Buzz Aldrin: Cancel Ares, reprieve shuttle, colonise Mars

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/28/aldrin_space_vision

by dhs • 17 years ago

16 34 17 years ago

theregister.co.uk

edw519• 17 years ago

Sounds like Obama needs to pull a "Kennedy" and define the goal. Amazing what smart people can do with a little vision.

sketerpot• 17 years ago

It helps to have funding that won't be cut off in two years by a mercurial congress.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Yes.

Politicians have a lot of vision, but little commitment.

We would have not went to the moon in the 1960s without the cold war.

TweedHeads• 17 years ago

Colonise Mars?

Coming from a man who's been in space, that is a stupid claim to do without first colonizing the moon and learning in the process.

Walk, run, fly.

gaius2• 17 years ago

Nonsense! Go and read some Robert Zubrin.

tom_rath2• 17 years ago

...then question some of the 'miracle technologies' used in Zubrin's infrastructure.

Yes, if we had Single Stage to Orbit fully reusable rockets and if all issues involved in living on another world were understood, Zubrin's plan(s) would be a shoo-in. However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial biosphere fully enclosed here on Earth!

Learn to walk before you try to run. Let's work on sustained outposts on a world no more than three days' travel away first.

dkberktas2• 17 years ago

Colonizing moon before mars is not a perquisite. Although it can teach us how to cope with complex engineering problems, still I believe we have already have the capability to colonize mars.

Locke1689• 17 years ago

From what I hear, it seems like reprieving the shuttle isn't really an option. It's so out of date and unsafe that NASA isn't willing to use it anymore.

Sure there are problems with Ares, but isn't that what engineers are for?

rbanffy4• 17 years ago

It's fine, as long as you let them design the system.

The shuttle, as it is, came out of an engineer's drawing board, but not before addressing the wishes of a lot of politicians.

I am all in for Ares, as long as engineers are in control. It seems they are not.

TriinT4• 17 years ago

Two questions:

1) why isn't the URL linking to the article on Popular Mechanics? (which is a lot better than this article)

2) would someone care to explain what the point in colonising Mars is? Unmanned exploration of Mars would be a whole lot cheaper because robots don't need life-support systems. Moreover, losing a couple of robots is more acceptable than losing a couple of human astronauts. Sure, we could colonise Mars, but at what cost, and what for? In case Aldrin hasn't noticed, the USA is not in the same financial situation as in 1960.

stcredzero10• 17 years ago

Humans living on Mars are in a much better position to access the resources of the Solar System than humans living on Earth. With a 24 hour day-night cycle, local access to water and necessary elements, it's also a lot easier to grow food. These two facts alone are enough to position human settlement on Mars for economic, military, and political domination of the Solar System.

Basically, colonizing Mars is desirable for the same reasons that colonizing North America was. Whichever nation does it can expect the resulting civilization to break away and surpass those on Earth. But the "old country" can expect much better relations with the new superpower.

(Actually, we could build a space elevator on Mars with materials we already have. The citizens of a Mars colony could eventually access space with the same ease with which we fly overseas.)

TriinT4• 17 years ago

"Humans living on Mars are in a much better position to access the resources of the Solar System than humans living on Earth."

Has the Earth run out of resources already? What is the rationale here: the Chinese seize the resources on Earth, so the USA goes to outer space to seize the resources of the Solar System? If this endeavor were cheap, it could be worth it. But let's face it: it won't be cheap.

I understand the allure of colonizing Mars. But I also believe in prioritizing. The US is fighting two unwinnable wars, and is in a grim financial situation. One step at a time. In a few decades the time might be right. Sending humans to Mars in the next couple of decades would be a bad investment imho.

Why not start small? We could keep sending robots to Mars. Since Mars has ice and CO2, one could introduce plants in Mars and try to start recycling all that CO2 into oxygen. That would perhaps create a tiny habitat and make things easier for the first humans to ever land on the red planet.

rbanffy4• 17 years ago

Don't forget the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn: low gravity, plenty of water and carbon-rich environments. The major downside is that the vicinity of Jupiter is as cozy as the interior of a microwave oven and sunlight is not that abundant as it is down here.

As for the Martian space elevator, it would involve the demolition of Deimos and Phobos or some moving of the counterweight in order to miss their orbits.

rbanffy4• 17 years ago

Colonizing other planets is one of the best ways to ensure the survival of our species. It's damn hard, but it's also very safe. The sooner we start, the sooner we are safe from the next global extinction and once we are settled, nothing short of a Gamma-ray burst frying our solar system could kill us off.

I am not willing to bet on faster-than-light travel and finding Earth-like worlds, first because FTL must be somewhere between insanely hard and plain impossible and second because we would have first to get permission from the natives.

And that arrangement, provided the ludicrously lucky situation of environment requirements being compatible, would make a lot of sense - by allowing reciprocal settlement both species would be insured against extinction.

Sound even like the start of a nice screenplay. Most probably someone already did it.

ars5• 17 years ago

I thought the problem was that humans can't get to mars!

Because there is too much solar and cosmic radiation, and no one would survive the trip. And enough shielding to block it is too heavy to launch (from earth). Which is why we want to go to the moon first.

stcredzero10• 17 years ago

I thought the problem was that humans can't get to mars! Because there is too much solar and cosmic radiation,

Nonsense. If you can hop in a shelter to avoid the occasional solar storm that can kill you instantly, the remaining associated risks are like smoking.

And enough shielding to block it is too heavy to launch (from earth).

Again nonsense. Water is a very good shield medium. You'll need to carry a lot of it anyhow, and you only need to shield a small short-duration shelter for radiation storms.

So we can extract the shielding from the moon? Waste of time for exploration. So you save on launch costs for the expedition. How much is it going to cost to launch the lunar shielding extraction equipment? Yes, it's desirable to have infrastructure on the moon, eventually. But for exploring Mars, it's superfluous. It's like Lewis and Clark needing to establish Tulsa before going to the Pacific.

Read Zubrin. He's got the facts on his side.

ars5• 17 years ago

> Nonsense. If you can hop in a shelter to avoid the occasional solar storm that can kill you instantly, the remaining associated risks are like smoking.

You are wrong. The radiation is lethal. What you wrote only applies near earth.

And it's not solar particles that are the main problem. It's cosmic particles, which have much much higher energies, and do not come in bursts.

See here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=magnet-forc... and here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shielding-s... and here: http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/the_real_reas... and here: http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/0004/files/rapp_mars_20... (pdf) and here: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080331-radiation-shield...

Is that enough? We are not going to mars anytime soon. Even a colony on the moon is not possible right now. We would either need to send people on once only short term construction trips, or some sort of robotic construction to make a shield first. Or a biological protectant of some kind.

dkberktas2• 17 years ago

nope, check put the ieee spectrum mars issue

Buzz Aldrin: Cancel Ares, reprieve shuttle, colonise Mars

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