DailyDirt: How Will Anyone Get To Mars?
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Traveling to mars is going to be a really, really long term project. We had some fun on the moon and drove around up there in a nifty moon buggy, but we didn't have a commitment to stay there for very long -- or even plans to keep going there once we knew it could be done. Getting astronauts to mars requires a completely different level of planning than going to the moon. Current technology won't get us there (well, at least not alive and healthy), but maybe we're still making some progress with a few untested propulsion systems.- Russia's national nuclear company Rosatom could build a nuclear-powered engine to get to mars in 90 days -- if it had the funding. The technology was first developed in the 1960s, but no one has really continued to work on various kinds of nuclear-powered propulsion for manned spacecraft (hmm, wonder why..?). Launching radioactive materials on a ship that might not make it into outer space could end in a spectacular disaster, but maybe if someone could build it in space from several small payloads of fissionable material? (Or better yet, build it from fissionable materials already in space....) [url]
- It's possible to send something to mars in just 30 minutes with a (proposed) laser propulsion system. Chemical rockets to mars will take months, but using photonic propulsion could accelerate a small (lightweight, perhaps wafer-thing) object to very high speeds. One catch would be that there wouldn't really be a way to slow it down, unless there was a decelerating laser on the other side. [url]
- It's not beyond the imagination to think that people might someday be able to move asteroids around at will. Getting more water to mars by sending an icy asteroid there might be possible someday, and if we're able to do that we might as well hitch a ride on it. [url]
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Filed Under: astronauts, fission, laser propulsion, lightsail, manned missions, mars, nuclear energy, propulsion, rockets, space, space exploration, spacecraft
Companies: nasa, rosatom
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Size matters not!
"It's not beyond the imagination to think that people might someday be able to move asteroids around at will. ""I can't, it's too big"
"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is."
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Once upon a time
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Re: Once upon a time
Could we do it in less than 7yrs? Uncertain.
1962 to 1969 - http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/ricetalk.htm
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Ball Bearing propulsion
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Size matters not!
"I can't, it's too big"
"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is."
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Moon?
YES!!
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Do a little research
> nuclear-powered propulsion for manned spacecraft (hmm,
> wonder why..?)
Because it's prohibited by a treaty that Russia is not signatory to (but the Soviet Union was). The technology is not only safer in every way than liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen rockets, it emits less radiation than the background radiation count on a sunny day.
Do a little research before posting. Please.
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Re: Ball Bearing propulsion
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What critical bit of science can only be done via human presence?
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Re:
A machine controlled by afew, isn't science. It cannot answer a question that has not been programed into it. It cannot adjust to a condition outside its ability. There is one thing that we know of that has that ability. Why not use it. Learn now, or forever be stuck in the dogma of man is a useless addition to animals.
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Re:
The ban *would* apply to nuclear pulse rockets, that is, powered by explosions, but that's not what the Russians are talking about.
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Re: Do a little research
Russia is considered the successor to the Soviet Union, and inherited its treaties. (The Soviet Union after all was simply the name of the Russian Empire.) Russia still has the power to veto amendments to the treaty.
Good advice, though.
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Re:
Even Mars Exploration Rover Principal Investigator Steve Squyres says this. He talks about the subject here (PDF). Ending with "But I love those machines. I miss them. I do. But they will never, ever have the capabilities that humans will have and I sure hope you send people soon."
And frankly, science isn't the only reason to have humans on Mars. As just one example there's also insurance: A self-sustaining colony on another planet is a dirt-cheap investment for the security of the human race.
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