I literally grew up with the US space program, from it's inception in the 50's, through the glory days of the 60's, 70's, & 80's. I think this event ranks up there with the best.
I wonder if we'll ever succeed in putting men on Mars like we did the Moon in '69.
Originally Posted by Kadmos
I don't keep up with NASA so much lately, so enlighten me on the above questions, if you would.
No enemy of America would have ever been killed if they didn't show up to be killed. HDR
I am talking about operational space craft, and picture taking is only a minor part of this mission. This rover has soil analyzers among other instruments designed to do experiments on the Martian surface. Please name the spacecraft that those countries have that inspected asteroids? Are still orbiting other planets and sending back data? Are rolling around on Mars, or any other planet for that matter?
Occasionally. But it does help get the point across.
Yes, wonderful pieces of machinery! Truly. Up there doing thier job long long past any possible expectation. They are sending pictures back every day. It truly is amazing.
But....is anyone looking at those pictures? Of course people at the agency probably are...briefly at least. But anyone else?
If this new one sends back just 1,000 pictures would you look at them all? How many pics in would you say "Yep, more red dirt and rocks" and give up.
If the new data tells you the average temperature on Mars is 1.7 degrees cooler than we previously thought, would you give a rats ass? Or if there were 7 parts per billion more of some element in the soil than we previously saw?
The ESA (European space Agency) has the Mars Express which has been orbiting Mars since 2004. The lander failed, but the orbiter is still going, long after it's mission end date. I think it's on its 3rd or 4th mission extension.Tell me which of those countries have craft orbiting other planets, anywhere close to an aasteroid,or has sent any kind of mobile landing craft to another planet. I know there have been probes, fly-bys, and failed attempts...but tell me which ones.
They also have the Rosetta, which did a Mars fly by, fly by of a few asteroids, and is headed to orbit a comet and drop a lander.
And the Huygens, also ESA, landed on Titan in 05, the farthest landing ever made.
Japan did flybys of Halley's comet back in the 1980's.
Obviously Russia had landing craft successes, hell, they got to the moon's surface before we did. Luna 2 smacked into the surface in 1959, Luna 9 managed a soft landing in 66 if I remember correctly. Russia also dropped a dozen or so successful probes on Venus
China has orbiters around the moon now and plans to drop a rover next year.
There really are too many for my memory
Good. Let this one rove around for awhile and lets get one somewhere else!If you read any of the articles, it was stated this is the last NASA funding for anything Mars bound at this time. Those othere were funded before now. What is being funded for the future
Sorry, but I have a love/hate relationship with our space program. We've gotten out there and done some truly amazing things. I've had a huge interest in this as far back as I can remember. But somehow we manage to do this in the dumbest possible way.
Only NASA could figure out a way to make space exploration boring as hell! 20 something years of low earth orbits with the stupid shuttle program! Another lander on Mars when one is still running! That's asking to have your funding cut. It's begging for it really!
If we're going to do it, we need to really do it, not just half do it. We designed some great landers, lets modify them for various conditions and put one on every hard surface in the solar system.
Oh, we can dial back government spending alright...
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings." -- Victor Stenger
Damn, jerks on parade.
Oh and LAGC, you're not paying for either, so STFU!
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We have the ability/capability. BUT......do we have the will.
Wart
"Quemadmoeum gladis nemeinum occidit,
occidentis telum _est"
"A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer's hands"
Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD)
No enemy of America would have ever been killed if they didn't show up to be killed. HDR
Unless we develop a magical means of traveling near light speed, we are not going to Mars.
Unlike the moon (which stays with us), Mars is in it's own orbit. It would take 9 months to get there, then you would have to STAY there 18 months to wait for re-alignment, then spend 9 more months coming back to earth.
Think of all the consumables needed (propellant, food, water, electricity, oxygen, some kind of CO2 scrubber, etc...) the spacecraft would weigh thousands of tons.
And it would have to REMAIN 100% man rated reliable all throughout the 3 year voyage. Even if it did, the astronauts would go ape-shit cooped up inside for 18 months in space (and another 18 months on Mars). And even if all THAT worked, what are the chances of being killed by a micrometeorite strike or fried by a solar flare while in unprotected deep space for THREE YEARS (cause there's no protection on Mars either).
A manned Mars landing will never happen with our current technology. It can't.
Send a little rover one way - sure. But send LIVING PEOPLE and bring them back LIVING? Nope.
Who told you to think? I don't give you enough information to think. You do what you're told, that's what you do.
You ARE joking I hope........
Who told you to think? I don't give you enough information to think. You do what you're told, that's what you do.
Those rovers are up there to do science, not send back pretty pictures for people to gawk at on YouTube.
NASA didn't even consider televising the Apollo 11 first steps on the moon! It was a mission: Land a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth. Do a little science while you're there. Nobody said "take cool pictures".
It was only after people yelled "are you nuts? The greatest event in human history and you're not even going to televise it???" that NASA whipped together a low bandwidth low resolution black and white TV camera to appease the masses.
The signal was grudgingly added to what was IMPORTANT... the LM telemetry stream.
That's why the "video was so lousy" for the first moon landing... it wasn't a priority.
