This actually quite sad. It was goofy when Carl Sagan suggested it almost 30 years ago and, with all due respect to Bob Zubrin, it’s goofy now.
So what is Russia going to offer? Their great expertiese in sending tiny punk rock chicks to the Gulag?
Zubrin is seeing mars slip away which is really sad considering how close we are to going. That’s what depending on government HLV does. Even sadder is he knows HLV isn’t required.
I’m all for the Russians going to mars, the same way Mars One is, by not excluding them.
The only thing missing is to have the Mars One lander tested and that’s on the schedule.
We just need to have a bit more patience.
One thing I’ve never heard a good answer for: why Zubrin thinks Mars Semi-Direct is better than on-orbit assembly. Surely if you can avoid a mission critical rendezvous in Mars orbit, on-orbit assembly is a small price to pay.
One thing I’ve never heard a good answer for: why Zubrin thinks Mars Semi-Direct is better than on-orbit assembly.
To my knowledge, there are three things. First, more stuff in the “have to do first” category. Orbital assembly techniques and the like would need to be refined (though we do now have the ISS as a working example). For a similar case, he’s complained about the “Moon first” people (who claim that we have to develop stuff on the Moon first before we can go to Mars), seeing that as an unnecessary obstacle to going to Mars. Even though we don’t have heavy lift now, it is still a proven technology.
Second, it simplifies the mission complexity to some degree (or more accurately, moves much of that complexity to the Earth’s surface). For example, in the original plan the first launch is an unmanned, nuclear powered, atmosphere processing plant. It processes enough propellant so that by the time you make the second launch a couple years later, you already have propellant ready for a return trip to Earth (as well as the power plant, a return vehicle, some basic living facilities, and enough water and air for a two year stay for four people). The second launch sends four or so people on a 6-9 month flight. That’s it for launches.
The people land and do stuff on the Martian surface for almost a couple of years. Then they come back on the return vehicle.
Third, because one takes a delta-v hit from assembling in LEO rather than launching directly into a Mars transfer orbit. I don’t know how much.
“Imagine if we worked together.”
In which case we never would have gotten to the Moon when we did, because competition spurs on innovation better than cooperation does.
It’s possible that the success of Project Apollo was only possible in the competent bureaucrat era.
I like that we have people and cameras in space sending back cool pictures, and I appreciate the engineering advances that come about as a result of taking on space exploration projects, but I’m not sure what we gain from manned expeditions at this point. “We” can’t go to Mars: At most, a handful of people can go. It’s not a place that can really be inhabited and it’s too far away for very many people to ever go and come back again. When explorers like Columbus sailed the oceans, it wasn’t just to see if they could survive the trip. They wanted to find stuff people could use or places they could live.
I’d be a lot more interested in near-earth projects that could yield actual advancements in transportation, etc., deep-ocean exploration — stuff that may be just as challenging and audacious but that holds more obvious potential to yield practical benefits to us earthlings.
I’m with you, Conrad. Mars is a distraction rather than a useful goal. It has just enough atmosphere to be a problem while not being enough to be useful; it’s covered in corrosive, abrasive dust that will be hell on equipment and people’s lungs; and there aren’t any resources there that aren’t available on easier targets such as the Earth-crossing asteroids. And it’s a very long way away, so any potentially fatal problems can’t be fixed in time and may kill space exploration because of Earthly reaction.
IMHO Mars is a worthwhile target only once humanity has enough equipment in resources in space that it will be relatively easy. The Moon, as an industrial target rather than a boots-and-flags one, is a good intermediate goal.
But given the way politics works, a hugely expensive stunt is probably the way it will go if it goes at all.
I’m one of those “you need to build a space based industrial infrastructure if you plan on going to places like Mars to stay” people. So a one time mission with Putin’s “help” sounds like repeating the basic mistakes of Apollo. The boots and flags thing can be fun, but it isn’t real progress.
Any plan with NASA in the critical path is unlikely to succeed. The NASA of today is not the NASA of the Apollo age. They will probably need the next three years just to make the view graphs and simulated animations of the mission.
