Mars Now - Third Alternative To NASAs Mars Who Knows When Program

[funniew]

Mars Now -- Third Alternative To NASAs Mars "Who Knows When" Program

My main objective, using current state of technology, is to safely get men and women to Mars and back to Earth without having to utter the phrase "People Will Certainly Die" as NASA does. To achieve this I would freeze all of the frivolous programs NASA has going to date this should free up lots of money; this means no space telescope, no going back to moon, etc...

One of the dangers of landing on Mars is missing the supply hut during landing. Therefore, I propose to land multiple supply huts within the radius of the area designated for exploration. These supply huts will contain water, food, fuel and oxygen. Also they will there will be companion science lab and living huts. That's 3pair tuples, repeated enough times to insure space questers have good chance of landing near supplies and science ordnances.

Actually, the supply huts would make the water, lots of water for drinking, washing, and to provide solvent for running experiments. This can be made from atmosphere of Mars itself. It will have ability to produce 300 gallons per day. The hydrogen component from Mars is a problem yet to be engineered a solution.

Science hut will consist of lab and field equipment to perform meaningful research and exploration on Mars.

The Living hut will be yet another module that will provide living quarters , mess hall, etc...

The 3 pair modular tuples will be launch together and replicated 3 times at least so the space questers have high chances of landing near one of them.

There will also be terrain vehicles flown separately as well the vehicles can autonomously drive themselves to whatever point the crew lands so accuracy there is not as important.

I have more ideas for my Mars Now mission and will update later. However, for "Mars Now" to work there will be no moon landings (been there already and there was nothing exciting about it). Also, money used to go to the moon can be used to build better Mars program.

Well, I have homework to do but I will expand on my "Mars Now Mission" soon going into more details and then into some of the software, robotics etc...

 

[Evo]

Why do we need to send humans to Mars? What would be the benefit?

 

[rewebster]

Why do we need to send humans to Mars? What would be the benefit?

more chocolate

 

[funniew]

Why do we need to send humans to Mars? What would be the benefit?

Well, actually, i'd prefer not to send people to Mars however NASA wants to do so because they feel it will keeps the public attention and keep them funded. So, I am thinking of ways of doing it to reduce the risk of life because I have a deep respect and appreciation for life. It's as simple as that.

 

[russ_watters]

I agree with EVo's questioning of the main premise, but also:

One of the dangers of landing on Mars is missing the supply hut during landing.

No, we are capable of landing a spacecraft on a dime when the need exists. At least one of the Apollo landings occurred near an earlier probe for the purpose of inspecting it.

[edit] Oh, it was Apollo 12: only the second time we landed humans on another world, it was a rendesvous with another craft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_12#Mission_parameters

The second lunar landing was an exercise in precision targeting, using a Doppler effect radar technique developed to allow the pinpoint landings needed for future Apollo missions.[4] Most of the descent was automatic, with manual control assumed by Conrad during the final few hundred feet of descent. Unlike Apollo 11 where Neil Armstrong took partial control of the lander and directed it further down range when he noticed that the intended landing site was strewn with boulders, Apollo 12 succeeded, on November 19, in landing within walking distance (less than 200 meters) of its intended target - the Surveyor 3 probe, which had landed on the Moon in April 1967. This was the first -- and, to date, only -- occasion in which humans have "caught up" to a probe sent to land on another world.

Conrad actually landed Intrepid 580 feet (180 m) short of Pete's Parking Lot because the planned landing point looked rougher than anticipated during the final approach to touchdown, and was a little under 1,180 feet (360 m) from Surveyor 3, a distance that was chosen to eliminate the possibility of lunar dust (being kicked up by Intrepid's descent engine during landing) from covering Surveyor 3.[4] But the actual touchdown point — 600 feet (180 m) from Surveyor 3 — did cause a thin film of dust to coat the probe, giving it a light tan hue.

 

[cronxeh]

Why do we need to send humans to Mars? What would be the benefit?

Because it is the man's purpose in life - to explore and conquer, and its also something to pass time with :tongue2:

Also, remember who brought you the Space Pen?

And another thing. Its time to take the money away from boys (financial sector) and give it to real men (science and engineering). Enough with those bailouts already. The people that work in the financial sector do not create 'wealth'. They are simply reselling what others made. The only actual value is created by engineers who make things, and its impossible to know what needs to be made until you've encountered a problem like getting to Mars.

