New Mars Forums

Let's assume every launch pad on the planet is available.

Most expensive : You might not be able to afford a Japan rocket, ask the Japanese for a lift ? This is very expensive due to their over-priced bubble economy and high-labor costs in Japan. They haven't lifted heavy craft and recent Japan rockets have been unreliable and might even explode.

Quiet Expensive: USA and Europe ( high success rates and large payloads ) but at a high cost when compared to Russian rockets. The most expensive American launch is the STS-Shuttle which costs about a billion to get moving.

Ruskies: Prices might go from $40-million to 120$-million depending on what you're after. Russia offers great prices and good payload ability but the problem is all the political back scratching you'll have to do, and you may find yourself no longer in charge of your own mission and find the Ruskies and Kazakhs running the show. Russia has great launch vehicles but the Russian pads aren't ideal for geostationary orbit.

Ultra-Cheap: Israel, India, North-Korea, Brazil, ...et cetera. The problem with these guys is that many of their launch vehicles look like ugly-Scud missiles and they mostly launch the payloads of sounding-rockets, there is also a high possibilty that these rockets will blow up on the pad or fall back down on your head.

Griffin knows his stuff, he's doing some great work

ESA's Venus Express spacecraft is closing the distance to its destination and remains on course for its rendezvous with the veiled planet on April 11, mission controllers said.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Venus … ation.html
The Venus Express team said the spacecraft's systems are ready for the orbit insertion around Venus and for the first in-orbit operations. Controllers based their assessment of the spacecraft's readiness for the approach to Venus on the "excellent" performance of the main engine during its Feb. 17 test

Video of the Venus Express
http://esatv-movies.e-vision.nl/videos/ … wmplow.wmv

Preparation for Venus Approach
13 Mar 2006 11:23
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object … ctid=38933
Report for period 03 March to 09 March 2006

With the reporting period all calibration, science and maintenance activities of the instruments have been completed and focus is now on the Venus approach phase. These included the last MAG and ASPERA science acquisitions and a USO drift test.

Future Milestones

The spacecraft is now configured for the Venus approach phase and activities will focus only to this.

The intense navigation campaign will enter now a period of maximum activity in order to have an extremely precise assessment of the spacecraft trajectory versus its target point at the planet.

Video Talk
Modem - Riddles of the rocky planets / Mysteries of Venus
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Video_Talk_ … 3EE_0.html
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Video_Talk_ … 2FE_0.html
Broadband - Riddles of the rocky planets / Mysteries of Venus
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VideoTalk/S … 3EE_0.html
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/VideoTalk/S … 3EE_0.html
videos with subtitle options

This was a celebration of new Venus missions, thanks to our colleagues in other countries. Many of the scientists and students attending were from Japan, a country that will be launching their first Venus orbiter in 2010. Also well represented were the various member states of the European Space Agency, whose Venus Express spacecraft was launched last November and will enter Venus orbit this April.
It was also a reminder that in current NASA planning, Venus remains "the forgotten planet." Throughout the week it became clear that the importance of Venus in planetary science is not reflected in NASA's current exploration plans. In fact, Venus has received visits from only two American missions in the last 30 years (not counting the fly-bys of Galileo and Cassini, which got a gravitational kick from Venus on their way to the outer solar system).
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Earth … Venus.html
The final session dealt with extrasolar planets and astrobiology. But, wait a minute, this meeting was supposed to be about Venus
why were we talking about other solar systems and the search for life? Because, as Dr. Victoria Meadows from JPL explained, many extrasolar planets are likely to be Venus-like. If we want to be prepared for the coming era of comparative planetology, when we have data about Earth-sized planets around other stars, we had better pay more attention to Venus

The NASA Science Missions Getting Cut

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … ml?1132006

Following are some of the areas that would be affected:
- Research and analysis: 15% across-the-board cuts in grants for research, ($350 to $400 million over the next five years) with some retroactive to 2006. An official at NASA Headquarters said he wasn't aware that any notices of specific research cuts have been issued at this time.
- Astrobiology research alone will have 50% of funding slashed.
- Astronomy and astrophysics at NASA cut by 20% over 5 years
- Aeronautics: cut by 18.1%, down to $724.4 million

Corot will be the first mission capable of detecting rocky planets outside our Solar System.
http://www.euronews.net/create_html.php … pace&lng=1
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMISENVGJE_index_0.html
EuroNews takes a closer look at this 30-centimetre diameter space telescope

European space solidarity

The CEV and Shuttle look like they are going ahead, they got their money.