This actually quite sad. It was goofy when Carl Sagan suggested it almost 30 years ago and, with all due respect to Bob Zubrin, it’s goofy now.
So what is Russia going to offer? Their great expertiese in sending tiny punk rock chicks to the Gulag?
Zubrin is seeing mars slip away which is really sad considering how close we are to going. That’s what depending on government HLV does. Even sadder is he knows HLV isn’t required.
I’m all for the Russians going to mars, the same way Mars One is, by not excluding them.
The only thing missing is to have the Mars One lander tested and that’s on the schedule.
We just need to have a bit more patience.
One thing I’ve never heard a good answer for: why Zubrin thinks Mars Semi-Direct is better than on-orbit assembly. Surely if you can avoid a mission critical rendezvous in Mars orbit, on-orbit assembly is a small price to pay.
One thing I’ve never heard a good answer for: why Zubrin thinks Mars Semi-Direct is better than on-orbit assembly.
To my knowledge, there are three things. First, more stuff in the “have to do first” category. Orbital assembly techniques and the like would need to be refined (though we do now have the ISS as a working example). For a similar case, he’s complained about the “Moon first” people (who claim that we have to develop stuff on the Moon first before we can go to Mars), seeing that as an unnecessary obstacle to going to Mars. Even though we don’t have heavy lift now, it is still a proven technology.
Second, it simplifies the mission complexity to some degree (or more accurately, moves much of that complexity to the Earth’s surface). For example, in the original plan the first launch is an unmanned, nuclear powered, atmosphere processing plant. It processes enough propellant so that by the time you make the second launch a couple years later, you already have propellant ready for a return trip to Earth (as well as the power plant, a return vehicle, some basic living facilities, and enough water and air for a two year stay for four people). The second launch sends four or so people on a 6-9 month flight. That’s it for launches.
The people land and do stuff on the Martian surface for almost a couple of years. Then they come back on the return vehicle.
Third, because one takes a delta-v hit from assembling in LEO rather than launching directly into a Mars transfer orbit. I don’t know how much.
“Imagine if we worked together.”
In which case we never would have gotten to the Moon when we did, because competition spurs on innovation better than cooperation does.
It’s possible that the success of Project Apollo was only possible in the competent bureaucrat era.
I like that we have people and cameras in space sending back cool pictures, and I appreciate the engineering advances that come about as a result of taking on space exploration projects, but I’m not sure what we gain from manned expeditions at this point. “We” can’t go to Mars: At most, a handful of people can go. It’s not a place that can really be inhabited and it’s too far away for very many people to ever go and come back again. When explorers like Columbus sailed the oceans, it wasn’t just to see if they could survive the trip. They wanted to find stuff people could use or places they could live.
I’d be a lot more interested in near-earth projects that could yield actual advancements in transportation, etc., deep-ocean exploration — stuff that may be just as challenging and audacious but that holds more obvious potential to yield practical benefits to us earthlings.
I’m with you, Conrad. Mars is a distraction rather than a useful goal. It has just enough atmosphere to be a problem while not being enough to be useful; it’s covered in corrosive, abrasive dust that will be hell on equipment and people’s lungs; and there aren’t any resources there that aren’t available on easier targets such as the Earth-crossing asteroids. And it’s a very long way away, so any potentially fatal problems can’t be fixed in time and may kill space exploration because of Earthly reaction.
IMHO Mars is a worthwhile target only once humanity has enough equipment in resources in space that it will be relatively easy. The Moon, as an industrial target rather than a boots-and-flags one, is a good intermediate goal.
But given the way politics works, a hugely expensive stunt is probably the way it will go if it goes at all.
I’m one of those “you need to build a space based industrial infrastructure if you plan on going to places like Mars to stay” people. So a one time mission with Putin’s “help” sounds like repeating the basic mistakes of Apollo. The boots and flags thing can be fun, but it isn’t real progress.
Any plan with NASA in the critical path is unlikely to succeed. The NASA of today is not the NASA of the Apollo age. They will probably need the next three years just to make the view graphs and simulated animations of the mission.