The Martian countryside in the Utopian Plain as seen by Viking. New analysis of the Viking data suggests microbes may be living just beneath the surface. Image 1976 NASA/JPL
Because of recently announced budget targets and a potentially exciting new look at old data, NASA is looking for low cost ways to continue exploring Mars and other parts of the solar system. It’s a shame for our nation and species they have to think this way, but that’s the real world in all its raw glory:
(MSNBC) — Earlier this year, NASA pulled out of a partnership with the Europeans due to budget cuts. NASA and the European Space Agency had been working on missions targeted for 2016 and 2018 that woud have marked the first steps toward bringing Martian soil and rocks back to Earth.The Europeans say they will continue moving ahead with the multibillion-dollar ExoMars program, thanks to a newly forged arrangement with Russia.
NASA officials say returning samples is still a priority, but a reboot is necessary to get closer to fulfilling the country’s goal of sending humans to Mars in the 2030s. Future missions will be aimed at preparing the way for human missions as well as looking for traces of past or present life on Mars.
BTW, I’m all for trying to put people on Mars. The general public may not appreciate the difference between a manned lunar mission and a Martian one — using souped up Apollo methods to go to Mars is a bit like floating across the Chesapeake Bay on a crude raft and hoping a slightly larger raft would get you to Australia. Mars is still a worthy goal, as long as we’re not suicidal. It’s just that right now the best bang for the taxpayer spacebuck is to continue pushing our unmanned capabilities, and those unmanned acivities greatly aid manned mission design and planning to boot.
Unmanned technology is enjoying the full benefit of Moore’s Law, and there’s more to it than just processing power and software. It’s also about robotics, it’s about good old-fashioned mechanical engineering in the 21st century. These engineers have developed a new class of machines, six sigma devices that move and work reliably in extreme environments while maintaining delicate network connections with orbiters and a homeworld many light minutes away. We can increase the number of unmanned missions ten-fold for less than what we’re going to spend over the next ten years on one traditional rocket, a rocket I worry will never be completed, much less do anything notable.
And it doesn’t have to stop there.
Thanks in part to advances in materials and cybernetics, if companies like SpaceX can cut launch costs in half in or thirds, we could begin to deploy a scalable, exploratory infrastructure for the solar system. Instead of one shot probes, imagine multitasking network imaging centers in orbit around planets, moons, and asteroids, overseeing a swarm of diminutive landers and floaters checking out objects below bristling with cameras and instruments. A line of semi-permanent Spanish forts, in the form of unmanned scouts and sentinels, reaching into the new-world wilderness of space is waiting to be built.
I must admit that the proposed Mars manned mission using a souped up Apollo capsule was a great disappointment.
I presume that such a mission would be comparable in duration to the present Curiosity jaunt underway!
9 months more or less…talk about stir crazy in a rather cramped tin can for 4 Martianauts.
Although the Mars lander might also provide a little more space.
Even the space shuttle tiered deck would have been a push to keep it sane!
I am not convinced this would be a flawless mission with regards to mental issues of the participants, never mind how well they were vetted.
After-all this is no week long excursion here…probable a two to three year duration…4 if you count the return journey!
In order to get anything worthwhile sorted and erect a hub for future colonists…this is basically the ISS construction on a solid surface and much further away.
All fine and dandy but the weak link would appear to be the Orion crew vehicle…keeping old successful technology in mind is one thing…just scaling it up for 4 crew ain’t gonna cut it methinks!
Too often space travel is about flag waving and not learning anything. Those who want to put people on Mars are as annoying as those who deny that Apollo 11 landed on the moon.
Unmanned rockets cost a fraction of manned ones because there’s no need for life support, plus you don’t have to return it to Earth. Hubble produced more usable science than the entirety of manned space flight combined, never mind the results of Mariner, Voyager and others.
I was very inspired by Zubrin’s Mars concept. Feet on the ground is largely meaningless if they are going to come straight home, but feet on the ground are invaluable if they are going to stay for quite a while and get some serious work done.
@ ^ Gordon – Yep. Agreed there – would be great to see Zubrin’s Mars plans given the go ahead and get a chance to work. Saw him give apublic lecture in my city (Adelaide, South Oz) many years ago and was quite impressed.
Human Mars landings, Human return to the Moon & common cheap nuclear fusion for energy generation – these are always going to happen in twenty years time and have been since the 1960’s it seems. Sigh.
I’ve wanted and waited to see us go forward in space exploration and travel all my life. It now seems further away and more remote than ever. Yet we know from Apollo we can develop the technology, we’re just lacking the political will and financial support. So depressing.
We need to fund NASA properly and remember that space is an investment that we gain far more by doing than we lose by putting money into – and employing people – and the money is spent here on Earth.
But the only US presidential candidate who even really raised the issue was Newt Gingrich and look what’s happened to him and the mockery he recieve for his Moon colony suggestion. Okay, he would’ve been a very bad president in other respects, probably, but still. Newton Gingrich is gone now anyhow and the derision he got won’t help the political advancement of space travel in the future.
Obama has killed off the Ares-Constellation program just as it was literally finally starting to take flight, and dismissed the idea of a human Lunar return which seems the obvious logical first step. Rmoney seems to have no inclination to support the space program or science. I wish there was more hope in sight but I can’t see much space exploration~wise right now. Not for the manned program and not a great deal for the robotic side either.
Paging Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon Tiki rafters .. ? ;-)
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki
Its actually surprising what even modest “primitive” technology can doa dn where it can take you!