Mars expedition requires air filtration systems, recycling, fuel from human excrement, all to highest standard and efficiency. Not to mention purification systems, genetically modified seeds that grow in most inhospitable conditions. All these things are useful on Earth as well. Radiation shielding, materials science, portable scanners, long range communication systems, high speed inter planetary Internet, the list goes on, and only limited by what we've already encountered.

Perhaps we'll find microbes there - makes us feel better about our own evolutionary stage, or perhaps we find water on Mars, could be turned into a backup 'Earth' in case we get hit by a meteor. You can't put a price on survival from extinction of entire civilization, all we've accomplished and will accomplish just by overcoming the 'how much will it cost?' factor. It costs us nothing to get to Mars compared to what it buys us - an accomplishment of a lifetime.

"In March 2007, NASA announced that the volume of water ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted, would be sufficient to cover the entire planetary surface to a depth of 11 meters" - out of Wikipedia.

 

[funniew]

I agree with EVo's questioning of the main premise, but also: No, we are capable of landing a spacecraft on a dime when the need exists. At least one of the Apollo landings occurred near an earlier probe for the purpose of inspecting it.[edit] Oh, it was Apollo 12: only the second time we landed humans on another world, it was a rendesvous with another craft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_12#Mission_parameters

Hmmm, I don't think so; Mars has atmosphere therefore significant drift can occur. I have dropped my Mars Future idea with cool spaceship to for Mars Now Mission. Also, I have never heard of pin-point landing on Mars so it is imperative to livelihood of crew to be near supplies else they could die within minutes of landing. Thus, I proposed to over engineer this aspect with duplication of supply huts. Also, the scientist from travel from one modular installation to the next whichever is nearest field work.

Also, when it comes to Mars the Moon landings are not relevant because ballistic parameters are different. And the lunar lander was a scantly cladded vehicle but a Mars Landing Vehicle would be quite bulky and massive in comparison; the moon has no atmosphere and tiny gravity. You are comparing the apples to the oranges.

 

[funniew]

Because it is the man's purpose in life - to explore and conquer, and its also something to pass time with :tongue2:

<stuff removed>
Mars expedition requires air filtration systems, recycling, fuel from human excrement, all to highest standard and efficiency. Not to mention purification systems, genetically modified seeds that grow in most inhospitable conditions. All these things are useful on Earth as well. Radiation shielding, materials science, portable scanners, long range communication systems, high speed inter planetary Internet, the list goes on, and only limited by what we've already encountered.
<stuff removed>

Yes, I will add more to my Mars Now Mission when I get more time. Mars has Lots of Oxygen so air recycling can be kept to minimum. Devices will launched ahead of time to generate oxygen from atmosphere. My main problem is getting Hydrogen from Mars so it does not have to be carried there. And todays technology does not allow landing people near poles to extract from water ice. That resource is just unavailable.

Seeding Mars would not be viable because it is such an extreme environment I doubt you could eat anything grown there. Internet and high speed communications system is not doable because governments will not dedicate the resources to develop such technologies unless it can be shown it could be used to kill people then the usa would invest in it for its army. Also, this is Mars Now, not Mars Tomorrow.

Radiation, I am thinking about typical and atypical shielding. First, I would use water, created their on mars. Second line of defense would be Martian mud. Inflatable balloons will be filled with Martian sludge made from crushed rocks and water. The balloons will cover exterior of Habitat canisters.

SIDE BAR:
My main purpose in life to is make the lives of those that come after me better through advanced, and impractical in some cases, application of science; though ideas are impractical until someone creates it. Like the physicist in the days of Wright Brothers THOUGHT powered aircraft violated the laws of physics; I'm quite sure if many of the people here were around then they'd happily and ignorantly agree. I am not into conquering because war violates one of my golden rules; Always Respect and cultivate life not destroy it.

 

[cronxeh]

Stick to the homework for now

 

[SpaceTiger]

I would happily pay the extra taxes it would take to make this happen, but dumping serious science (like space telescopes) to pay for it seems pretty silly to me.

 

[russ_watters]

Hmmm, I don't think so; Mars has atmosphere therefore significant drift can occur.

What "drift"? It's not like we would drop the spacecraft toward the planet on a ballistic trajectory and hope they would land near where we aim. They would be under control: steered.

I have dropped my Mars Future idea with cool spaceship to for Mars Now Mission. Also, I have never heard of pin-point landing on Mars so it is imperative to livelihood of crew to be near supplies else they could die within minutes of landing. Thus, I proposed to over engineer this aspect with duplication of supply huts. Also, the scientist from travel from one modular installation to the next whichever is nearest field work.

