The Race to Mars....will it happen?

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With the discovery of seasonal methane plumes on Mars and the possibility
of life or volcanic activity....will there be a new drive to send human beings
to Mars (perhaps to get deeper core samples or investigate the seasons in
greater detail)? Any designs, information or opinions welcome. :)

Personally speaking, my wife (a molecular biologist) and I were quite excited
by the possible implications of the NASA findings presented at the press conference
(just wish we could have seen it....Swedish television only mentioned it in passing).
 
I doubt we (baby boomers) ever live to see manned Mars mission. It'll take several generations just to pay off our current ever expanding national bail-out debt. Unless we discover life on mars that has some cash to spend. Or we Americans learn to live within our means and take bumps as they come I’d venture some other more savings based culture will be first to Mars. China???? Not so sure without us they seem stymied as well.
 
There are just two possibilities that could seriously reactivate a manned flight to Mars,
- The discovery of new propulsion technologies capable of making the trip in a shorter time
- The discovery of a good reason to go (two examples come to my mind)
- The discovery of ruins or artifacts from a Martian civilization.
- The discovery of a non-terrestrial form of life.
I must say that if earth can be impacted by meteorites coming from Mars, likewise bacteria of terrestrial origin might have travelled to Mars in the same way.
All known life forms share the common feature of deflecting polarized light in the same direction, if another life form be found that makes it differently, we will see a multiracial crew sharing the available space within a thin during two years!
I see that all opinions have been pessimist so far.
I personally believe that methane comes from old comet (Oort class) impacts, possibly liberated with season change warming or by small meteorite impacts.
I have always believed that Kennedy´s space program was a mistake and that the Dyna Soar was the right way to do things.
At the end, the huge expenses incurred by the Apollo Project created a strong rejecting feeling against science and technology, currently at its peak.
We will be having a new Kennedy now. Wait and see.
 
Justo Miranda said:
There are just two possibilities that could seriously reactivate a manned flight to Mars,
....
- The discovery of a non-terrestrial form of life.
Click to expand...

Finding extant life on Mars would be one of the more effective ways to make sure that an American manned mission doesn't happen.
1) The enviroweenies and greepissers would be up in arms about messing with the Martian ecology
2) The panicmongers woudl freak out about the possibility of the astronauts returnign a Martian plague to Earth.
3) NASA currently has to go to insane degrees to assure that its Mars probes are sterile. Imagine doing that with humans and food going to Mars.

My hope would be that if one of the rovers finds a confirmed case of current life on Mars that the onboard thermonuclear device immediately goes off before the news can be reported.
 
Orionblamblam said:
3) NASA currently has to go to insane degrees to assure that its Mars probes are sterile. Imagine doing that with humans and food going to Mars.

My hope would be that if one of the rovers finds a confirmed case of current life on Mars that the onboard thermonuclear device immediately goes off before the news can be reported.
Click to expand...

best example is Surveyor 3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveyor_3
landed 20 April 1967 on moon, in 1969 Apollo 12 astronaut take piece back to Earth
in TV camera they found common bacterium, Streptococcus mitis alive after 2 year space
(now this is question http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reports_of_Streptococcus_mitis_on_the_moon)
but NASA began to adopt strict abiotic procedures for space probes to prevent contamination.

however after some source, the USSR dint do that to there space probe
so its possibly that MARS 2, 3, 6 have contaminate The Planet Mars !

that's gonna be a cosmic Joke
NASA rover "Mars Science Laboratory" finds life on Mars
they do Sample return mission to get it (Probe lands in Utah !)
2) The panicmongers would freak out about the possibility of the astronauts returning a Martian plague to Earth.
Click to expand...
and in a high techlabor like Andromeda they find only Streptococcus mitis...
LOL
 
Humans to Mars won't happen until society is ready to put nuclear reactors into space. Going on chemical propulsion alone will be too heavy and too costly to launch.
 
