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Posted on 01/10/2004 9:24:23 AM PST by tricky_k_1972
Getting Man on Mars will need more than just rhetoric
PARIS (AFP) Jan 10, 2004
If George W. Bush, in an announcement likely to be made next Wednesday, intends to put an American on Mars, the endeavour will require commitment that endures way beyond his presidency, a gamble on technology and buckets of dollars.
These factors will determine if the expected plan will enjoy the same glory as John F. Kennedy's 1961 pledge to place an American on the Moon by 1970 -- or whether history will dismiss it as a political flourish in an election year.
Sources in the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) say the Bush scheme entails scrapping the ageing shuttle fleet by the end of this decade, pulling back from the International Space Station (ISS) a few years later and ploughing resources into lunar and then interplanetary manned missions.
Trips to the Moon, where Man last set foot more than 31 years ago, would resume around 2015, providing the experience and expertise for a later mission to Mars, according to these sources.
The phaseout of the discredited shuttles and cash-burning ISS will cause many scientists to heave sighs of relief.
Many rubbish these projects as rotations around Earth's back yard that do almost nothing to advance knowledge when compared to the low-cost unmanned missions such as the Mars rover Spirit.
Sending humans to Mars will test technical, psychological and financial resources to the limit.
"Going to the Moon is one thing, you can take them there in one or two days, but going to Mars is quite a different story," Hans Rickman, general secretary of the Paris-based International Astronomical Union (IAU), said.
Apollo 17 made a there-and-back mission to the Moon from December 7-19 1972.
But a voyage to the Red Planet, depending on the relative orbital positions of Earth and Mars, would take at least six months there and six months back with today's slow chemical rockets.
Factor in time spent on the planet's surface -- a hostile environment with an arid, rocky landscape, blood-freezing temperatures and a suffocating atmosphere of carbon dioxide -- and the trek would probably take some two years in all, imposing monstrous strains on the crew.
A spaceship to Mars would have to be roomy, shielded from cosmic radiation and collision with space rocks, and supplied with tonnes of food, water, oxygen and fuel.
There would have to be enough for the outward and return trips and the time spent on Mars itself, if no substitute can be found, grown or manufactured on the planet.
"Electric nuclear propulsion will be the key to going to Mars," said Richard Heidmann, a rocket motor engineer who is head of the French branch of the Mars Society, referring to the revolutionary concept of a fast-thrust ion engine.
All these amount to a bill with many zeroes on the bottom line.
The last time an American president made a Kennedyesque stab at setting foot on the Red Planet was in 1989.
And the dreamer was Bush's own father, who also saw a lunar stepping stone to Mars. The vision was put on hold after experts put the tab at between 400 and 500 billion dollars.
But the bill may not have to be that high, say others.
According to a 1997 NASA estimate, a Martian trip would cost between 30 and 40 billion dollars, about half of which would have to be spent on rocket boosters to get material into low orbit around Earth, and then to send the assembled ship zooming towards the Red Planet.
Dick Taylor, secretary of the British Interplanetary Society, said the cost of the heavy lifting of payloads could be slashed by using the Moon's low gravity.
Robots could build a lunar factory, extracting minerals and helium from moon rocks to manufacture propulsion systems, accommodation modules and fuel for long-term missions.
If the CIC is thinking the way I am thinking he is, you use trips from LEO to the moon to develope the tech for the longer duration Mars trips. If you have a ship building and fueling on the moon you don't have the problems that you have with production on Earth with the added cost of movig all the materials to LEO.
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I would say that the main objective is not a flags and foot prints show like some would say that the Apollo mission's were. I think that the CIC's idea here is to put us out there to stay, an incremental approach that develops the tech for a permanent presence in space.
Also, accountants. Preferably old Ebeneezer Scrouge type accountants. To keep the engineers in-budget.
Remember the Wright brothers flew when papers just weeks before said it would take decades.
The new space exploration blueprint was drawn up by Vice President Dick Cheney, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe and representatives from the Defense Department and other government agencies, NASA officials said.
They said the plan calls for retiring the ageing space shuttle fleet by 2010 and scaling back US involvement in the International Space Station after it is completed by 2013.
NASA would develop an orbital space plane to ferry crews and cargo to the ISS -- a prototype could be ready by 2008, which could be later adapted for longer voyages to the Moon and Mars, NASA officials said.
During the period in between scrapping the shuttle fleet and developing the orbital space plane, NASA could use Russian Soyuz vehicles for its flights to the ISS, the officials added.
The sources could not estimate the cost projections for the new space program, but said it would be more than the 15.5 billion dollars the White House has requested for NASA in the 2004 budget awaiting approval by Congress.
McClellan moved Friday to calm fears about the impact of an ambitious space plan on the US budget.
"The president is strongly committed to the exploration of space," McClellan told reporters adding "the president is someone who will, again, put forth a responsible budget that meets our highest priorities while working to hold the line on spending elsewhere in the budget."
The Washington Times Friday quoted government officials as saying NASA planned to pay for the new space exploration program with the money left after it retires the space shuttle fleet, which now costs 3.5 billion dollars annually to maintain and run.
We'll go from burning cash in low earth orbit to burning cash on Mars. We're just rearranging the deck chairs so Republicans can have a larger government.
I agree, except the money should be returned to the people who earned it.
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