Also, when it comes to Mars the Moon landings are not relevant because ballistic parameters are different. And the lunar lander was a scantly cladded vehicle but a Mars Landing Vehicle would be quite bulky and massive in comparison; the moon has no atmosphere and tiny gravity. You are comparing the apples to the oranges.

With all due respect, you really don't have a clue what you are talking about. None of that makes any sense.

 

[cronxeh]

None of that makes any sense.

Why russ, I do believe we've encountered a http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt"

 

[D H]

I agree with EVo's questioning of the main premise, but also: No, we are capable of landing a spacecraft on a dime when the need exists.

On Mars? If by landing on a dime you mean a dime placed on a map of Mars that is one or two foot wide, then yes, we can land on a dime on Mars. The landing footprints of the vehicles sent to Mars to date have been hundreds of kilometers long. The best so far have been the rovers whose landing footprint was a 63 km × 9 km ellipse (3σ). NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) will be the first vehicle to ever make a precision landing on Mars. Here, "precision landing" means a landing footprint that is a mere 5 to 10 km long.

Precision landing remains one of many risk areas (low technology readiness level) related to a human mission to Mars. NASA would need to reduce that 5-10 km uncertainty in the MSL landing footprint by more than two orders of magnitude to make a human mission to Mars an acceptable risk.

 

[Garth]

I would happily pay the extra taxes it would take to make this happen, but dumping serious science (like space telescopes) to pay for it seems pretty silly to me.

My thoughts exactly!

Welcome back ST! How are you doing?

Garth

 

[SpaceTiger]

My thoughts exactly!

Welcome back ST! How are you doing?

I'm doing just fine, thanks Garth! Getting married, changing jobs, buying a house... you know, the usual stuff. :)

 

[russ_watters]

On Mars? If by landing on a dime you mean a dime placed on a map of Mars that is one or two foot wide, then yes, we can land on a dime on Mars. The landing footprints of the vehicles sent to Mars to date have been hundreds of kilometers long. The best so far have been the rovers whose landing footprint was a 63 km × 9 km ellipse (3σ). NASA's next mission to Mars, the Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) will be the first vehicle to ever make a precision landing on Mars. Here, "precision landing" means a landing footprint that is a mere 5 to 10 km long.

I didn't say we've done it yet, I just said we can. AFAIK, the rovers were just dropped-in unguided on a ballistic trajectory: they had no ability to steer themselves to a landing site. So why compare them with a spacecraft that would be steered?

Precision landing remains one of many risk areas (low technology readiness level) related to a human mission to Mars. NASA would need to reduce that 5-10 km uncertainty in the MSL landing footprint by more than two orders of magnitude to make a human mission to Mars an acceptable risk.

Why is it possible to do it on the moon (and Earth, of course), but not possible to do it on Mars?

 

[cronxeh]

Landing footprints apply only to unguided landings. We have the technology to land to any location on Mars if we had a manned spacecraft mission. First the big mother ship takes the entire mission payload from Earth to Mars orbit, then smaller shuttle would detach and enter the atmosphere and land on any location. Doing it any other way is a suicide mission.

 

[D H]

I didn't say we've done it yet, I just said we can.

Come on, Russ. Where's your inner engineer? We can't say we can do it until we have done it. We engineers are supposed to be Missourans at heart: "Show me!" Up until a capability has been demonstrated point its just a bunch of scientists yammering -- or something at a low technology readiness level (same thing). Precision landing on Mars (if you want to call a 5-10 km long footprint "precise") is at TRL 6. The Mars Science Laboratory will bring it to TRL 8. Pinpoint landing on Mars, 100 meters or less, is way, way down there on the TRL scale. TRL 2, maybe.

Why is it possible to do it on the moon (and Earth, of course), but not possible to do it on Mars?

There are several reasons, none of them insurmountable. Some are

• The initial state uncertainty at the onset of the entry, descent, and landing phase is much lower for landing on the Moon than it is for landing on Mars.
• There are no state updates from the outside for landing on Mars. The vehicle is on its own. Round-trip comm link time for Mars is 40 minutes, a few seconds for the Moon. Earth-based navigation greatly reduces the uncertainty in the navigated state for landings on the Moon. This capability played a big part in those Apollo precision landings.
• Mars has an atmosphere. The Moon doesn't. This makes for a significant process noise for landing on Mars that simply is not present in landings on the Moon.
• We don't have a particularly good model of Mars' atmosphere (yet). That process noise is rather large.
• Mars' atmosphere is rather thin. It's hard to use it for control.
• We don't have a good gravity model of Mars (yet). This is one of the leading contributors to the uncertainty in the navigated state.
• We don't have precise maps of Mars (yet). This leads to map tie errors that remain on the order of a kilometer or so for Mars.
• The Apollo 12 landing was done with human eyes. Automated hazard avoidance remains a hard problem. (Automated hazard avoidance is an issue distinct from precision/pinpoint landing.)

