Manned mission to Mars

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For all the places life has been found on earth, including in reactors, there are species who could live there. Not us without a lot, but it is going to grow something if we are around.

I am not Serria Club about it, hyjack some Comets, bring them in for a landing, there will be more water, gas, and organics on Mars. There are asteriods that if redirected would warm the place up, release water, then cool it from the dust cloud.

Playing pool with it could redirect it's orbit closer to the sun.

The surface does not offer us much protection. Hollow out one of the moons, build a ship large enough to orbit and have gravity.

I think it a boring base compared to an Apollo Object, crossing Earth orbit, getting closer to the Sun, and out to the Asteroid Belt. We still need a ship, but no fuel. Once we get there, latch on, it is a long term free ride.

Drill into it, get some shielding, build within. As it crosses Earth orbit, resupply might be possible. It provides a large surface area for solar cells. It has been running around for a billion years or so.

Without altering its mass, something Nickle Iron, could be smelted with electric power, made into plate, I-Beams, for surface construction.

There is a view that all the Plantenates on Earth come from asteroids, that the asteroid belt was a planet, with a moon, that was in the wrong place one day, and chunks of the core are floating around with everything with an SG above 15.

With a two mile long Apollo Object for a ship, we could harpoon the Great White Metal chunks. Smelt them into cannon balls and shoot them into Earth orbit.

For all the stories of mining other planets, this is the only one that does not have the cost of getting it off the surface, starts with large chunks of near pure ore, with a built in return delivery.

It is large enough to support a large crew, gravity, food production, have endless electric power, and thick shielding. Catching one would be simpler than trying to land on the Moon. The more you carry the more likly to survive, and a whole pack train of food, water, air, could be set down on an Apollo Object.

First robot ship lands, clears a flat spot, super glues on, and starts digging. Second robot ship lands on top of the first, super glues on, and stores compressed air, water in prepared chambers.

The third human ship latches to the top, and has a stocked celler. Inside at center of mass is a large donut, giving gravity. The walls are iron hundreds of foot thick, No navigation, no engines, the location is known for hundreds of years in advance.

Compared to getting off Mars, back to earth, the earth crosser would be a short hop to return to earth, several times in its orbit.

That might be fifteen years, and retired rich.

computers are far better pilots than any human ever will be without operating a computer into his head anyway,

all modern fighter planes are impossible to fly without a computer translating what teh pilot wants into actual movement, wihtout their pc's the humans wouldnt have the reaction time to fly for 20 seconds even.

"Fly by wire" or computer control is the only way of operating an inherently unstable aircraft safely. The reason why these war birds do such harrowing maneuvers so will is because the are unstable.

ruveyn

I don't necessarilly see the flight as being manually piloted 'all the way'. However astronauts can be invaluable in cases where a technical fault or navigation error arises that would otherwise doom an unmanned craft.

My point is that the presence of human beings on the scene provides the sort of on the spot, sentient decision making capacity that is only otherwise provided after a 30 minute reaction time by some guys 60 million kilometres away in Texas. If robots could take over entirely it would make mission control pretty redundant.

What computers provide in calculative speed they lack in practical, hands on scenario adaptability and natural initiative. A single manned mission will undoubtedly provide the scientific return of 100 unmanned missions.

At our current stage of rocket propulsion, the weight of the crew and all the material need for their life support both in flight, and when they land would be a major penalty to pay. It is cheaper to send several robotic missions assume the first few fail.

ruveyn

like i said the thrust to weight ratio implications may be well worth the scientific return. No pain, no gain.

If America doesn't do something then the Chinese will.

Good. Let them. The effort will bankrupt their economy, and the rest of us can take over down here.

Good article by Nobel winner in physics on why manned flight is a waste right now:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 68684.html

He makes a good point. Why send men to one spot on Mars, when you can send a bunch of robots to many different spots on Mars for cheaper.

Either that or America will go bankrupt anyway, and China will grow even fatter off of contracts with private companies and whatever untapped mineral wealth is located there.

The way I see it America is getting poor precisely because its not investing in stuff like this these days. Its become lazy and complacent. Its not taking the 'next step forward' anymore. It would rather squander money on 'wars on terror' and other s**t we dont need.

