UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions

Going to mars without landing means the ship won't be able to manufacture fuel
on Mars for the return journey. (although this would not prevent the lander
from relying on Mars-manufactured fuel).

The journey to the Moon's surface is totally pointless in my opinion. The ISS
is a far better platform to test a year long mission, hardware performance,
reliability and servicability in space.

If they build a ship capable of sustaining X crewmembers for one year and send
it off just for an orbit around mars, bring it back and then send another
mission to mars, one would hope that such a ship (which would have to be even
bigger than the current space station) would be reused and as a result, remain
in earth orbit upon return so it can be refurbished for the next mission.

It is doubtful that a mars vehicle could be launched as a single piece. Some
assembly in LEO will be required, and so will a lot of missions that will
bring the fuel to the vehicle.

Manned mission to mars, yes. But I am not sure that this can or should be
achieved with the priorities outlined in the document.


Can humans really spend 6 months in 0g and then land on a planet and function
productively ? If not, they will require some sort of centrigugal accomodation
module wherte they can spend a few hours per day.

drdoody wrote:
Sounds like the impetus NASA needs to quit jacking around and get to
cracking on something important.

NASA may have lacked a clear focus and a clear goal, but I don't think that
they've been jacking around. The experience gained with the shuttle and with
the ISS will be incredibly useful to build a ship to Mars and back.

"Hagar" wrote in message
...
In article
Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:

January 8, 2004

wrote:

UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions
By Frank Sietzen Jr. and Keith L. Cowing
United Press International

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 (UPI) -- American astronauts will return
to ...

congress.

Wow, more footprints. Real Cool.

Note the fine print:

retiring the shuttle fleet

NASA would end substantial involvement in the space station

Bush will direct NASA to scale back or scrap all existing
programs that do not support the new effort.

No more Galileos or Cassinis or Pluto probes or Space Telescopes?

That will certainly get the scientific community in a frenzy. OTOH, the cost
of these missions is likely to be such that there isn't any other way to do
it, unless the U.S. wants to spend 5% of GDP on space exploration. My guess
is that NASA will have to do all this with the current budget, adjusted for
inflation on a year-by-year basis, which may lead to cutting corners. But
OTOH there's a lot of knowledge built up from the Apollo program on how to
do this stuff, so it should be possible for a lot less money.

"John Cody" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
m...
UPI Exclusive: Bush OKs new moon missions
By Frank Sietzen Jr. and Keith L. Cowing
United Press International

The first manned Mars expeditions would attempt to orbit the red
planet in advance of landings -- much as Apollo 8 and 10 orbited the
moon but did not land. The orbital flights would conduct photo
reconnaissance of the Martian surface before sending landing craft,
said sources familiar with the plan's details.

What exactly would be the point of this? Anyone?

A 'true' Mars mission would last up to three years and would therefore
create its own host of problems (logistics). A manned fly-by would already
take more than a year and would be doable within a decade (my guess is that
it WILL be done within a decade).

"John Cody" writes:

I'm not wholly against the idea of a crewed Mars orbital mission
(particularly if it includes flybys/landings on Phobos and/or Deimos as a
bonus). It was the mention of 'photo reconnaissance of the Martian surface'
as the primary aim (as opposed to Phobos science or the real-time
teleoperation of Martian robots) that confused me. Is there *really*
anything useful we could learn about Mars that could be obtained by the
early 21st century equivalent of an astronaut pointing a Hasselblad at one
of the LM windows?

When you're flying back anyway you can avoid sending all data back via
the DSN bottleneck (and just take along a rack of harddisks). If you
look at the earth surface mapping missions (using STS) you will easily
see that the sheer amount of data gathered with some instruments are a
real showstopper otherwise.


Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take
away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Hmm, it ain't gonna happen I suspect when Bushykins is hopefully going to be
booted out of the Whitehouse soon. But that is just a personal observation.

I understood that one idea was greater collaboration between Nasa and other
countries for the unmanned explorations of places humans could not go,
presumably so that the cost is shared. I must say that if the Mars Rovers
are a success, he may have great difficulty selling the vision to anyone at
all.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
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Wasn't he the guy who wanted to commit this nation?--and pretty well
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John Doe wrote:

The journey to the Moon's surface is totally pointless in my opinion. The ISS
is a far better platform to test a year long mission, hardware performance,
reliability and servicability in space.

The Moon is possibly very important if your goal is domination of cis-lunar space.

Paul

Dr. O wrote:

No more Galileos or Cassinis or Pluto probes or Space Telescopes?


That will certainly get the scientific community in a frenzy. OTOH, the cost
of these missions is likely to be such that there isn't any other way to do
it, unless the U.S. wants to spend 5% of GDP on space exploration.

So those kinds of missions are cancelled, and the program only costs (say)
4.95% of GDP?

Paul

In sci.space.shuttle Jochem Huhmann wrote:
"John Cody" writes:

I'm not wholly against the idea of a crewed Mars orbital mission
(particularly if it includes flybys/landings on Phobos and/or Deimos as a
bonus). It was the mention of 'photo reconnaissance of the Martian surface'
as the primary aim (as opposed to Phobos science or the real-time
teleoperation of Martian robots) that confused me. Is there *really*
anything useful we could learn about Mars that could be obtained by the
early 21st century equivalent of an astronaut pointing a Hasselblad at one
of the LM windows?

When you're flying back anyway you can avoid sending all data back via
the DSN bottleneck (and just take along a rack of harddisks). If you
look at the earth surface mapping missions (using STS) you will easily
see that the sheer amount of data gathered with some instruments are a
real showstopper otherwise.

There are other ways.
For example, a little bird stuck in earth orbit, talking to martian
orbiters over a fast laser link, with a big dish pointed down at some
earth stations.

Tens of megabytes/second is not hard to achieve, compared to a manned
flyby mission.