New Mars Forums

Look what Lyndon B. Johnson did.

He was really the man who was America's greatest proponent of space travel while he was Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate and President and pushed the Apollo program during the days of the "Space Race" with the Russians.

While Kennedy set the goal of sending humans to the Moon, it was Johnson who saw that the job got done despite increasing Congressional opposition during the Nam years and the years of civil unrest.

Ron Carlson

How much of the Apollo success was really due to Johnson or Kennedy, weren't they just spokesmen for the real drivers of the space program - the military, industrialists, engineers and scientists? (not necessary in that order of importance)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mars could be in for an asteroid hit. A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1 in 75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said Thursday.

In much less than centuries from now people will be exploring Valles Marineris, they won't need to bring back samples as there will be laboratories on Mars.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/spa … 5309.story

SENTINEL SPECIAL REPORT

Lawmakers want shuttle's life extended despite dangers

Mark K. Matthews and Robert Block | Sentinel Staff Writers
December 6, 2007

CAPE CANAVERAL - Despite the objections of senior NASA officials and Columbia disaster investigators, key members of Congress are pushing hard to extend the life of America's aging space-shuttle fleet beyond 2010, potentially risking astronaut lives as well as the agency's program to return to the moon.

Those efforts are being readied as shuttle Atlantis sits on Launch Pad 39A waiting to lift off from Kennedy Space Center at 4:31 p.m. today. It will be NASA's fourth and final flight of 2007 -- the most in a year since the 2003 Columbia tragedy forced the grounding of the shuttle for 30 months.

Four, or possibly five, flights are planned in 2008, followed by seven to eight more by September 2010, when NASA plans to retire the orbiter to make way for the next generation of manned spaceflight. It's a punishing, risky schedule -- just enough, NASA says, to finish building the international space station, repair the Hubble Space Telescope, and still leave time and money to build the next spaceship by 2015.

Some members of Congress, however, have other ideas. Texas lawmakers led by Republican U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas are drafting legislation to force the agency to fly at least one more mission to launch a $1.5 billion antimatter experiment that NASA grounded because of other priorities.

At the same time, U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Indialantic -- anxious about preserving shuttle jobs at KSC -- wants the agency to keep flying the shuttle until the next-generation spacecraft is ready to take its place. That won't be until 2015 and may take longer if the shuttle keeps flying and NASA's budget languishes.

Prominent critics and internal NASA studies say that adding more flights could put astronauts' lives at greater risk by requiring them to fly in an aging and inherently troubled system beyond its recommend retirement date. And doing so without adding more money also would delay and possibly sink the agency's moon and Mars projects.

'Not a good idea'

In an interview Wednesday, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin was blunt about the impact: "If I am directed to keep flying the shuttle but no additional money shows up, then that additional money has to come out of other programs. There is just no other source," he said.

"And to me, that is not a good idea."

The extension of the shuttle also goes against the findings of a blue-ribbon panel that investigated the Columbia disaster. One key recommendation was that NASA retire the orbiters in 2010 or face the enormous expense of testing and refurbishing every system until it is certifiably as good as new.

"Congress is flirting with fate," said former Columbia investigation board member John M. Logsdon, currently director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. The panel, he said, found that the shuttle was a risky system that would only become riskier with age.

"Since so much of the future depends on completing the shuttle manifest without another accident, each new flight tempts fate," Logsdon said. "Adding more flights over time will only increase that risk."

The danger also is recognized by NASA's most respected scientists.

"We have to have a new manned capability to replace the shuttle, which is old -- really old -- and obviously now pretty dangerous, no matter how hard you work on it. It's something we cross our fingers about every time," said John Mather, NASA senior astrophysicist and Nobel laureate.

In a report last month titled "NASA's Most Serious Management and Performance Challenges," the agency's inspector general said the public would accept the danger of flying until 2010 to complete the space station as long as the missions were successful. But if tragedy struck again, it added, "the merits of manned spaceflight to the moon and Mars would likely be re-evaluated."

Aging equipment

Worried by the potential danger posed by aging, NASA last year asked its top engineers to figure out what equipment was most likely to fail with time. The result, obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, is a list of 35 potentially problematic issues that keep engineers awake at night.

NASA has since resolved 10 of the issues. Though engineers say none of the remaining 25 are "show-stoppers," many are chronic and in need of constant attention.

"If we found a red flag, we'd stop business in a second," said Rick Russell, head of the NASA team devoted to examining age issues.

But not every red flag is clearly visible or well-understood. In another study, Boeing M&P Engineering examined 1,000 "soft" -- or nonmetallic -- materials used in the shuttle, including critical seals and wire insulation. It found that a fifth of the materials were safe to fly for 40 years, while 10 percent had specific life spans and are replaced when needed.

well, wouldn't there have to be some kind of habitation module on mars to keep the humans living for awhile?? and even if they did that, it would have to be built underneath the surface because of all the dangerous dust storms, unless there is some kind of building strong enough to take that kind of wind power, and i don't think there is.