Who told you to think? I don't give you enough information to think. You do what you're told, that's what you do.
What they should do is solicit convicts with Life sentences and see if they'd be willing to go. If I was in prison and knew I was never getting out, I'd sure as fuck volunteer for such a worthy cause.
It would be a one-way trip to build a colony, but re-supplies could be sent every 9 months to keep them alive and working the rest of their natural lives.
I bet a team of 12 or so could really get a lot accomplished, and their names in the history books in perpetuity.
"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings." -- Victor Stenger
My God man... are you serious?
Who told you to think? I don't give you enough information to think. You do what you're told, that's what you do.
Even a one way trip with enough consumables and materials to start a "base camp" and barely survive until the next supplies arrived would probably be stretching things really thin.
The only way I can imagine it could work is if many, many automated spacecraft went to Mars (uninhabited) and deposited small survival structures and supplies so that a one way manned trip could at least land and live there long enough to assemble the pieces into a larger habitat (which would in turn be enlarged by subsequent landings) until Mars was actually colonized.
But, an "Apollo 11" type of trip (visit, bring back rocks) will never happen to Mars.
I don't know... I wouldn't want to do it. I'm gonna die sooner or later, but I want to die on earth.
Who told you to think? I don't give you enough information to think. You do what you're told, that's what you do.
Rover Spirit is dead, Rover Opportunity is still going after 8 years after it was supposed to have died. If this Rover dioes half of what is designed to do for even 1/10th of the time Spirit and Opportunity did we will have done good. No doubt in my mind we can get to Mars faster and cheaper then the 70 year old technology we are using now but we won't get it unless we really push the space program. Only with competition and pushing the boundaries will we learn and advance.
I would ask all the Dim Dongs out there who think every spare dollar should go to food, housing and medical care for indigents how much has that charity program advanced our technology and how many great scientists has it produced.
Still when all is said and done and no matter how much I admire the science that has gone into building and shipping Rover Curiosity to Mars I wish it were a team of men. Maybe a dozen men from an international roster of the best scientists and engineers they could find along with a robot fleet of 2 dozen cargo ships landing with them. Another half dozen men in a space station above them to render assistance with communications and planetary observations, Whatever we learn from being able to set up a community that can sustain life on Mars would have to provide scientific benefits to us back home.
Roman Catholic, Life Member of American Legion, VFW, Wisconsin Libertarian party, Wi-FORCE, WGO, NRA, JPFO, GOA, SAF and CCRKBA
"THE STATE THAT SEPARATES ITS SCHOLARS FROM IT WARRIORS WILL HAVE ITS THINKING DONE BY COWARDS AND ITS FIGHTING DONE BY FOOLS"
THUCYDIDES.
No pics, it didn't happen.
Seriously though, to keep funding they need to keep interest.
While there is a slight "new factor" of another probe landing on Mars, the wow factor will dissipate quickly.
The sad thing is that these landings often do more harm than good. People get a bit interested and then look up what has been done before. Then they find out Russia dropped probes there in the 60's, that we still have a running rover already there, and people start to say "What the hell? Been there, done that, so what's the point".
We can talk about it being science, but it's only vaguely of interest to most people, and truly not even all that important to the people who do in fact really care.
It's like the space shuttle, and yes I was very serious, it goes up once and it's awesome, goes up twice and it's proof of concept, goes up three times and people would rather watch sitcoms. It becomes commonplace, the only time it becomes noteworthy is when someone famous goes up (old astronaut returning to space, a teacher) or something goes horribly wrong.
People aren't really awed by yet another flight of United Airlines, it ain't the Wright brothers, or the first solo crossing of the Atlantic.
Manned spaceflight is essentially pointless anyway if you don't have a place to go, and a low earth orbit space station isn't another place, it's simply going from one ship to another...slightly more impressive than switching trains at the station.
I'm cool with us going to space, but not if we are going to do it stupidly.
It's not exploring if you go to the same place over and over. We need to go further, faster, put landers on new places.
Think about it, you said it yourself, there will be no manned mission to Mars. Might happen eventually, but not likely in this century. And truly there isn't any point to it, we put probes there and we all know that essentially Mars would suck to try to live on.
That said, LAGC, there is no need to send lifer convicts to Mars, there would be no shortage of volunteers...give me a 20% chance of just successfully landing there and even a 10% chance of getting home again, and I would jump at the opportunity!
You can stretch things by calling today's chemical propulsion "70 year old technology" in that a rocket engine today is just a perfected version of the ones Dr. von Braun designed and built in the 1940's.
Of course, turn that around and you can say "he was one hell of an engineer to get it almost perfect the first time - starting from NOTHING".
The Space Shuttle Main Engine is the most efficient rocket engine ever built. It converts the propellant it uses, per pound, into almost 2 times as much thrust as the A4/V2 engine did.
But the basic design is the same. Fuel, oxidizer, regenerative cooling, multi-point injectors, combustion chamber and De Laval nozzle.
It's more efficient, but basically the same design.
To go anywhere beyond the moon (manned flights), we need a quantum leap in propulsion technology. Something way beyond chemical propulsion. Merely a "better" rocket will never make it.
