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#9
October 8th 05, 01:21 PM
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Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote: K4YZ wrote: wrote: K4YZ wrote: Going to Mars is at least 100 times more difficult than going to the moon. Mars never gets closer than 30 million miles - more than 100 times farther away than the moon. A Mars mission would be years long rather than a week or two. Martian gravity and atmosphere make the problems even worse. Yep...But... It's been over 30 years since we've walked on the moon. We got there in a bit over 9 years from President Kennedy's challenge to do so. Yep. Think about *why* the USA was able to do it. And if it took 9 years to get to the moon, and Mars is 100 times harder, that works out to 900 years! We've squandered those intervening years on LEO manned missions. I'd hardly say they were "squandered". Other things took precedence. Astronomers and scientists knew then when Mars would be in an Earth-Mars-Earth (In this thread if I refer to EME, this is what I mean...Not EME as in "moonbounce")-transit favorable trajectory. And they know all the problems. One of them is that with any known practical rocket technology, a mission to Mars will take *years*. With no hope of rescue from Earth if anything serious goes wrong. There have been hundreds of plans put forth using AVAILABLE technology and resources to get there...All we had to do was pick one and get started. The plans are only basic outlines. They require lots of development to become reality. Just ONE plan that seemed practical enough (or at least made the most sense) to me was one to send the necessary resources for life support in a series of UN-manned "pre-missions" while the manned vessel was prepared in Earth orbit. Of course. The first missions would be one-way supply ships that would orbit Mars for years, waiting for people to show up. They could go at very slow speeds to maximize the usable payload. Resources would be pre-positioned both on Mars and along the way. Pre-positioning "along the way" isn't practical. The only really practical place to put a supply cache is in Martian orbit. Not one man had to spend a day in orbit until the "package" was in place. More like "packages", so that the mission would not depend on any single component. Now consider how much payload would have to be sent ahead. We're talking *tons* of supplies and equipment, all of which would have to be still usable after *years* in space. Sure it can be done, but it's not easy, fast or inexpensive. If it costs $100-200 billion or more to go to the moon, what would Mars cost? Who cares? Those of us who have to pay the bills! The PRESENT Space program has already generated TRILLIONS of dollars in new technology and incentives since July, 1969.. Like what? And can you guarantee that the money would not have been better spent on direct problem solving? Imagine where we COULD have been...?!?! Do you remember the 1970s? I do. All through the 1950s and 1960s, "aerospace" was the big deal. Incredible resources were poured into the space programs and "defense". We were told our future would be like that shown on "The Jetsons". But when the supply of cheap oil disappeared in the early 1970s, we found ourselves unable to produce a decent "economy" car. "Aerospace" didn't help the folks in the gas lines. Meanwhile the Japanese and Europeans already had lots of good economy cars. It's taken the US auto industry decades to catch up. Now we're set to repeat that history. Maybe we would have had our CURRENT level of technology 15 or 20 years ago? How? And current level of which technology? Just think...If we'd pared only $10B from each YEAR'S defense budget since 1970, we'd have "only" spent $360B now, which is about 1 1/2 years military budget over THIRTY-SIX years...And wudda had an American flag and American footprints on TWO astronomical bodies by now. Imagine if that money had gone into energy independence instead. If we're going to have a tit-for-tat about the bottom-line practicality of going, Jim, I'm not up for it. I am. That's what engineering is all about - dealing with *real* problems. It's easy to blue-sky what coulda-woulda-shoulda been done. It's a lot tougher to actually do the things. If you don't want to take a long serious look at just how difficult and expensive a manned Mars trip would be, please don't lecture us about what should have been done. Anyone can "successfully" argue that it's going to "cost" time, money and resources to go. Even lives. But EVERY expedition of exploration in man's time has cost money up front and lives along the way. Of course. And some times it was worth it. Other times it wasn't. The REAL bottom line is that we could have done this a LONG time ago if we'd only said "Let's Do It." But "we" didn't, because "we" didn't think it was worth the costs. "We" are busy selling our hats to each other at the moment. "We" don't have a national will to do great things any more. "We" had the national will to fight a couple of wars in the Persian Gulf. Plus Afghanistan, Bosnia, etc. Whether those qualify as "great things" is another issue. They sure were expensive things, though. And I think "we" made the right decision. Lessay we concentrate all our resources into feeding the poor, fixing all the social inequalities, and making the world a better place for our children and our childrens children. Wrong goals. The goal is not to "feed the poor" but to make it possible for "the poor" to feed themselves. Big difference. Same about the other stuff. After all that. I would wager my life that there will still be poor, there will still be starving people, there will still be inequality, and the world will not be any better a place than it is today. Sounds pretty fatalistic to me. I say things can be made a lot better, if the will is there to do it. Take the whole energy issue. Suppose there *were* a serious, longterm, well-funded national program to improve our energy situation. Attack on all fronts - conservation, recycling, new sources, greater efficiency, etc. Do you really think such a program couldn't help improve the lives of almost all Americans? Back to NASA...The technologies in my chosen profession alone that have benefitted from the Space Program are phenominal. I think if we pulled the rug out from under it any time soon, the "trickle down" effect in lost of impetus in technology development would be rapid and deep felt. Can you guarantee that those advances would not have happened if the money had been spent on research in the fields directly affected? IOW, why not simply go after a problem directly? In industrialized society's history, major technological advancements have MOSTLY followed (1) war, (2) captialist investment for profit (3) government subsidy to do research in that field (usually the impetus of, again, war). There are certainly exceptions to the rule, radio being one of them. "Radio" was not developed by governmental subsidy, nor was it the product of an 18th century "Motorola" but was the "product" of private inventors. BINGO! The same was mostly true of computers. Oh yes, the first real computer, ENIAC, was built for the Army to compute artillery aiming tables. But it was built on the work of earlier machines like the Atasinoff-Berry Computer. And only one ENIAC was ever built. Its successors came from private industry, for commercial purposes. No, I can't guarantee that those advances would not have occured...but WHEN would they have occured? Nobody knows. Right - who knows. Nobody. Technological advance isn't always predictable. One interesting historic game is to look at what was predicted for the future back 10, 20, 30 years. It's hilarious how many predictions never came true, and how many things that are common today were not foreseen. As much as I believe that the Space program was a peaceful spur to technology, in the end, I don't care. I like adventure, I like science, and I like exploring. People *will" go into space, people *will* go to Mars. Will it be us, or will we be known as the Portuguese of space exploration? IOW, you're in it for the Buck Rogers factor. Recall that the "great nations of Europe in the 16th century" all went exploring for *commercial* and *political* reasons. For the bucks, not Buck Rogers. Certainly NOT in the time frame that they have. Why not? The fact is that we've avoided making serious longterm plans to solve some basic technological problems in the USA. That avoidance has cost us dearly, and will cost us more, until we tackle the problems head-on rather than expecting some silver bullet to do it for us. Paying big bucks for the Buck Rogers factor, while ignoring the serious earth-bound issues like energy supply, trade deficit and vulnerability to weather disruption isn't smart. It's exactly like the guy who buys season tickets and a new bigscreen plasma TV/home theatre to watch the games using a credit card. While he ignores his rundown, collapsing house, sick children and insecure job situation. Wanna buy a hat??? Exactly. 73 de Jim, N2EY |
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