at a worse time, now that 'they' are mulling the possibility to return to the moon. I can imagine Senate reading this and going 'Duh, there's no wather after all, what were those space-guys in the hearings trying to sell us?' It's not new for many people, but bad news for the future... Potentially.

Do not agree. Ik denk niet dat er veel mensen mijn gezever zouden begrijpen, mocht ik in het nederlands beginnen schrijven.

('i don't think a lot of people would understand my drivel, if i started writing in dutch')

Not everybody likes it, but English is the 'lingua franca' of the net. You could argue about using other languages, but where do you end? Gaelic? Fries? With all due respect for these languages, but it would become an incomprehensible mess in no time.

I can read or at least partially understand about 6-7 languages, but i'd hate it to constantly having to reach for another dictionary in order to understand what somebody tries to say.
On the other hand, i regularly feel frustrated for not being able to express myself as fluidly in English as in my mother-tongue, i know i'm not the only one. And we non-natives tend to 'lose' in discussions for the lame fact we just can't express ourselves as nuanced as the others. That's sometimes a real pain in the posterior...
But still. If pilots use English internationally, it's for a good reason, methinks...

instead of impacting asteroids head-on, wouldn't it be more subtle to kinda aero-break them? inserting them into a trajectory so that they 'scrape' Mars' upper atmosphere, and release smaller bits, by breaking up or friction induced evaporation, instead of causing seriously violent impacts... Of course this would be a bit more complicated, bigger asteroids wouldn't break up completely, but zip through the upper layers, causing them to eventually return for a possible head-on impact... they could be re-captured again ater aero-breaking, and pushed into another run, or 'discarded' (sent away further out...)
Of course this is mere speculation with today tech, but, who knows...

Thanks. And first of all my apologies for bumping in to the forum about Zubrin's testimony, but i was so excited and felt he was unjustifiedly(sp?) 'brought down' by Ralf Sinberg.
Mars has been my place of dreams ever since i was a kid, and Dr. Zubrin is IMO a fantastic guy, even if a lot of people merely see him as a zealot. His work makes sense. We're wasting time and money in LEO.

I can't believe it! my comment has been deleted, without any notice!

I didn't use swear words or call names or something like that... Can they just do that? I just said He jumped to conclusions, that it was not necc. written by Zubrin himself, that he was giving people a bad name...

Really, i' cannot believe this...

(BTW saw the stream, Senators *definitely* were positive towards Dr. Zubrin, esp. Sen Brownback(?) he was saying things like that such an aggressive mission/goal would be good for society, in the end he said he really wanted a book...

(Still can't believe they pulled my post....)

anybody read this?

Zubrin making big impact on hearing

been posting this around the boards like crazy, but is it true? The comment under the article sounds very cynical...

(please say it's true, or i've been postig around the last hour, making a complete fool of myself...)