If someone is smart they will find a way to build a hotel there and provide a regular spaceliner service there and back. If Space tourism is a money spinner for the Russians, I can see billionaires wanting to spend their children's legacy just to vacation there. I can see the Chinese doing precisely that. It will take Asian ingenuity and resourcefulness to make it economically viable which is precisely why space is going to be dominated by the 5 gold stars. Sorry yanks.

First of all, if America went bankrupt, China is f****d.

China has its own, hidden problems. Which include it's hidden debt, estimates have it as high as 160% of their GDP. They have ghost towns, half the country lives on less than 2 dollars a day, plus they have a demographic time bomb. Bottom line: China is overrated.

NASA is still at the top. Most of the best projects the general public has never even heard of. The WMAP for example, which is damn cheap, has told us more about the universe than anything. It has the 3 most cited papers in all of physics worldwide. But we're gonna lose because of space tourism? ok.. They can have their space tourism and doing other things we accomplished 50 years ago. We'll continue having the largest scientific impact factor in the world.

How do you figure? It still has Japan, the EU and the rest of the developed world to trade with.

Doesnt the USA owe China something in the region of $16 trillion?

The point is while other countries, notably India as well, are making massive strides forward, and are catching up. Meanwhile NASA is cutting back and winding down. They still have no manned replacement for the shuttle fleet. China has went from a minor player in the space industry, to having an operational space station (Tiangong-1) in less than a decade.

If, any of those major players go down, the others are f****d. If the EU goes down, America is f****d. If America goes down, China and the EU are f****d, etc..

US debt to China is overstated. Nowhere near that number. More like 1 trillion. I think most debt is domestically held.

We have not got even the hope of a glimmer for the technology to do that. Not in a thousand years.

Our best space craft can go 50,000 mph without a slingshot boost from another planet. Essentially our rocket technology has bare advanced from the rockets the Chinese used during the Tang Dynasty. The Chinese invented the solid booster rocket and the British improved on it slightly.

ruveyn

Why would anyone want to go 50,000 mph?

We can get from here to an Apollo Object, and we only need to match it's speed. I would be more concerned with slow cargo, food, air, water.

With a natural orbit through the asteroid belt, at a slow speed, as it stalls out and returns. No need to be fast if you pass within a thousand miles of a rock.

Find a likely subject several miles long, just floating along, and drill it. Then with four suitcase nukes, space them in the hole, backfill, and leave.

A little sensor says that bright spot is the sun, and when pointed in this direction, Boom! The second shot is deep in the rubble, in a crater, which gives nossle and a thick medium to exhaust.

A few small explosions and the orbit changes, now moving sunward, toward Mars orbit.

It is low cost mass driving, and came from an idea to park an Apollo Object in the Clarke Belt. Much cheaper than building a station and sending it up by bottle rockets. Building shielding that thick is not possible, but there are better rocks that could be had.

We need a major foothold in near space, the factory and drydock for building real space ships, not tin cans on the end of a rocket. I was thinking the Enterprise, because we already have the plans, and people are familier with the concept.

It does not have to hit Warp 9, it does have to support human life over long periods, also they did not explain Gravity To Go, and Inertia Proofing.

Lack of gravity we become thin walled bags, sudden bursts of Inertia, stresses those bags, combining the two, as on long weightless voyages, and Big G events, is not going to turn out well.

It does offer the possibility for being a movie set, and big enough to have some gravity, dance could become a new art form.

Before going far, we have to do the mutant testing close to home. In the third generation controls have to be made for tentacles. Guild Navigators were mostly head.

Time for some unethical floating baby experiments. Without trees to climb the ape body becomes useless, and living weightless, for say ten years, forget coming down to Earth. It may take a few generations till the change shows, and those little cuties have big heads and suckers on their tentacles. They may also be breathing an Oxygen, Helium mix, and speaking like dolphins.

Pressure can replace gravity, at 140 psi, they would be saturated, and could also live on the same gas mix under a hundred meters of ocean.

In both cases the current species is not suited to the job. Whoever breeds an adapted species will get not only a tentacle up in space, but the free for the taking ocean bottom between a hundred foot and a hundred meters. That is about equal to the surface of the land.

A little genetic modification, cross them with filter feeders, and the world of Sponge Bob becomes practical.

We have nothing to fear but ourselves!

It was a "little genetic modification" that produced the Gypsy Moth and the African Killer Bee.

We are not that good at genetic modification. At least, not yet.

ruveyn