A human Mars mission?

"Christopher" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 14:27:26 -0700, "Jason Rhodes"
wrote:


"Christopher" wrote in message
...

Sad but true, you as an American have any objection to a private
none[sic]
American individual going to Mars? :-

Not really.

Cool. Be nice if NASA and your government had the same attitude.

Care to provide a reference for NASA and or the US government objecting
to a
non-American private individual going to Mars?

In 1957 the American government and people got quite upset when the
Russians sent up Sputnik, and NASA and the American government got
even more upset when just 4 years later the Russians in 1961 launched
the Russian called Yuri Gargarin, so IF a 'non-American private
individual' got to Mars first thus beating NASA and its multi billion
dollar technology, and armies of bright sparks with Phd's, NASA, the
American government, and people would probably be morose, at the
thought that the Cross of Saint George was flying on the Martian
surface with English footprints around it, and not the Stars and
Stripes and American footprints. In fact I dout the American TV news
would even mention it on the main American evening news. :-)

I'll ask the question again, because in all your incoherent rambling, you
made no attempt to answer it. Care to provide a reference for NASA and or
the US government objecting to a
non-American private individual going to Mars?

I would guess that nobody at NASA has even given a second though to "The
Cross of St. George.. flying on the Martian surface." The though of that is
so ludicrous that it doesn't merit any attention at NASA.

Now, if you have any evidence that NASA or the US government is officially
opposed to a private Mars mission, please point it out.

Jason

"Christopher" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 21:49:17 -0700, "Jason Rhodes"
wrote:


"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" wrote in message
.. .

"Jason Rhodes" wrote in message
...


To maybe, but then your country never had an empire like mine.

Can you rephrase this sentence to make your point clear? The first
clause
is total nonsense and it is hard to understand what you are implying.


Insert the word you in the first part.

Jason

So his point was that by virtue of his being British,

English.

he has a better grasp
of the intricacies of empire building, trade, and exploration (and how
these
are related) than anyone of any other nationality?

Something like that. Rule Britannia.

The lack of knowledge you have demonstrated in historical facts and the
causes of historical trends tends to indicate otherwise. Fortunately, I
know several English people who don't suffer from the same lack of
knowledge, so I won't use your ignorance as an indictment of the entire
English educational system.

Jason

"Joe Strout" wrote in message
...
NASA wants to go to Mars so bad, they're neglecting a large number of
much more sensible options. But there is no sign that they'll get to go
any time in the foreseeable future. It's too expensive, and frankly
NASA's success record isn't good enough to justify it.


What is the requisite measure of success that could justify it?

Jason

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 09:04:45 GMT, (Christopher)
wrote:

The English were the first to stay and
establish colonys, so my 'argument' dosn't fail.

No, that would be the *Spanish*, by a significant margin.

What year, and do you mean North America, or South America, or the bit
in the middle?

St. Augustine, Florida (Spain). Founded August 28, 1565.
http://www.oldcity.com/history-information.cfm

Roanoke Island, North Carolina (England). Founded 1587 (found
abandoned 1590, colonists never seen again.)
http://www.nps.gov/fora/search.htm

Santa Fe, New Mexico (Spain). Founded 1607.
http://sfweb.ci.santa-fe.nm.us/

Jamestown, Virginia (England). Founded May 13, 1607.
http://www.historian.org/local/jamstwnva.htm

Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. 1610.

Brian

In article , Sander Vesik
writes:

Patrick wrote:
In article ,
(Christopher) writes:

But even if someone started NOW on it, I'd be surprised if it could
happen in the next 50 years. How are they going to get there?

50 years is a long time - in that time we (as a species) will have
doubled the time we have been exposed to spaceflight.

We might, unless a few more shuttles disintegrate and the desire
to go up evaporates.
The moon landings began in 1969. 34 years later (a long time), not
only do we not have a permanent moon base, we couldn't even
get to the moon right now if we wanted to.

A Hohman-transfer orbit would require keeping astronauts alive
for about 2 years, 14 months in space and the rest on the surface
of Mars. What's the longest anyone has lived in space? A year?
Is it possible to counteract the effects of no gravity on the human
body? Nobody knows yet. Is it possible to make a system that
can provide food/air continuously for long periods away from earth?

you don't need that if you can send out 6 supply sattelites - 3 for the
way there and 3 for getting back to rendezvous. Plan to miss one on both
trips, so a refueler will need to carry about 8 months worth.

Ah, just so. What rocket are you going to use to put your supply
satellites in place? Take the time required to develop the rocket,
the supply systems and the mission, then the time to test the
system (by say, practice missions between the moon and earth),
and then actually launch them and put them in place. How many
years does that come out to be? That's not even including
failures. How long was it supposed to take to get the ISS put
together?

A mars-direct launch might cut the time but then you need
a BFR (big f****** rocket), which we don't have now. You'd probably
in either case have to build a ship in orbit, not launch it from the earth,
and you'd probably need at least two, one to go ahead of time

You can send a lot of small(er) ships to carry suplies, you can start sending
them well in advance, they can continue to leave Earth when the main mission
is in progress and a large portion of them can definately use fuel efficent
ion propulsion.