Nuclear Power Space ships are better for marsflights

some examples

NME 1971 - 1900 tons chemical multistage, mission time 570 days
IMIS 1968 - 1226 tons with multistage NTR, mission time 460 days
if you use NTR in combination with Ionnengine its reduce more time and mass
GEM 1967 - 682 tons, multistage, mission time 450 days

that's with solid nuclear fuel, if you use Gaseous nuclear fuel
you get mission times of 80 days !
but today no one has build a reactor core for that in U.S.

it gonna be Chines, India or Russia how build nuclear reactors for Deep space

and U.S.A ?
there proposal for Chemical mission with
Aerocapture: with fat heat shield and to high G forces for crew after months of Weightlessness.
Split mission: return fuel and Lander are already in Mars orbit.
ISRU: propellant generated on Mars from the atmosphere.
those "support" makes the Mission to complex

links to examples
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/nasn1971.htm
http://www.astronautix.com/craft/imis1968.htm
http://beyondapollo.blogspot.com/2010/01/to-mars-in-30-days-by-gas-core-nuclear.html
http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,5107.0.html
 
There are times when I think IMIS is still the most realistic plan for Humans-to-Mars, even after 40 years of post-IMIS design studies. At least IMIS doesn't require a dozen Ares V launches per mission; nor does it suffer from the unrealistic optimism of Mars Direct.
 
Any manned Martian exploration will require both new technologies and living off of the land. The very idea of hauling everything with you is ludicrous. New technologies needed are in propulsion, shielding, spacesuit design, life support and tele-presence. Propulsion will require nuclear, either fission or fusion. And if it's fusion it will have to be something along the lines of Bussard's Polywell or some other non-Tokamak approach. Shielding will need to be some sort of powered magnetic system. Systems using magnetic fields have been proposed for shielding a lunar base. Spacesuit design has to simpler and less cumbersome. IMO the Mechanical Countermeasure type has the most potential. Life support, simpler and more reliable. Tele-presence would allow an individual in orbit or say a habitat on Phobos to operate probes in real time. Now if we could build a humaniod shaped robot operated by tel-presence we most likely would never really need to set foot on Mars

http://www.newmars.com/forums/index.php?sid=f072bcd7f21c66b4b4840b03269fcbc0

http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php?sid=e0a804d993ab0bba82a9628f9bfdb17b
 
It appears that moment of exploration opportunity has escaped us for now. It was very close in the late 60's as all the pieces of the puzzle began to come together. We had the will, infrastructure and technology in place in the Apollo era but failed to seize the moment. But with Apollo 11 the race it seems was over. Soon after history and events conspired to lead us down a different path. We chose to allow that will of exploration to wane and to abandon our infrastructure, to simply abandon in place and walk away. As a result today we are much farther away from such a journey than we we're in 1969. We had the chance to go and blew it. Who knows how long or how many generations it will be until that door of opportunity opens again? As for the race without any prize or motivation there are no contenders so its over...for now anyway.
 
It appears that moment of exploration opportunity has escaped us for now. It was very close in the late 60's as all the pieces of the puzzle began to come together. We had the will, infrastructure and technology in place in the Apollo era but failed to seize the moment. But with Apollo 11 the race ... we are much farther away from such a journey than we we're in 1969. We had the chance to go and blew it. Who knows how long or how many generations it will be until that door of opportunity opens again?

I dunno. I think in terms of 60s technology it would be a bridge too far. The price would go up and up, with no end in sight. The vast improvement in electronic miniturization and bandwidth made unmanned space exploration well within any acceptable budget. Mars isn't going anywhere. We have a chance to do unmanned exploration and find out what there is that is worth looking at. I do not forsee a manned expedition to Mars unless space travel becomes vastly cheaper and faster, unless unmanned exploration shows the unequivocal presence of life.
 
Apollo was unsustainable anyway since it required so much workforce and thus money. STS is barely sustainable, leaving little money for substantial new developments. Just throwing more money to keep larger armies operating the current paradigm of space launch is not going to work. There will not be large scale space activities until space launch becomes routine. It is still in the unreliable, unsafe, expensive, and delay prone experimental phase. It doesn't need to reach airline levels but 98% reliability just sucks.
In the least, if you have decent RLV:s that can fly tens of times per year, every craft would on average live only a few years before being destroyed in an accident - it could never be sustainable.
NASA is still stuck in the Apollo mindset, just like Wernher von Braun warned. A narrow minded unlimited cash crash program where the government specifies everything. Afterwards everybody wonders what should be done with all the monuments that were built. The cash isn't unlimited anymore so you can only scrap them. Are you any better off compared to when you started?

