Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/how-to-go-to-marsright-now

by TriinT • 17 years ago

32 23 17 years ago

spectrum.ieee.org

DanHulton• 17 years ago

I just watched Apollo 13 last night and I have to say, I'm sad i wasn't alive during the space race - the very concept thrills me.

But it appears that while we have the technology to get to Mars today, we lack the impetus - something that the article addresses, but not wholly.

We went to the moon to beat the Soviets. It would be more likely that we would persue a manned Mars program if we had someone to beat.

As it stands, I feel it's more likely that a manned Mars program will be undertaken by the various commercial ventures out there than by any government.

uuilly• 17 years ago

Apropos: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/17/the_moo...

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

We went to the moon to beat the Soviets.

That's half the truth. The rest of the truth is: We went to the Moon out of sheer terror.

In fact, the Moon trip itself was a side effect. The space race took the form of a race to the moon because "the race to the Moon" was a much more joyful marketing slogan than "the race to design and build the next generation of ICBMs that will enable cities and towns like yours to be destroyed with even greater precision."

Remember that the Moon race was conceived in the early 1960s. ICBMs were a brand new technology. Everybody knew that we had to build more of them, keep improving them, stay ahead in them -- they'd seen the H-bomb tests. People who had lived through the 1940s -- Stalingrad, Auschwitz, Nanking, Bataan, Dresden, Nagasaki -- naturally found it difficult to have faith in human decency and restraint; they all thought World War III was inevitable, and probably imminent. This was several years before the Cuban missile crisis and a decade before the ABM treaty.

But it was hard to stay cheerful when talking about the world's rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals, so the space race was portrayed as a game to get astronauts and/or cosmonauts to the moon, and everyone had a lot of fun playing along. Enormous quantities of money were poured into rocket research, the military on both sides of the Cold War got their high-tech missiles and spy satellites and electronics, and in the end we got to watch some truly amazing pictures of people walking on the moon and feel proud. Smiles all around. A big win for everyone.

But the Moon itself was a secondary goal. A Macguffin. The Soviets didn't even bother to go, and their effort seems to me to have been rather halfhearted. By 1969 they had long since achieved the important goal anyway: Better rockets. The USA followed through but quickly got bored with the actual "moon" part. The Apollo 13 movie talked all about that: Mere months after the first moon missions, the remaining ones attracted scant public interest.

So I find the space race fascinating, and I understand the nostalgia for it, and I'm glad some good came out of the cold war, but I don't want to live through anything like it if I don't have to.

jibiki2• 17 years ago

I'm fascinated by comments like this one, which relate a historical narrative explaining what motivated some event. How do I tell if it's true? What would it mean for it to be false? If it's true (which it is, presumably,) could you tell another story that was just as true, but completely different? There's nothing controversial about the idea that the space program was motivated by the desire to test military technology (indeed, everyone assumed this was the purpose of North Korea's recent "satellite launch" or whatever.) And yet the story being told here is much "bigger" than that fact.

(If you have trouble seeing what I mean, here's an example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624495 . People see the same facts and write completely different stories.)

ars• 17 years ago

Interesting plan, but massively glosses over some very hard things.

Land 40 tons using a parachute????

And of course galactic radiation that is going to be bad for the crew (how bad is a subject of debate that I already had, so am not going to repeat).

smhinsey3• 17 years ago

One of the cornerstones of the Mars Direct approach is that it takes advantage of the solar system's orbital mechanics such that the actual trip is relatively short in comparison with the duration humans have spent in space so far. I think you probably have a point about 40 tons aerobraking in the atmosphere and then popping a parachute, but I wouldn't expect either to be a deal breaker.

The NASA Design Reference mission is essentially a modified version of Mars Direct, so I would expect reading up on this would provide solutions to these problems, or at least it will go into more detail than this brief article.

vaksel2• 17 years ago

it needs competition, private companies would be all over this if they could profit from space exploration. Setup a law that states that any landing on the planet will get the lander all land for 250 miles, and you'd have hundreds of missions lifting off trying to get a piece of the pie.