 

[D H]

Landing footprints apply only to unguided landings.

The Phoenix lander was a controlled landing. It's landing footprint was 90 km long or so -- and that was the uncertainty at entry interface. The mission uncertainty was 150 km or so. The Mars Science Lab will be a controlled landing, and its uncertainty at EI is 5-10 km, 20-40 km mission.

We have the technology to land to any location on Mars if we had a manned spacecraft mission.

No, we don't.

 

[cronxeh]

The Phoenix lander was a controlled landing. It's landing footprint was 90 km long or so -- and that was the uncertainty at entry interface. The mission uncertainty was 150 km or so. The Mars Science Lab will be a controlled landing, and its uncertainty at EI is 5-10 km, 20-40 km mission.


No, we don't.

Ok again manned means there is a human in there who flies an aircraft, we have it right now and I'm certain Cape Canaveral in Florida is not 90 km long.

 

[zomgwtf]

I have to say I disagree with Evo and russ's posts. There would potentially be new technology coming from a mission to Mars. It'd be good for science in all fields I think. All that is small stuff compared to saying WE DID IT!

I mean like really you are going to say that it wouldn't be amazing if we landed a man on Mars? If that happened within my lifetime it'd probably be one of Mans greatest accomplishments in my lifetime.

I hate how people say we can spend the money better here on Earth, I highly doubt that. The amount of coruption here on this planet is insane, giving people more money to 'do good' with it clearly doesn't have 'good' outcomes the majority of the time. It'd be great if we could find a way to feed the world but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be equally as great if we went to Mars.

I can say that I would love to see poverty and hunger ended on our entire planet for all people but that doesn't mean I can't say that I'd love to see humans go to Mars.

 

[D H]

Ok again manned means there is a human in there who flies an aircraft, we have it right now and I'm certain Cape Canaveral in Florida is not 90 km long.

Big difference there.

• The Shuttle's state uncertainty prior to the deorbit burn is very, very small compared to the state uncertainty prior to the Mars injection burn.
• The Shuttle uses military-grade GPS augmented with ground sitings. There is no Mars GPS (yet).
• The Shuttle's deorbit burn is tiny compared to that needed to slow a vehicle that makes a entry into Mars' atmosphere directly from hyperbolic orbital speeds. This makes for a much larger plant noise in a Martian entry compared to reentry from low Earth orbit.
• We have an extremely good model of the Earth's gravity field. The best Mars gravity model is lousy in comparison.
• Comm with the Shuttle is nearly continuous. There is no comm with a Mars lander during Mars entry, descent, and landing.
• Once the Shuttle slows down below transsonic speeds, multiple ground stations provide azimuth, elevation, range, and range rate readings. The Shuttle's state uncertainty is near zero by the time it drops into the subsonic range. There are no ground stations or beacons on Mars (yet).

 

[cronxeh]

Big difference there.

• The Shuttle's state uncertainty prior to the deorbit burn is very, very small compared to the state uncertainty prior to the Mars injection burn.
• The Shuttle uses military-grade GPS augmented with ground sitings. There is no Mars GPS (yet).
• The Shuttle's deorbit burn is tiny compared to that needed to slow a vehicle that makes a entry into Mars' atmosphere directly from hyperbolic orbital speeds. This makes for a much larger plant noise in a Martian entry compared to reentry from low Earth orbit.
• We have an extremely good model of the Earth's gravity field. The best Mars gravity model is lousy in comparison.
• Comm with the Shuttle is nearly continuous. There is no comm with a Mars lander during Mars entry, descent, and landing.
• Once the Shuttle slows down below transsonic speeds, multiple ground stations provide azimuth, elevation, range, and range rate readings. The Shuttle's state uncertainty is near zero by the time it drops into the subsonic range. There are no ground stations or beacons on Mars (yet).

Hold on this issue is easily solved with beacons. First you approach Mars with the mothership, deploy satellites for guidance above the spot you are trying to reach, and launch a beacon onto the landing zone. Once the beacon is in place, enter the atmosphere. This scenario is ridiculously more complicated than it needs to be.

The simplest scenario is to have the mothership in geostationary orbit directly above the landing zone and have the shuttle spiral down into the atmosphere. Easy landing, easy takeoff. Or perhaps not so easy, but nonetheless within the reach of possibility.