What if you hadn't built such teraprojects in the beginning? Instead you could have developed and experimented with technology that would substantially lower the cost of space access (stuff like engine tech that doesn't have to be disassembled between uses. or multi use heat shield materials), then create a healthy sustainable small scale industry (perhaps suborbital) which could go through multiple generations of operationally improved craft. Small scale is essential to provide multiple paths and multiple generations with low cost. As you certainly don't always know in the drawing board what works out in real life, you build many vehicle generations and try many parallel things that are proved in operations, and each one is improved from the lessons learned, providing more value for less cost, often through things like better reliability and maintainability, not necessarily performance.
And then finally expand to real spacefaring.

It's a long road, but it's faster when you compare it to trying to continually leapfrog and abort, wasting billions every time and then starting from scratch again with new managers. X-30, X-33, you name it.

But rational discussion about space strategies is really hard, the Apollo legacy is just too strong emotionally. Large cathedral like rockets launched a few times per year capture the imagination but are ultimately the antithesis of sustainable spacefaring (which ultimately aims to colonization).
 
It's a long road, but it's faster when you compare it to trying to continually leapfrog and abort, wasting billions every time and then starting from scratch again with new managers. X-30, X-33, you name it.
Click to expand...

...One thing to consider is that the leaps between the frogs is so long that the reason you start from scratch with new managers is that the old ones have either moved on, retired or just flat up and died.
 
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/30/obama-shoots-down-mars-exploration/
 
These kind of polls are meaningless. Public opinion polls on space subjects are notoriously all over the map. For starters, a majority of the American public doesn't even support space exploration and never did. And civil space is often at the top of the list of things that people say should be cut when money is short, right up there with foreign aid. But the public has no sense of what the United States actually spends on civil space, and when polled, they indicate that they think it is about a third as much as the military budget, or over $200 billion (compared to about $17+ billion).

But ultimately there is no indication that the public votes based upon these views. It just doesn't matter.
 
Not to mention, that you can pretty much get whatever poll result you're looking for through cherry-picking your respondants and through careful phrasing of your questions and choices...

Later! OL JR :)
 
Studying the mission profiles to the Moon and space stations as a rehearsal for going to Mars, I see two distinct different approaches forming up. The US seems to be prioritizing on 100% goal of reusable hardware or a high-end, over-budget disposable hardware (which makes little sense with this combo strategy)
The reusable strategy is technically challenging and requiring high speed turnaround of rockets and payloads (often fuel for spacecraft in space); the tech hurdle of large amounts of propellant transfer in LEO or LO; insitu of propellants on a large scale. Other items in the goal quest is operational nuclear power plants fon the Lunar and Mars surfaces as well as nuclear propulsion. (SpaceX has the additional challenge of proof of concept for reentry in two distinct atmospheres and 3 gravIties) The results can be rewarding but there are tremendous dependencies that are interconnected and could cause serious delays and high expense. The US has a floating, none-fixed target date and it has been continuously been pushed back.

The Chinese are utilizing improvements on previous designs with technical advancement but not necessarily requiring reusability for reaching the Moon, and likely the same for Mars. This can be a more modest approach and a likelihood of more manageable costs.

While there has been discussion of SpaceX Lunar Pass missions and or Orion,
In light of this… The Chinese are certainly capable of piloted Lunar Pass or Lunar Orbit Missions in the next 2-4 years. They will merely need a kicker stage for the TLI burn or the advent of the Long March 9. As a result, the Chinese are in a better position to achieving this earlier.

If the Chinese concentrate on the main spacecraft and the Russians as a potential partner focus on a Lunar Lander, this combo could very well beat the US back to the Lunar Surface.

