Mars To Stay

[Khan_Tiger]

/facepalm

I'm not "shooting it down", it will fail all by itself. And I happen not to be a brilliant rocket scientist. That doesn't mean I can't see the painfully obvious flaws in sending a bunch of members of the public on a one-way trip to mars with our current technology.

And yet you claim it's NOT technology.

[Halsfury]

Going straight to Mars is not the way forward, we've seen some spectacular failures in history due to people thinking that they can go from small ventures to large enterprises in one easy big step, something which too few appreciate no thanks to Neil Armstrong and his "giant leap" soliloquy.

In truth Armstrong's speech should have been "one small step for a man, serval small steps for mankind"

Apollo took 10 years and it succeeded with baby steps where others (like the soviets) have failed by rushing.

Playing KSP should show that any adventure needs proper planning and years of testing equal to the grand scale of the endeavour, otherwise you end up forgetting your landing legs, parachutes, fuel, EVA ladders you name it, just like a Kerbal, but unlike a Kerbal rocket scientist, in real life you have a duty to protect the life and limb of people who are more brave than yourself.

[Warshawski]

Well, I don't serious got the thrust that SpaceX re-usable goal become true in 2023. It would TBH even dumb to use government funds (again) for years and years for a re-usable first stage, and finally a re-usable second stage, who both terms of re-usable counts only for LEO missions, missions where there is almost no profit! Planetary resources orbital fuel stations are almost fiction, and who supply the fuel station? I don't see any real fact that Planetary resources fuel station become true.

SpaceX can't solve the problems. If spaceflight was so easy, then NASA already landed already people on Mars in the 70's.

Planetary Resources will fuel the stations off of mined asteroids... might want to check their website, 'cause unlike Mars One, they've got the billionaires to make it happen.

[Kerbface]

Going straight to Mars is not the way forward, we've seen some spectacular failures in history due to people thinking that they can go from small ventures to large enterprises in one easy big step, something which too few appreciate no thanks to Neil Armstrong and his "giant leap" soliloquy.

In truth Armstrong's speech should have been "one small step for a man, serval small steps for mankind"

Apollo took 10 years and it succeeded with baby steps where others (like the soviets) have failed by rushing.

You think zilch to man on the moon in 10 years is baby steps?

[Halsfury]

You think zilch to man on the moon in 10 years is baby steps?

I don't think that zilch is a good way to describe the state of rocketry in 1961 in the US.

zilch suggests that in 1961 people had to beat their dinner to death before they could eat it and traded bearskins and flint spears

No Apollo wouldn't be possible without 1903 wright brothers biplane, the V2, jet powered aircraft and the Bell X-1 which proved that a person could actually be accelerated passed the sound barrier safely

Not to mention everything else which I haven't listed

[jwenting]

and the Soviets did not rush. They went slower than the Americans, gave up when there was no political capital to be gained from spending more rubles on what was purely a political propaganda program to them.

Often going fast is the only way to get things done. You need to show results before the next shareholder's meeting (or elections) else your funding will dry up after all.

That's another reason Mars One will fail, and any long lead program fails in our economic/political system: the lead times are too long for the stakeholders to have something to show for it on their budget sheets (either $$$ or votes) soon enough.

[Kerbface]

I don't think that zilch is a good way to describe the state of rocketry in 1961 in the US.

zilch suggests that in 1961 people had to beat their dinner to death before they could eat it and traded bearskins and flint spears

No Apollo wouldn't be possible without 1903 wright brothers biplane, the V2, jet powered aircraft and the Bell X-1 which proved that a person could actually be accelerated passed the sound barrier safely

Not to mention everything else which I haven't listed

...Obviously I didn't LITERALLY mean nothing. But we'd never even sent someone to space and within a decade we were on the moon. I really don't see how this can be seen as baby steps when you're trying to tell people to stop rushing to Mars when it's 45 years later and we've never even left LEO in decades.

