So President Bush wants to send manned missions to the moon and Mars. On the news tonight, Andy Rooney pointed out a minor flaw in the President's plan for manned exploration of Mars:
Mars' gravity is strong enough that manned missions may not be able to lift off from the surface for the very long voyage home.A quick spin around for some hard data shows that gravity is 1.62 m/s2 on the moon, and 3.69 m/s2 -- over twice as strong. Escape velocity is also over twice as great on Mars: 5.03 km/s vs. 2.38 km/s.
The problem of course is the cost of fuel, schlepping all of it to Mars, and all of the associated complications of sending all that additional weight to Mars and to the surface.
This is not an insurmountable problem, but a successful mission profile presupposes some major advances in propulsion systems. All in the name of some empty campaign promise intended to inspire the country and gain votes.
Hm...
Governmentese is eating your English!
Re:Oof
ziggy on 2004-01-26T02:42:03
Well I did spend some time on Capitol Hill past this week. Must be a lingering after effect.
Re:We don't need to take it with us
ziggy on 2004-01-26T14:45:24
Fuel to reach escape velocity isn't the only problem to solve. There's also going to be a huge energy requirement for the landing party, much bigger than what Spirit and Opportunity need. With a journey like that, they're also not going to visit for three days and come home. And even if they do bring the hydrogen with them, there's a lot of energy necessary to run shipboard systems for a few months there and back, as well as on the surface -- when atmospheric CO2 isn't available. Solar panels probably won't be delivering all of that power.It's not impossible, but the challenges are significantly more complicated than:
- Return to the Moon
- Build a moon base
- stuff happens here
- Manned Mission to Mars
Re:We don't need to take it with us
pudge on 2004-01-28T04:12:46
They're not even projecting a date for a manned mission to Mars, but it would, given the rest of the timeline, be at least 20 years from now. I won't worry about it jut yet.:-) Re:We don't need to take it with us
ziggy on 2004-01-28T15:32:09
I must be misremembering something. When they first floated the trial balloon around the 100th anniversary of Kittyhawk, I think they alluded to a manned mission by 2015, with lunar exploration re-commencing around 2008 or 2012.Keeping up with history is hard!
:-) Re:We don't need to take it with us
pudge on 2004-01-28T18:34:09
They are thinking of a manned mission to the moon from 2015-2020, and then establish a base there, and then go to Mars. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/14/bush.space/ says, "The president did not announce a date for a Mars mission, but administration sources said the earliest date for a journey to the red planet would be 2030." I'll practically be retired by then (unless I rely on social security!).Re:We don't need to take it with us
jdavidb on 2004-01-26T19:57:03
If they are going to produce the fuel there, I think we need to produce a fully automated return trip to and from Mars as proof of concept. If we can send a man-sized ship to Mars, harvest materials, produce fuel, and return, all without human presence, then we can modify the mission profile to include human beings and have more confidence in their safe return.