The assembly of the Chinese space station components over the next five years, is a good trial run for eventually building a Mars component ship in LEO

It is very clear the Chinese have nuclear propulsion in their sights for piloted Mars and unmanned planetary missions to the Jovian worlds. Unlike the west, there are really no political obstacles for China in developing and bringing this into operational status, while the west is mired in bureaucracy and red tape.
When the Chinese tick the long space duration mission of 180 days box, they will have many of their habitation support systems in rigorous compliance for the next goal of perhaps a piloted Mars Flyby. This will be a good deep space testbed for the nuclear propulsion with a safe level guarantee return. The next step is piloted Mars Orbit and perhaps a stop over on Phobos with a test project of fuel insitu.
After a few more robot mar probes in heavier succession, the challenges of 5-8 tons landing on the Martian surface will be covered. I will speculated that the Chinese will go for speed and short stays on the surface and use a small piloted lander to land on Mars for a short duration. It is possible the previous piloted flyby could have dropped off supplies and provisions on its mission to augment the manned landing.

As for the US and the West; Mars seems to require large LEO refueling and large insitu fueling depots and infrastructure on the Moon and Mars. There also seems a leaning to large, fully reusable landers and habitats and all need support systems and massive funding.

Currently, at the state of technology and needed proof on concepts, I currently give the edge to China to being first, back to the Moon and first to Mars, unless there is a multi-administration commitment and a clear, strategic vision of going back to the Moon and staying on the Moon are to be accomplished and Mars as well.

Hope this starts some new discussions…on this topic
 
Not trying to come out as a condescending A-hole which I am sure is going to infuriate alot of users but I know a faster way we can get all get to Mars but wont do it out of national pride. That is just using the Chinese and the U.S. to start dumping the funding they had from their space agencies to Roscosmos and problem solved. Dont like it, than go figure out what they are doing in their educational institutes or scientists. Back in a 2018 interview of the head chief or Energomesh stated the re-usability of methane and that their are even space companies wanting to use this concept to travel to Mars. Than when asked what is recommended for deep space travel he states it is not LNG fuel but nuclear reactors with ion thrusters. Searched up LNG fuel as what kind of fuel must he be talking about and mostly got results saying methane. Its one of those I cant tell if we or anyone trying to use methane for Mars should feel insulted or not by his interview. And I surely cant argue them that it is idiotic to use nuclear fuel and ion thrusters when NASA themselves have made a Mars 2033 proposal.

spacenews.com

Independent report concludes 2033 human Mars mission is not feasible

A report concluded that NASA has no chance of sending humans to Mars by 2033, with the earliest such a mission could be flown being the late 2030s.
spacenews.com spacenews.com

That Mars mission is part of an overall human spaceflight program with total costs through 2037 of $217.4 billion. That includes the Mars mission costs as well as operations in low Earth orbit and development of Mars surface systems needed for future missions.

sdelanounas.ru

Прорыв отечественной космонавтики. Транспортно-энергетический модуль «НУКЛОН»

На выставке-форуме «Армия-2020», посвящённом новейшим разработкам, был представлен проект российского планетолёта «Нуклон». Беспилотный аппарат уникален не только для нашей страны, но и для всего мира. Предполагается, что...
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In July 2020, employees of the Keldysh Center proposed to launch a Martian complex. The expedition is planned to be carried out in 2030-2033 Its essence is to deliver a person to the surface of Mars during the period of the closest convergence of the two planets.

This complex will consist of 4 nuclear engines, tanks with liquid hydrogen, a warehouse, a ship for returning to earth "Eagle", take-off and landing and residential complexes. To launch it, it will take about 9 launches of heavy and super-heavy missiles. The complex will use a nuclear power plant (NPS), which has a capacity of 200 kW, a mass of 14 tons and emitters of 400 square meters. The estimated cost of such an installation is 8 billion rubles. According to experts, the implementation of the entire project will need at least 450 billion rubles.

In other words 6,324,750,000.00 dollars or more than 100 times the costs they proposed for nuklon to travel to the earths moon, venus and what looks like 3 moons of Jupiter.

https://news.rambler.ru/scitech/446...mars-cherez-10-let-pri-neobhodimosti-rogozin/ 8-10 years is Rogozins estimate if the right amount of funding is acquired.