Its Mars we talking about, it doesn't even have a magnetic field. Atmosphere of 92% carbon dioxide, and only 37% of Earth's gravity. Almost no atmospheric pressure, and certainly the 'burn' in carbon dioxide rich atmosphere has a different meaning. How hard can it really be to land on an ice cap on another planet

In any event, just by thinking about this problem we can already invent better technologies for guidance. Atomic clocks, faster navigational computation for triangulation, etc all for building satellite guidance system.

 

[Evo]

My question is what long term benefits are we expecting here? Is it to gain knowledge towards a future goal of leaving the galaxy? Or is it just to be a dumping ground to ease overpopulation here?

Predictions based on the sun becoming a red giant, the Earth will be uninhabitable within a billion years. I'm sure there is an equally dire furure for Mars. And if I'm not mistaken, The milky Way is due to collide with Andromeda in about 5 billion years.

WB SpaceTiger!. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

 

[D H]

Hold on this issue is easily solved with beacons. First you approach Mars with the mothership, deploy satellites for guidance above the spot you are trying to reach, and launch a beacon onto the landing zone. Once the beacon is in place, enter the atmosphere. This scenario is ridiculously more complicated than it needs to be.

No, your scenario is ridiculously more simplistic than reality.

Think of it this way: Would NASA be bragging that the upcoming Mars Science Lab mission is the first precision landing mission on Mars ever, with "precision landing" means an error of only 5 to 10 kilometers downrange, if this scenario is ridiculously more complicated than it needs to be?

A vehicle that is going to land from space is going to land somewhere. There is no turning around after performing atmospheric entry burn. It is a point of no return. There is no going back, and there is limited ability to control where the landing will occur.

Think of the Shuttle. Once it has performed its deorbit burn and entered the atmosphere the Shuttle will land somewhere. If it aims for Florida it is going to land somewhere near Florida. Landings in Hawaii or Spain are out of the picture. The Shuttle has limited control authority. A vehicle landing on Mars has much, much less control authority than does the Shuttle. Our atmosphere is thick. Mars' atmosphere is anything but.

At any point along the descent trajectory there is a modeled uncertainty and an unknown error in the vehicle's navigated state. Seeing a crater or sensing a beacon at a location other than expected can give the vehicle a better idea of where it is. (These are called state updates. Without such state updates the state uncertainty and state error can only grow.) Because the vehicle has limited control authority, only some of that error/uncertainty can be removed prior to landing even if the measurements have zero error associated with them.

That measurement will itself erroneous (all real measurements are somewhat erroneous). Failing to properly model the error in the measurement may mean the vehicle's navigated state is now wrong; the true state is no longer within the navigated state plus or minus the nav uncertainty. This is an unforgivable error on the part of the nav system designers. They always design the system so that every measurement is taken with a grain of salt.

Now let's look at your beacons. What, exactly, does releasing a beacon from the mother ship accomplish? Visual navigation (e.g., looking at craters) provide meaningful measures. You know where the craters are to within map accuracy. If you don't know the location of the beacon to a similar degree of accuracy that beacon on the surface is pretty much useless.

One beacon is pretty much worthless, anyhow. A slew of beacons spread out on the planet's surface are what is needed. That way the beacons can be used for triangulation. Assuming, that is, that the beacons locations are precisely known ahead of time. One beacon right at the landing site, even if the location is well known, is pretty much worthless. By analogy, think of driving down a country road. Right after rounding a curve a deer jumps onto the road and freezes. You do not have the control authority (braking power) to stop in time. You are going to hit that deer.

That one beacon is like the deer. The beacon will come into the field of view too late. The vehicle's limited control authority will not give the vehicle enough time to correct the error in the vehicle's state. The vehicle will miss the landing site; all the beacon will do is tell the vehicle by how much it has missed the site.

 

[russ_watters]

Come on, Russ. Where's your inner engineer? We can't say we can do it until we have done it.

I agree with that sentiment, but the reason I don't agree with the main point is that it seems to me that we have done it. To me, it seems like questioning that a new airport would work because we've never flown there before. That's why I asked what is different about Mars that makes it more difficult.

Examples of landings that were not intended to be precision doesn't tell us anything at all about whether a precision landing is possible.

There are several reasons, none of them insurmountable. Some are

• The initial state uncertainty at the onset of the entry, descent, and landing phase is much lower for landing on the Moon than it is for landing on Mars.

• Because of the speed and altitude, I assume? I thought about that. Besides the fact that the moon landings were 50 years ago and we should be better at it today, the fact that the craft would be steered makes it less sensitive to the precison of the initial state.