I don't think you want to use ion propulsion to go anywhere fast. The latest
ion powered probe is going to the moon (Smart-1) and it's going to take
17 months to get there.

The trip to mars is a lot more difficult than people seem to think it is. It
took a huge Saturn-5 rocket just to put a tiny capsule with 3 men in
it into earth orbit. The longest Apollo mission lasted 12 and a half DAYS.
The moon is only, 250,000 miles away, even a direct shot to mars is a minimum
45 million miles, and a Hohman type orbit is 300 million miles. It ain't
so easy folks.




Patrick

Michael Gallagher writes:
That was the same argument used against Apollo, IIRC. If we wait for
all the "important" things to be done with that money, we'd never use
it to go to Mars. Or anywhere else, for that matter. As another
poster pointed out, if the English had waited for everything to be
perfect back home before colonizing North America, the map would look
very different today.

Apollo is a bad example. By all accounts it was a politically
motivated stunt to show the world that the US was economically and
technologically superior to the Soviet Union. We've not been to the
moon in over 30 years. By all accounts, Apollo was a dead-end
program. It was an aberration that would not have happened in another
socio-economic climate.

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 09:04:28 GMT, (Christopher)
wrote:

On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 14:27:26 -0700, "Jason Rhodes"
wrote:


"Christopher" wrote in message
...

Sad but true, you as an American have any objection to a private
none[sic]
American individual going to Mars? :-

Not really.

Cool. Be nice if NASA and your government had the same attitude.

Care to provide a reference for NASA and or the US government objecting to a
non-American private individual going to Mars?

In 1957 the American government and people got quite upset when the
Russians sent up Sputnik, and NASA and the American government got
even more upset when just 4 years later the Russians in 1961 launched
the Russian called Yuri Gargarin, so IF a 'non-American private
individual' got to Mars first thus beating NASA and its multi billion
dollar technology, and armies of bright sparks with Phd's, NASA, the
American government, and people would probably be morose, at the
thought that the Cross of Saint George was flying on the Martian
surface with English footprints around it, and not the Stars and
Stripes and American footprints. In fact I dout the American TV news
would even mention it on the main American evening news. :-)

You may not have noticed two things...

1. An American has already travelled into space without NASA's help.
He was Dennis Tito, and he paid the Russians to take him. NASA was not
pleased, to say the least, but that was mostly because Tito flew to a
Space Station that was still under construction and NASA considered
him a distraction.

2. What may be the world's first private spacecraft made its maiden
glide flight over the weekend. Suborbital, but its a start. NASA and
the US government have not made any effort to stop it.

Brian

(Christopher) wrote:

On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 18:29:07 GMT, (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

(Christopher) wrote:

On Sat, 09 Aug 2003 22:41:36 GMT, (Derek Lyons)
wrote:

(Christopher) wrote:
Thats a sad indictment of America and it's 'frontier sprit'

The 'frontier spirit' is mostly a myth anyhow. What truth there was
to it was mostly about economics and exploitation, not about going
someplace for the sake of going there.

Trade follows the flag.

laughs No. The flag goes were trade desires. It's a myth that it
flows the other way 'round.

To maybe, but then your country never had an empire like mine.


And oddly enough... Both in your Empire, our version of the same, and
our 'manifest destiny period', all followed the same pattern.

The Flag followed where trade will go.

D.
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(Christopher) wrote:

On Sun, 10 Aug 2003 16:40:26 GMT, Brian Thorn
wrote:

The
British were the third or fourth world power (depending on if you
count the Vikings) to reach the New World but were ultimately the most
influential power in the New World, until they arrogantly overtaxed
their colonies to the point of revolution.

That what they taught you in American high school.

That's the facts of history, extensively supported by documentary and
archeological evidence.

Note that the oldest continuously occupied cities in the United States
are St. Augustine, Florida and Santa Fe, New Mexico... both former
Spanish outposts. Note also that the first British outpost in the New
World, at Roanoke Island, failed and its colonists were never seen
again.

The Spanish had something to do with that.

Um, no. The latest findings seem to show that the Roanoke colonists
pretty much did themselves in.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
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(Christopher) wrote:

In 1957 the American government and people got quite upset when the
Russians sent up Sputnik, and NASA and the American government got
even more upset when just 4 years later the Russians in 1961 launched
the Russian called Yuri Gargarin, so IF a 'non-American private
individual' got to Mars first thus beating NASA and its multi billion
dollar technology, and armies of bright sparks with Phd's, NASA, the
American government, and people would probably be morose, at the
thought that the Cross of Saint George was flying on the Martian
surface with English footprints around it, and not the Stars and
Stripes and American footprints.

ROTFL.

I find it even less likely that Britain would be able to organize such
a mission than NASA.

Or hadn't you noticed that your country hasn't managed much on the
technical side in nearly 50 years that didn't involve American or
French help? Even worse, what little you do manage, you promptly stop
doing.

In fact I dout the American TV news would even mention it on the main American
evening news. :-)

One advantage of living in a free country is that we have multiple
news sources, so there is no 'main American evening news'. A further
advantage is they rarely miss an opportunity to cover something that
embarrasses the government.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
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