[Halsfury]

...Obviously I didn't LITERALLY mean nothing. But we'd never even sent someone to space and within a decade we were on the moon. I really don't see how this can be seen as baby steps when you're trying to tell people to stop rushing to Mars when it's 45 years later and we've never even left LEO in decades.

Maybe there is a good reason why nobody has left LEO since the space race, it's all good and fine to go to the moon but what does going there teach you? It taught the world that Deep and Cis-Lunar space is not to be treated lightly, and is in fact the largest/worst desert that man has ever traversed and secondly it showed that even though we could go to the moon at the drop of a hat with our current technology doing so hardly constitutes a reasonable goal for a spacefaring people.

In short ask anybody at NASA, or Korolev or any major centre for space exploration and they will tell you "I would rather see 100 stations in LEO doing work which we can cash in on in future than 1 station on Mars"

The reason for this is that both LEO and Mars' surface are deserts, like the Sahara with extras like zero g and food out of plastic tubes, so the question is "Why terraform Mars when Low Earth Orbit is closer, pretty much the same in terms of challenges and less expensive by a thousandfold?"

[The Stinger]

No Apollo wouldn't be possible without 1903 wright brothers biplane, the V2, jet powered aircraft and the Bell X-1 which proved that a person could actually be accelerated passed the sound barrier safely

Not to mention everything else which I haven't listed

They didn't know if or how a man could operate in space, what kind effect it had and how to keep them alive and protect them during the week long trip. They had find out how to control the craft, their heading, re-entry, docking. How to land on the moon and get off. No matter how much of an accomplishment the wright biplane was, it didn't help NASA to get in to orbit, dock, land on the moon, rendezvous and survive the blazing heat of reentry.

I give you the V2 for helping in rocketry and the Bell X-1 for showing that humans can survive going through the sound barrier. Although what you mentioned are great achievements, they pale in comparison to what they had to achieve in that decade to get people to the moon.

Apollo took 10 years and it succeeded with baby steps where others (like the soviets) have failed by rushing.

The Sovjets didn't rush anything, they just didn't have the resources that the Americans had. Each of their launches were tests which learned from so they could fix it in the next launch, that's how they solved their lack of resources.

It worked for them as they were first in everything:

- first satellite

- first animal in space

- first man in space

- first woman in space

- first space walk

- first lunar impact

- first image of the far side of the moon

- first unmanned spacecraft landing on the moon

The reason why they lost was because Korolev died, he was responsible for all successes the Sovjets had in space.

[Halsfury]

I'll grant that the wright flyer could be considered to be not a big deal in comparison to Apollo but it was a necessary step, if only in terms of advances in propellant and engines, without lightweight engine construction in 1903 the Saturn V F1 main rocket would have been impossible due to low TWR

if you tried to make a rocket in the 19th century which was anything like a modern space capable rocket the TWR would be incredibly low due to everything being built with cast iron and steel like a steam engine, that's why Jules Verne decided that the best way people of his era could launch into space was in a giant blackpowder cannon, (that way at least you don't have to carry the uselessly heavy engine with you)

About Korolev dying that in itself blew a lot of confidence for the Soviets out the window true, which was not entirely a bad thing.

Back to the original topic though, going to Mars right now is certainly inadvisable, and the ethical implications of leaving people in the vast black desert which we know our local space to be and then dumping them on a red rock many millions of miles away (which just happens to be a mini desert in the much, much bigger desert of the universe)

And then what is the profit for the company? is it going to be reality TV? I hope to god not, the final frontier won't be a safe place to be an idiot on survivor for many millennia yet.

(by the way I looked at some of the 78,000 applicants for mars one and I am not sure any of them have the stuff to survive long term anywhere outside their basement)

Perhaps it's an unnecessarily inflammatory statement to say that they are planning to run reality TV from mars, (somehow I don't think that anybody would stand for that) nevertheless, leave space to the pros and don't cobble together a 4 person team from 78,000 basement dwellers to go to anywhere but the mini mart

Edited June 23, 2013 by Halsfury