  [*]There are no state updates from the outside for landing on Mars. The vehicle is on its own. Round-trip comm link time for Mars is 40 minutes, a few seconds for the Moon.

  If you're rendesvousing with a craft that has already landed, the state updates come from that craft that has landed (or even a navigation satellite around Mars) and the lander's own navigation equipment and sensors, not from Earth.
  
  Is the moon even close enough for earth-based state updates? What's the round trip, 2 seconds? That's an awful lot at a few thousand miles and hour.
  

  Earth-based navigation greatly reduces the uncertainty in the navigated state for landings on the Moon. This capability played a big part in those Apollo precision landings.

  I don't understand. Do you mean sensors on Earth tracked the position of the lunar lander and updated it's navigation computer? That's very surprising to me.

  [*]Mars has an atmosphere. The Moon doesn't. This makes for a significant process noise for landing on Mars that simply is not present in landings on the Moon.

  Agreed, that's a tough issue. That's why a lander would need significant capability for course correction...fortunately due to the atmosphere, it could have aerodynamic control surfaces. So I see this as a plus, not a minus.

  [*]We don't have a particularly good model of Mars' atmosphere (yet). That process noise is rather large.

  Indeed. We'd need to get that.

  [*]Mars' atmosphere is rather thin. It's hard to use it for control.

  Not at high speed, it wouldn't be. Besides, you don't need a lot of control. We're only talking a few degrees of course correction and adding or subtracting a few hundred mph of speed.

  [*]We don't have a good gravity model of Mars (yet). This is one of the leading contributors to the uncertainty in the navigated state.

  That surprises me - I wouldn't have thought it was that big. But ok.

  [*]We don't have precise maps of Mars (yet). This leads to map tie errors that remain on the order of a kilometer or so for Mars.

  That surprises me to, but in any case, that's again not something that is terribly difficult to overcome.

  [*]The Apollo 12 landing was done with human eyes. Automated hazard avoidance remains a hard problem. (Automated hazard avoidance is an issue distinct from precision/pinpoint landing.)

You mean dodging rocks? We're talking about a rendesvous with a previously landed craft. I see no reason why the first craft to land couldn't conduct a survey of the surrounding area.

Listen, I'm not saying that traveling through hyperspace is like dusting crops, I'm just saying it can be done. A Mars mission would be a hugely expensive and complicated engineering project. But I don't think it is correct to call the capabilities so difficult that we'd need to send a bunch of supply ships in a shotgun pattern over a few hundred square miles in order to have a significant chance of being close to one.

There really isn't anything new here except the address. When the early space program did these things, they truly were "new". There were so many things that had never been done before, it is truly remarkable that they were done. Everything from an in-space rendesvous to the touch-down itself. There is a huge difference between doing those things truly for the first time and just doing them in another place.

 

[russ_watters]

The Phoenix lander was a controlled landing. It's landing footprint was 90 km long or so -- and that was the uncertainty at entry interface. The mission uncertainty was 150 km or so. The Mars Science Lab will be a controlled landing, and its uncertainty at EI is 5-10 km, 20-40 km mission.

"Controlled" how? Was it controlled the way the Apollo craft were controlled? Did it fire rockets to hover and fly like a helicopter toward a pre-defined, precise landing point? Did it have capability for guidance over the last minute or two before touchdown?

Also, according to the wiki, for some reason its parachute fired 7 seconds late, leading it to be near the edge of it's predicted ellipse (28km long).

Again, it does not appear that an attempt was made to hit a small landing area.

No, your scenario is ridiculously more simplistic than reality.

Think of it this way: Would NASA be bragging that the upcoming Mars Science Lab mission is the first precision landing mission on Mars ever, with "precision landing" means an error of only 5 to 10 kilometers downrange, if this scenario is ridiculously more complicated than it needs to be?

Since NASA has deployed none of the infrastructure described in your previous post, which it surely would if a manned attempt was made, yeah, I think it is a reasonable thing to brag about.

You're talking about a $500 billion program as if it shouldn't be expected to be any better than a $500 million dollar project.

 

[zomgwtf]

My question is what long term benefits are we expecting here? Is it to gain knowledge towards a future goal of leaving the galaxy? Or is it just to be a dumping ground to ease overpopulation here?

Predictions based on the sun becoming a red giant, the Earth will be uninhabitable within a billion years. I'm sure there is an equally dire furure for Mars. And if I'm not mistaken, The milky Way is due to collide with Andromeda in about 5 billion years.