however

Mars smaple mission - MSR looks delayed
the Dawn Discovery mission seems to be cancelled
The outrigger Keck telescopes are gone.
MTO is dead
NASA has dropped the Methane-Engine from CEV
LISA and Constellation-X will be delayed indefinitely
Europa probe is getting axed
Mars research has been cut by $243.3 million to $700.2 million

NASA's Space Shuttle Program successfully fired a full-scale, full-duration reusable solid rocket technical evaluation motor Thursday, March 9, at a Utah test facility. The two-minute static, or stationary, firing of the rocket motor was performed at ATK Thiokol, a unit of Alliant Techsystems Inc., in Promontory, north of Salt Lake City.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_ … _Test.html
The technical evaluation motor, or TEM-12, burned for approximately 123 seconds, the same duration each reusable solid rocket motor burns during an actual space shuttle launch. The static-fire test included 26 specific objectives and used 89 instrumentation channels to collect and evaluate the motor's performance

NASA assesses unexpected reading from fuel tank sensor
Shuttle engineers are studying what, if anything, to do about an unexpected reading from one of four liquid hydrogen main engine cutoff - ECO - sensors in Discovery's external fuel tank, officials said today. The sensors play a critical role during the climb to space by ensuring a shuttle's main engines shut down normally before draining the ship's external tank. A malfunction could trigger an early engine shutdown or let the powerplants run too long.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/s … ecosensor/

China should set up a governmental agency as a leading body of the nation's space program, a former chief designer of spacecraft said during the annual session of the country's top political advisory body.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Aeros … ogram.html
China needs a unified leading organ to plan the country's program of manned space mission, satellites and lunar exploration as a whole, said Qi Faren, chief designer of China's first five Shenzhou spaceships and a National Committee member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

China will seek three breakthroughs in its space program in the next five years, a former senior commander of the country's manned space mission said Tuesday.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006- … 268630.htm
    Space walk, lunar exploration and carrier rockets with greater propulsive forces are listed on the top agenda of the country's space program for the 2006-2010 period, said Hu Shixiang, former deputy commander-in-chief for China's manned space mission.

In the "space race" of the early 1960s, when reporters asked U.S. rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun what he expected to find on the moon, he jokingly replied: "Russians."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f … pe=science
Nowadays, his answer might be: "Indians, Chinese, Japanese and Europeans."
India, China, Japan and Europe are busy launching, or planning to launch, robotic spaceships to the moon and points beyond.

Guiana is the French/European spaceport for ESA missions and Ariane launches and  France offered to share Kourou with ESA. Europeans built a number of launch pads over the years, the Italians had a launch site at San-Marco off the Kenya coast in Africa, the British tested rockets in Australia and the French had sent off launchers from Algeria. Kourou provided France with the alternative to the African/Arab rocket test base in Algeria, evacuated in the aftermath of the Algerian war.

The European Space Agency, the French space agency CNES as well as the commercial Arianespace company launch their satellites from Kourou. The ESA is currently building facilities for launching Russian built Soyuz rockets from this spaceport. Under the terms of a Russo-European joint venture, ESA will augment its own launch vehicle fleet with Soyuz rockets (and use them to launch ESA and/or commercial payloads) and the Russians will get access to the Kourou spaceport for launching their own payloads with Soyuz rockets.

Arianespace and Roscosmos sign contract to kick off Soyuz operations phase at Guiana Space Center
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=19000

Soyuz nearing French Guiana
http://www.cnes.fr/html/_455_463_1545_2864_.php

An exotic ocean-side coastline, near a sleepy town of Kourou, located just five degrees north of the Equator, would provide a starting point for a safe flight corridor over the Atlantic Ocean and give the rocket extra 460 meters per second in velocity from the natural Earth rotation.
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/kourou.html

Open letter to NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin
March 10 , 2006
http://www.planetary.org/
It is been a rather heady and intense time at The Planetary Society.  The political problems posed by the NASA budget -- with deep cuts in space science -- are curiously juxtaposed with the excitement about the finding of water evidence at Enceladus, the moon of Saturn, and the orbit insertion of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.   (The Japanese success at Hayabusa is also not lost on us, nor is the upcoming orbit insertion of Europe’s Venus Express).

http://www.planetary.org/home/
Gone (delayed indefinitely, in NASA-speak):
* Mission to Europa
* Terrestrial Planet Finder
* Mars Scout missions after 2011
* Mars Sample Return
* Mars Telecommunications Orbiter
* DAWN -- mission to two largest asteroids
Slashed (scaled back):
* Astrobiology research -- down 50%
* Research and analysis -- down 15%

some delays for China, well now they aren't moving so fast

but their robo-Moon craft looks very good