The previous costs given of the Yenisei were 4 times cheaper than SLS but they had to postpone the design because for them it was still too expensive and they said lets make it methane instead. Its not rather that they are technologically incapable but do not have the money. I hear more news about China trying to make a starship design, havent gotten much headline news of the chinese or the U.S. proposing projects similiar to nuklon, Yes the U.S. is going nuclear now with some proposals but I think its more thermal propulsion than ion propulsion. The funny part is if either China or the U.S. knows ahead of time that they will be losing I know who they will turn to.

I dont know how users on the Space X thread manage to keep themselves entertained with starship flight dates, heat tiles, re-usability usage of engine increases and existing falcon kerosene rockets, tesla stock prices and his friend Bezos. I would more than likely be bored to death most of the time but periodicially check if there is anything new in rocket technology but its the same old same old designs. I get more entertained watching Russia defense net space program threads with news ranging from detonation engines, aerospike engines, new upperstage closed circuit engines that burn kerosene from 300 to 3000 seconds, intruducing parachute landing for orel and upper stage rockets, re-usability usages increases of engines, new rocket engines in the rd-170 to rd-180 series, new re-usable methane rocket Amur expectancy, minauture methane re-usable fly wing rockets like Irkut and probably krylo-sv, of course nuklon, keldysh center showcasing their nuclear reactor powered based for mars of using nuclear reactor travel, quantum engine even with thrusts being higher than what NASA or China being showcased, I expect more from Leonov as a possibility, sending a flying drone to deal with Venus, new material that absorbs radiation better than lead but weighs less as well, etc. Depending how serious the Mars race is between the U.S. and China they have help lurking around the corner which they themselves might be credited for in helping out.
 
Putin is starving Russian Space. He’s their Proxmire.

Musk could do Mars sooner by putting off Starship and have SuperHeavy flight orbit a private version of the barebones FLEM type mission. Flags, footprints—and a rake to clear a landing pad for bigger landers. Wasn’t there a minimal lander being looked at? Mark Wade had a LEM illustration…

The tiny lander for SLS was quite bare bones. Musk and Dynetics need to work together.

Dynetics Alpaca manned, Starship unmanned for the Moon.

Similar for Mars. Send a Starship Hab (STARHAB) first. Assemble the old red Mars One Crew Manual Battlestar that Zubrin hated. Tiny lander…massive bus left in Mars orbit…Athena type pusher shoves a Dragon with an inflatable living compartment tethered to this latter day Agena type deal that is discarded…after having supplied artificial gravity by spinning home. Spartan but doable?
 
Last edited:
publiusr said:
Putin is starving Russian Space. He’s their Proxmire.

Musk could do Mars sooner by putting off Starship and have SuperHeavy flight orbit a private version of the barebones FLEM type mission. Flags, footprints—and a rake to clear a landing pad for bigger landers. Wasn’t there a minimal lander being looked at? Mark Wade had a LEM illustration…

The tiny lander for SLS was quite bare bones. Musk and Dynetics need to work together.

Dynetics Alpaca manned, Starship unmanned for the Moon.

Similar for Mars. Send a Starship Hab (STARHAB) first. Assemble the old red Mars One Crew Manual Battlestar that Zubrin hated. Tiny lander…massive bus left in Mars orbit…Athena type pusher shoves a Dragon with an inflatable living compartment tethered to this latter day Agena type deal that is discarded…after having supplied artificial gravity by spinning home. Spartan but doable?
Click to expand...
Their economy might go back up for sufficient funding where putin might make more decisions for their space projects but the only thing i wish more from space X is more creative ideas on new rocket projects and ways of travel. We're still waiting here to find out when starship will carry payloads into orbits but still can't understand why NASA doesn't want to switch to starship for supposed cheaper costs than SLS for manned lunar landings. Their is a massive brain drain if we compare NASA to either Space X or Roscosmos which perplexes me that I find people wearing NASA shirts and sweaters out more in public than to this day finding someone wearing a space x shirt or sweater. The only NASA worn thing I would wear is if it says apollo 11 on it.
 