WB SpaceTiger!. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

I highly doubt any rational person is claiming we should go to Mars in order to escape our Sun a billion years from today. Do you know how large an amount of time 1 billion years is? Even relative to the age of our planet. It looks like a red herring to me.

If you read my post I think the majority of people would just like to have it done for the sake of doing it. We're human, we like to explore the unknown and conquer huge daunting tasks.

If you just want to talk economics about the situation I'm pretty sure it'll help with jobs etc. would help a national economy? Probably not. Why does eveything have to do with money though?

 

[D H]

"Controlled" how? Was it controlled the way the Apollo craft were controlled? Did it fire rockets to hover and fly like a helicopter toward a pre-defined, precise landing point? Did it have capability for guidance over the last minute or two before touchdown?

Your three questions answered in order,

1. No and yes. No for three reasons: The Apollo spacecraft could not take advantage of the Moon's almost non-existent atmosphere; the Phoenix lander of course could and did take advantage of Mars' atmosphere. Secondly, the Apollo spacecraft received critical state updates from the Earth. Phoenix was on its own. Thirdly, humans flew the Apollo vehicles. particularly during final descent. Phoenix was, once again, on its own.
   
   Now for the "yes" answer: Phoenix made a powered descent. It released the chute about a kilometer above Mars' surface.
   
   
2. No and yes again. The Phoenix lander's state uncertainty was too large for a precision landing. It did however use powered descent and it did (limited) hazard avoidance capability. (NASA treats hazard avoidance as distinct from precision landing.)
   
   
3. Yes. Phoenix made a powered descent and had a limited hazard avoidance capability.

Again, it does not appear that an attempt was made to hit a small landing area.

Again, no such attempt has ever been made. Automated precision landing requires a lot a of new technologies. The precision landings by Apollo relied on a human pilot's eyes. LIDAR is relatively new stuff. LIDAR is one of the key technologies for hazard avoidance and for precision landing. Relating that LIDAR imagery to a map and getting a nav update out of it is very much new stuff.

 

[D H]

Three lay articles on NASA's ALHAT (Automated landing and hazard avoidance technology) project:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/alhat-project.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1990
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=1991

and the obligatory video:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=796

 

[SpaceTiger]

WB SpaceTiger!. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Thanks Evo! Good to see you all again.

I can only really speak about the scientific gains of such a mission and I know they would be minimal, at least relative to the amount of money that was spent. It's difficult to predict what the technological gains might be from such an endeavor -- perhaps there are some folks on here who are knowledgeable enough about the moon missions to say how much those stimulated new technological breakthroughs.

It would certainly be unrealistic to expect that landing a man on Mars would lead to a boom in space travel. The only way space will really become a "new frontier" is if people can make money off of it, and I find it difficult to imagine that commercial interests will pursue manned space missions anytime in the near future, regardless of whether we land a person on Mars or not.

 

[D H]

Welcome back, ST!

I can only really speak about the scientific gains of such a mission and I know they would be minimal, at least relative to the amount of money that was spent.

First off, we are not going to send people to Mars anytime soon. The technology just isn't there yet, and the cost/time to develop the requisite technology is extremely high.

We in the US like to make the government switch affiliations on a regular basis. One of the first things an incoming President/Congress does upon such a switch is to kill or revamp key (but not critical) programs developed by the other side. NASA's high-visibility programs fit the bill rather nicely. Republicans would have loved to have killed Johnson's social programs, but they couldn't. Apollo was a highly visible but non-essential Democratic idea. It was gone. The Democrats revamped Space Station Freedom into the multinational entity that it now is, and more lately, killed Constellation in part because these were Republication ideas.

A realistically funded human mission to Mars would be highly visible, rather expensive, and take decades to accomplish. It would have to survive multiple switches between Democrats and Republicans.Suppose the government did fully fund a mission to Mars and kept that funding intact for the decades needed to accomplish it. I beg to differ with ST's supposition. The scientific and technological gains from such a program would be immense. Space Tiger, rather than looking at how much money would be wasted on a mission of little scientific benefit, look at things from the perspective of the immense amount of money that would inevitably flow to space science as a result of such an endeavor.

Britain's Royal Astronomical Society has learned this lesson well. Britain had a forty year long ban on government funding of human spaceflight activities. The RAS was one of the key players in getting this ban placed. The law of unintended consequences kicked in big time with this ban. British space science decline for forty years, eventually making Britain #21 in civil (non-military) space exploration. Most of the paltry sum of money they did spend on space went across the Channel as obligatory payments to the European Space Agency. There are very few space scientists left in Great Britain. Going back to the lead sentence of this paragraph, the RAS was one of the key players in getting that ban lifted. Great Britain now has a fledgling space agency, the UK Space Agency. The person who ceremoniously pushed the button to signal the start of this new space agency was Britain's first official, government-funded astronaut.