Who told you to think? I don't give you enough information to think. You do what you're told, that's what you do.
(1) True. After Apollo 11, interest almost died out. Apollo 13 re-ignited interest (because of the possibility that the astronauts could die). In the news business, "If it bleeds, it leads".
(2) The Shuttle was a "space truck". It was meant to take stuff up there and it did just that. Would you design and build a radically new truck (road truck), test it once and say "OK it works, scrap it"? No, you would USE IT as a........... truck.
(3) The Mars landings were done in an incremental fashion. First the little Pathfinder (note the name). Once that worked, things learned were built upon and MER (Spirit and Opportunity) was sent. More things were learned (like for example you can't depend on solar panels!) so yet another rover (bigger, more experiments and nuclear powered this time) was sent (Curiosity).
Imagine teaching a kid to shoot. Do you start him out with a .50 BMG, or a .22 single shot rifle? And once he learns the .22, do you STOP?
(4) I said no manned mission to Mars with current technology. I don't want people to think I'm one of those loons that says it's "impossible" because it's not. It's only not possible TODAY.
(and no jokes from the peanut gallery about me being a loon!)
Who told you to think? I don't give you enough information to think. You do what you're told, that's what you do.
Plasma rocket technology is supposed to be able to take astronauts from Earth to Mars in 30 days instead of 6 months reducing in space time and exposure to solar radiation. Crank that up to speeds that astronauts couldn't handle and you have the perfect resupply ships, bring the cargo, drop it off in orbit and head back to earth to pick up another load. The first serious reports I heard about it were 3 years ago, since then nothing.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Last Wednesday, the Ad Astra Rocket Company tested what is currently the most powerful plasma rocket in the world. As the Webster, Texas, company announced, the VASIMR VX-200 engine ran at 201 kilowatts in a vacuum chamber, passing the 200-kilowatt mark for the first time. The test also marks the first time that a small-scale prototype of the company's VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket) rocket engine has been demonstrated at full power.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news174031552.html#jCp
Roman Catholic, Life Member of American Legion, VFW, Wisconsin Libertarian party, Wi-FORCE, WGO, NRA, JPFO, GOA, SAF and CCRKBA
"THE STATE THAT SEPARATES ITS SCHOLARS FROM IT WARRIORS WILL HAVE ITS THINKING DONE BY COWARDS AND ITS FIGHTING DONE BY FOOLS"
THUCYDIDES.
(1) True. After Apollo 11, interest almost died out. Apollo 13 re-ignited interest (because of the possibility that the astronauts could die). In the news business, "If it bleeds, it leads".
(2) The Shuttle was a "space truck". It was meant to take stuff up there and it did just that. Would you design and build a radically new truck (road truck), test it once and say "OK it works, scrap it"? No, you would USE IT as a........... truck.
(3) The Mars landings were done in an incremental fashion. First the little Pathfinder (note the name). Once that worked, things learned were built upon and MER (Spirit and Opportunity) was sent. More things were learned (like for example you can't depend on solar panels!) so yet another rover (bigger, more experiments and nuclear powered this time) was sent (Curiosity).
Imagine teaching a kid to shoot. Do you start him out with a .50 BMG, or a .22 single shot rifle? And once he learns the .22, do you STOP?
(4) I said no manned mission to Mars with current technology. I don't want people to think I'm one of those loons that says it's "impossible" because it's not. It's only not possible TODAY.
(and no jokes from the peanut gallery about me being a loon!)
(1) You only get the (good) attention by going further, faster, someplace new.
(2) It was a horribly inefficient truck that only went to the same place over and over. Aside from dropping off what I admit was a very few amazing payloads (satellites, Hubble, etc.) it was mostly joyrides.
To torture a metaphor, imagine packing up the family and driving cross country to Disneyworld, then when you get there circle the parking lot ten times and drive home. Then six months later do it again, again, again. Won't be very long before your family despises you!
(3) While I get the incremental fashion of it, here's a better one. Successfully drop one on the Moon, then Mars, then on one of the 66 moons of Jupiter, 62 moons of Saturn, etc, etc.
Humans have tried to put 16 objects on mars, with 7 successes spanning nearly 5 decades...next!
Ok, so the kid shot the .22 (Sputnik) and again, and again, roughly 6,500 times (rough number of satellites launched), He's also done some .223 (deep space probe), .308 (orbit another planet), .50 BMG (man in space), and some 40 mm grenades (man on moon, rover on mars)....all of which he has successful manage to hit the targets. It's time to move up to the heavy artillery.
Don't forget, even those .22 rounds were millions of dollars a shot
(4) Didn't think you were, I heard the current technology part. If that were our goal, to get people to Mars, then fine we can concentrate on Mars and work to that goal. But that's not our goal, nor should it be really, it would just be an exercise in vanity to be honest as we know long term habitation there is pointless without either terraforming or serious mining operations. Neither of which is particularly feasible.
To be honest, this is part of the main problem, we don't have an actual goal. So we sort of putter about in space. And if we are going to simply putter about, can we at least attempt to make it look like forward progress? Go a bit farther, faster, land on new places?
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