Manned spaceflight is an aberration of the Cold War.
When the International Space Station ceases operations and the Chinese decide that no-one apart from Musk and Bezos is interested in sending people, the era of humans in space will fade out.
Developments in artificial intelligence will make probes far more durable and capable than human crews.
 
tequilashooter said:
Not trying to come out as a condescending A-hole which I am sure is going to infuriate alot of users but I know a faster way we can get all get to Mars but wont do it out of national pride. That is just using the Chinese and the U.S. to start dumping the funding they had from their space agencies to Roscosmos and problem solved. Dont like it, than go figure out what they are doing in their educational institutes or scientists. Back in a 2018 interview of the head chief or Energomesh stated the re-usability of methane and that their are even space companies wanting to use this concept to travel to Mars. Than when asked what is recommended for deep space travel he states it is not LNG fuel but nuclear reactors with ion thrusters. Searched up LNG fuel as what kind of fuel must he be talking about and mostly got results saying methane. Its one of those I cant tell if we or anyone trying to use methane for Mars should feel insulted or not by his interview. And I surely cant argue them that it is idiotic to use nuclear fuel and ion thrusters when NASA themselves have made a Mars 2033 proposal.

spacenews.com

Independent report concludes 2033 human Mars mission is not feasible

A report concluded that NASA has no chance of sending humans to Mars by 2033, with the earliest such a mission could be flown being the late 2030s.
spacenews.com spacenews.com

That Mars mission is part of an overall human spaceflight program with total costs through 2037 of $217.4 billion. That includes the Mars mission costs as well as operations in low Earth orbit and development of Mars surface systems needed for future missions.

sdelanounas.ru

Прорыв отечественной космонавтики. Транспортно-энергетический модуль «НУКЛОН»

На выставке-форуме «Армия-2020», посвящённом новейшим разработкам, был представлен проект российского планетолёта «Нуклон». Беспилотный аппарат уникален не только для нашей страны, но и для всего мира. Предполагается, что...
sdelanounas.ru sdelanounas.ru

In July 2020, employees of the Keldysh Center proposed to launch a Martian complex. The expedition is planned to be carried out in 2030-2033 Its essence is to deliver a person to the surface of Mars during the period of the closest convergence of the two planets.

This complex will consist of 4 nuclear engines, tanks with liquid hydrogen, a warehouse, a ship for returning to earth "Eagle", take-off and landing and residential complexes. To launch it, it will take about 9 launches of heavy and super-heavy missiles. The complex will use a nuclear power plant (NPS), which has a capacity of 200 kW, a mass of 14 tons and emitters of 400 square meters. The estimated cost of such an installation is 8 billion rubles. According to experts, the implementation of the entire project will need at least 450 billion rubles.

In other words 6,324,750,000.00 dollars or more than 100 times the costs they proposed for nuklon to travel to the earths moon, venus and what looks like 3 moons of Jupiter.

https://news.rambler.ru/scitech/446...mars-cherez-10-let-pri-neobhodimosti-rogozin/ 8-10 years is Rogozins estimate if the right amount of funding is acquired.

The previous costs given of the Yenisei were 4 times cheaper than SLS but they had to postpone the design because for them it was still too expensive and they said lets make it methane instead. Its not rather that they are technologically incapable but do not have the money. I hear more news about China trying to make a starship design, havent gotten much headline news of the chinese or the U.S. proposing projects similiar to nuklon, Yes the U.S. is going nuclear now with some proposals but I think its more thermal propulsion than ion propulsion. The funny part is if either China or the U.S. knows ahead of time that they will be losing I know who they will turn to.

I dont know how users on the Space X thread manage to keep themselves entertained with starship flight dates, heat tiles, re-usability usage of engine increases and existing falcon kerosene rockets, tesla stock prices and his friend Bezos. I would more than likely be bored to death most of the time but periodicially check if there is anything new in rocket technology but its the same old same old designs. I get more entertained watching Russia defense net space program threads with news ranging from detonation engines, aerospike engines, new upperstage closed circuit engines that burn kerosene from 300 to 3000 seconds, intruducing parachute landing for orel and upper stage rockets, re-usability usages increases of engines, new rocket engines in the rd-170 to rd-180 series, new re-usable methane rocket Amur expectancy, minauture methane re-usable fly wing rockets like Irkut and probably krylo-sv, of course nuklon, keldysh center showcasing their nuclear reactor powered based for mars of using nuclear reactor travel, quantum engine even with thrusts being higher than what NASA or China being showcased, I expect more from Leonov as a possibility, sending a flying drone to deal with Venus, new material that absorbs radiation better than lead but weighs less as well, etc. Depending how serious the Mars race is between the U.S. and China they have help lurking around the corner which they themselves might be credited for in helping out.
Click to expand...
It’s an interesting funding concept but clearly that is a no-go and undoable in numerous ways. Clearly it’s the US vs the Chinese. Where the various European countries fall, and the Russkies side on and just some momentum.