 

[SpaceTiger]

Welcome back, ST!

Thanks, D H!

Suppose the government did fully fund a mission to Mars and kept that funding intact for the decades needed to accomplish it. I beg to differ with ST's supposition. The scientific and technological gains from such a program would be immense. Space Tiger, rather than looking at how much money would be wasted on a mission of little scientific benefit, look at things from the perspective of the immense amount of money that would inevitably flow to space science as a result of such an endeavor.

I don't see how this is inevitable... when Bush decided to pursue another mission to the moon, he ended up cutting the Hubble Space Telescope, the most important scientific tool to astronomy. Similar cuts would almost certainly occur in the pursuit of a Mars mission. As far as Great Britain goes, their contributions to astronomy have been immense for the last 40 years; the fact that their civil space program ranks low really has very little to do with their contributions to science.

That said, I really don't know what the technological gains would be. One can argue that such a mission could lead to advances in technology that enable the success future *scientific* missions. I certainly can't rule out such a possibility, but on the surface, a mission to Mars would be more of a political endeavor than a scientific one and it's difficult to see how science wouldn't suffer, at least in the short term (i.e. our lifetime).

 

[D H]

don't see how this is inevitable... when Bush decided to pursue another mission to the moon, he ended up cutting the Hubble Space Telescope, the most important scientific tool to astronomy.

That is not what happened.

What happened is that after the Columbia disaster NASA internally decided that the fourth Hubble repair mission was a no-go. There was no safe haven and no backup plan in the case of a launch problem. The decision to cancel the Hubble repair mission was largely an internal decision. Astronomers did exactly the wrong thing after that decision was announced. They went the political route. Politics was one of the key factors that led to the Columbia disaster in the first place.

NASA internally resisted that political pressure. They hurriedly developed a plan to repair the Hubble robotically. Many of NASA's space centers were involved in this plan. Only one problem: That robotic repair mission had too many unknowns, too high a cost, and there was a huge doubt as to whether Hubble could stay alive long enough for any repair mission, Shuttle-based or robotic, to have any value. The Aerospace Corporation performed an independent audit of the options ten months after the decision to cancel the repair mission and recommended that the robotic repair mission and the Shuttle repair mission be scrapped for technological, economical, and safety issues. They found that the best thing for Hubble was to let it die, and that the money needed to perform the repair would be better spent almost anywhere else.

NASA did cancel the robotic repair mission, but they bowed to the immense political pressure and did perform the final Hubble repair mission with the Shuttle. From a technological, economical, and safety perspective, that was one of the dumbest and luckiest decisions made by NASA to date. The only reason it went forward was because of politics. The only reason it succeeded was because humans , rather than robots, did the repair.

 

[AlexES16]

Because it is the man's purpose in life - to explore and conquer, and its also something to pass time with :tongue2:

Also, remember who brought you the Space Pen?

And another thing. Its time to take the money away from boys (financial sector) and give it to real men (science and engineering). Enough with those bailouts already. The people that work in the financial sector do not create 'wealth'. They are simply reselling what others made. The only actual value is created by engineers who make things, and its impossible to know what needs to be made until you've encountered a problem like getting to Mars.

Mars expedition requires air filtration systems, recycling, fuel from human excrement, all to highest standard and efficiency. Not to mention purification systems, genetically modified seeds that grow in most inhospitable conditions. All these things are useful on Earth as well. Radiation shielding, materials science, portable scanners, long range communication systems, high speed inter planetary Internet, the list goes on, and only limited by what we've already encountered.

Perhaps we'll find microbes there - makes us feel better about our own evolutionary stage, or perhaps we find water on Mars, could be turned into a backup 'Earth' in case we get hit by a meteor. You can't put a price on survival from extinction of entire civilization, all we've accomplished and will accomplish just by overcoming the 'how much will it cost?' factor. It costs us nothing to get to Mars compared to what it buys us - an accomplishment of a lifetime.

"In March 2007, NASA announced that the volume of water ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted, would be sufficient to cover the entire planetary surface to a depth of 11 meters" - out of Wikipedia.

Dude! Thank you so much! at last i hear a person with a good asnwers about the economics and the progress in science dude!.

Watch this its about this topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7cX...&p=8C3B60FC2884B800&playnext_from=PL&index=22