TriinT• 17 years ago

I am all for private enterprise and creating incentives, but would that work? We know that there are metals and minerals that could be mined in asteroids and other planets. But, so far no private mission has been carried out. In fact, only recently have private companies started launching satellites into orbit, which is kind of trivial when compared to mining the Moon, or Mars.

Last but not least, suppose that you would grant any spaceship landing in Mars the right to own all land within 250 miles. Sounds great, but why wouldn't they explore and mine the entire planet if they could?!? It's not like you have CCTV cameras on Mars to know what they're doing, where they're mining, etc. Hence, in a way that's a false incentive.

vaksel2• 17 years ago

That's because the cost does not justify the payout. Sure you could go and mine on Mars, but there is no guarantee you'll keep the land if you find anything. By setting up a rule that if you explore it, it's yours...you'd have companies rushing to plant their flag...not because they wish to explore, but to lay a claim of ownership on the area for the future.

As far as companies mining the entire planet, sure they could, but they'd be poachers. The 250 mile area claim would have legal rights of ownership backed by earth governments.

The rule would obviously need to add some extra provisions to drive innovation. I dunno, require colonies within 100 years, or trips every decade to show the flag etc.

There is a reason that pretty much every single explorer on earth was financially backed by either a company or a gov't grant.

tom_rath• 17 years ago

Like Earth, the resources on Mars are at the bottom of a gravity well and lack the benefit of Earth's breathable atmosphere, massive infrastructure and ~7 Billion inhabitants. What, exactly, would you profit from by owning 250 miles of that? A business would do better to snag 1 mile of diamond-yielding tundra here instead.

Want something valuable? Mine an asteroid for platinum, build fuel cells out of it, and undercut the terrestrial competition while cleaning up on the profit. Right there you've identified a competitive advantage (low-cost of scarce resources) to satisfy a growing market which exists today.

eru• 17 years ago

Who cares about earthly laws in space? You can take whatever you can lay claim on.

improbable42• 17 years ago

I don't think it's ever been the technology that's prevented us going to Mars - its the cost and the will of the people. A 25% bigger budget for NASA is still bigger, and considering right now even the ISS looks to be in trouble, you would need someone or something very special to get the public behind more space missions.

warfangle• 17 years ago

Hmm.

NASA: 17.6 Billion. TARP Bailout: 700 Billion.

Your tax dollars at work...

I'd love to see what a company like SpaceX could do if they had a yearly grant (qualified by demonstrable successes) of 25% NASA's budget.

dan_the_welder• 17 years ago

Nice comparison. Sad though.

mynameishere• 17 years ago

Relevant:

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/animation/watch/v...

smhinsey3• 17 years ago

I think the most interesting aspect of the Mars Direct-style plans is that they can potentially be one-way. The largest expense with a trip to Mars in terms of technology and resources is getting back out of the Martian gravity well and back to Earth. If you go far enough into the Mars Direct-style approach, there's no particular reason why you need to be in any hurry to come back and you can think about sending crews in the dozens rather than single digits.

I'm not sure I can see NASA doing a one-way mission, but I'll be first in line if SpaceX or whoever tries it.

poutine• 17 years ago

We need a permanent presence in space, not a series of one off jaunts. Mars is too far and our technology too limited to colonize. It would just be a flag plant. However the moon is within our reach.

Spending resources on Mars now will only delay our permanent presence in space.

Manned missions to the Moon to set up a colony. Robotics for the rest of the solar system. It's the only way.

gaius• 17 years ago

I don't understand this at all. Your first sentence is bold yet your second is hesitant. Make up your mind, my friend! :-)

bart• 17 years ago

I think that Moon is much important milestone than mars in the shorterm. The main reason is that Moonh is the huge resource of Helium-3, which should be a main energy resource of the next centuries. Who dominate the moon will also dominate the energy of the future. This is the main reason, why Chine, USA and Russia take a look more at the Moon than Mars.

troels• 17 years ago

Without knowing anything specific, I'd venture to guess that the distance has something to say too.

Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now

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