I’m really trying to focus on the first two missions to the moon and Mars. Does it all have to be reusable? This is an expensive and tech luxury and costs a lot of money and time. Money and time are not a luxury. So maybe on the first missions back to moon and to Mars could have a wee bit more disposable and ideally cheaper and faster as a result.
 
uk 75 said:
Manned spaceflight is an aberration of the Cold War.
When the International Space Station ceases operations and the Chinese decide that no-one apart from Musk and Bezos is interested in sending people, the era of humans in space will fade out.
Developments in artificial intelligence will make probes far more durable and capable than human crews.
Click to expand...
Not so sure about that but it will be dependent on funding and the basic will to do it. What we learn from automated missions may teach us a lot but, manned missions will teach us more.
 
This isn't about costs, it's about the will to do the job.

Meanwhile, at the very top of NASA's agenda is getting a woman to the Moon. Why? Because she's a woman!

That and it's closer...
 
GTX said:
But that won't satisfy the human need to be there in person.
Click to expand...
That's what they do in all the Alien movies and all those guys end badly, it's preferable to send robots to dangerous places, heroes are no longer needed.
 

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uk 75 said:
Manned spaceflight is an aberration of the Cold War.
When the International Space Station ceases operations and the Chinese decide that no-one apart from Musk and Bezos is interested in sending people, the era of humans in space will fade out.
Developments in artificial intelligence will make probes far more durable and capable than human crews.
Click to expand...
I have always believed that Kennedy´s space program was a mistake and that the Dyna Soar was the right way to do things.
At the end, the huge expenses incurred by the Apollo Project created a strong rejecting feeling against science and technology, currently at its peak.
 
There are just two possibilities that could seriously reactivate a manned flight to Mars,
- The discovery of new propulsion technologies capable of making the trip in a shorter time
- The discovery of a good reason to go (two examples come to my mind)
- The discovery of ruins or artifacts from a Martian civilization.
- The discovery of a non-terrestrial form of life.
 
If Mars had a magnetic field or was shielded from solar wind, it'd be infinitely more habitable than it is right now. That alone would make colonization worthwhile.
 
Space Baron said:
tequilashooter said:
Not trying to come out as a condescending A-hole which I am sure is going to infuriate alot of users

In July 2020, employees of the Keldysh Center proposed to launch a Martian complex. To launch it, it will take about 9 launches of heavy and super-heavy missiles.

The previous costs given of the Yenisei were 4 times cheaper than SLS
Click to expand...

I’m really trying to focus on the first two missions to the moon and Mars. Does it all have to be reusable?
Click to expand...
No, it doesn’t have to be reusable in the sense Musk thinks of.

A true international mission Mars mission might be a little less than the old Mars One Crew Manual…but a little more than FLEM.

The FLEM method with one SLS, one LM-9 and an LM-5….a Proton DOS/Zvezda, and two Super Heavys and a Falcon Heavy might be as bare bones as you can get. You might be able to launch and assemble about 700 tons all in a few days.
 
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The Apollo and Mercury missions, and the prep for the, introduced a heap of new products. We also learned a lot about medicine so while not everything gained from those projects is obvious to a casual glance, going deeper gives a whole new viewpoint.
 
I agree. I would like to see Starships send up enough solar panels that ISS…instead of splashing in Point Nemo, gets slowly shoved out of orbit as a Mars cycler once Axion detaches. SPS-become solar electric tug.
 
publiusr said:
I agree. I would like to see Starships send up enough solar panels that ISS…instead of splashing in Point Nemo, gets slowly shoved out of orbit as a Mars cycler once Axion detaches. SPS-become solar electric tug.
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ISS can not survive out of LEO
 

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