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Space Science

6 New Mars Missions 113

Posted by Hemos from the back-to-the-red-planet dept.
JM_the_Great writes "Seems NASA is planning 6 new Mars Missions. They'll try to answer questions about Mars' past and the possibility of life there."
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6 New Mars Missions More

6 New Mars Missions

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  • Re:How long is a Meter (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What makes you so sure that they are gonna put units in their figures?
  • I hate to break this to you, but who do you think gets the federal contracts from NASA to BUILD this stuff? Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. The problem is a sort of double-edged sword. There's so much red tape to wade through it adds tons of extra effort and money to the whole project, but on the other hand... people get really sad when something like the Challenger explosion happens.
  • I find it more likely that the world will unite into a one-world government and everyone will sing in harmony and contribute work and services willingly to each other in the interests of fostering world peace. Who needs money when you have love baby? Want to put men on Mars? All the scientists will get together out of the sheer thrill of doing the task rather than expecting to get some monetary reward out of it. All resources will be shared amongst all world states whether they be resource rich or poor. We'll all light a huge bonfire an sing the night away as the world finally matures in a single cohesive unit. Of course ironically, three days later the comet the size of Texas will hit the Earth and we'll be wiped out. But it was a damn good 3 days while it lasted!

    So, no.. maybe in about 500 years corporations will want to mine the moon or Mars.. but right now, there's too much good stuff to exploit right here on Earth. Unless they find some really rare element up there they're never going to justify it to their stockholders.
  • Well, I would say there will be a manned mission to Mars within 20 years definitely. Just for the hell of it. We'll have the technology needed better developed by then. If you REALLY want to see it happen, start spreading the rumor to everyone you know that Saddam Hussein has manned-space capability and is planning on sending 3 Arabnauts to the red planet to mine it for oil. Congress will pass an emergency appropriations bill for $100 billion more NASA funding the next day and the President will declare it a national priority to claim those rich oil fields on Mars before anyone in the middle east gets there. :-)
  • Signals only go up to 32.
  • Whoops, make that 63.
  • You utter fool. Do you honestly think that money spent on the space program is wasted? The Space program is by far one of the most EFFICIENT parts of the US Government. Money spent in space is not returned the next friday like some bad lotto. It comes back 10 or 20 years down the road as pretty much ANYTHING. From simple ecnomic boosts, to vastly better technology to fanciful innovations.

    Do you actually think that the decendants of blacks who were imported as slaves deserve to receive welfare? I say no, for one reason. Compare the US to Africa. You should be happy as hell you are living in a place as nice as the US as opposed to Africa.
  • Finally. I think this is the right direction for NASA right now. Over the next ten years build up our knowledge of Mars, and culminate with having rocks sent back to us. I don't think the rocks are the important thing here -- if we can send a robot to Mars and have it come back safely, it's the first step to having a human go there and come back safely.

    If NASA can do this and minimize the dumb mishaps, we'll be well on our way to getting people on Mars within 30 years.
  • I know I'm not the only person here who has read Carl Sagan, as well as countless other scientists and futurists that beg us to think past our nose when it comes to the human race.

    Our civilization has come to the point where we have the technological capability of establishing a permanent presence off this planet for the first time. I can't think of many more honorable and worthwhile goals than to get a bunch of us off this rock permanently.

    Remember: 1/5000 chance of an extinction level event in our lifetime. If a few hundred years from now, an asteroid went BOOM on earth and we all died, no one could argue that we didn't have ample chance to protect the survival of our species.

    A quick disclaimer: this should be simple logic, but the question keeps coming up about "money better spent elsewhere", so I have to get it out there.
    ---
  • Well, Bush Sr. made a half-hearted attempt with SEI ... but partisian politics killed it just out of spite. Pork barrelling will kill any manned Mars mission, as it did with the supercollider in Texas. I think the only way to get to Mars is through commercialization. It was a miracle that we got to the moon -- not only a technological miracle, but a political miracle. If we hadn't had a president as popular as Kennedy, or the USSR on our heels, I don't think it could have happened. Now we KNOW for a fact that Gore ain't gonna send us to Mars, and Bush Jr. won't either unless the rockets burn pure crude oil and make all his Texas buddies stinkin rich.

    Anyway, kids don't dream about space anymore, they dream about female pop stars' exposed midriffs, which are much easier to come by than Mars missions.
  • ... Also, it could be used as a future point from which to launch spacecraft. If we could harvest fuel from the moon or from space debris, and transport all the materials up to the moon, then it would be very efficient to do continuous lauches from the moon.

    A big "yup" to the need to find a source of volatiles on the moon or to import them from the Near Earth Asteroids before we could afford the cost of a lunar base. Hopefully, the presumed water at the moon's poles will be recoverable. And, the NEAs should be explored anyway, as a matter of self-defense.

    I'm not sure what you mean by launching from the moon. There's no point in escaping from one gravity well, then dropping down into another. Maybe you're thinking of O'Neil and company's lunar mass driver plan for build solar power satellites. Launching fiber-glass bags of moon dust is one thing (a useful thing), but launching missions from the moon's surface is another.
    --

  • "If America doesn't even think it's got enough money to pay reparations to those of African ascent for the harms done by slavery, why do we have enough money to go to mars?"

    That's an amazing question. Rather than try to anwser it I will give you a link to review.

    lovell-spac eta lk [nasa.gov]

  • I am a little confused, NASA managed to send two Viking [nasa.gov] landers to the surface of Mars (with a mass of 572 kg each) with no 'glitches' to speak of. You'd think they'd have it down to a fine art by now...

    Capt. Ron

  • Oh no! I'm going to post a link to the solar system simulator [nasa.gov]!


    Karma is meaningless...

    Capt. Ron

  • 6 new Mars Missions. They'll try to answer questions about Mars
    Ooh! Ooh! Will they use the /. interview model to determine what questions are asked?

    1. What about that face, huh? It's a government conspiracy! And I'm sure Microsoft are involved somehow!

    2. Can a space probe run on open source software? It should be running Linux! No, FreeBSD! No, Linux! No, OpenBSD! No, Linux! No, the BeOS!

    3. Does the Martian surface contain any naked petrified hot grits?

    4. Space probes? Hey, how about a Beowulf cluster of those things!

  • Nevermind, somebody else posted a comment similar to this one hours ago already...

  • They'll try to answer questions about Mars' past and the possibility of life there."

    Will they also answer the ten highest moderated questions posted here on Slashdot?

  • If NASA can't correctly calculate the position of Mars so that the lander can make it to the surface, then this whole project needs to be placed into the hands of corporations who will actually hire competent mathematicians and scientists to do the math.
  • At a space conference about a year and a half ago (SSI conference on Space Manufacturing), I had a chance to talk with the JPL lab peopel in charge of the NASA robotics program. The head and staff was very pro-Mars.

    Some people at NASA from a generation raised on planetary sci-fi just doesn't get it. Colonizing the surface of the Moon would create a habitable area equal to Africa. Colonizing Mars would produce a habitable area with a surface area equal to Earth's land masses (not including ocean surface). Sure, do it someday for fun, but not first.

    NASA should instead invest the bulk of its R&D in creating one self-replicating space habitat that could duplicate itself using only sunlight and asteroidal ore. If duplicating once per year in a hundred years such a habitat and its offspring would produce thousands of times the habitable surface of the Earth, enough to support trillions of humans and large populations of other species.

    Remember: a planet is a very wasteful way to use mass. It is much more efficient to use shells to contain atmosphere. If you wan't gravity, just spin it. If you don't want gravity, live in bubbles.

    NASA should take on the responsibility of educating the public about humankind's future in space, not pandering to old obsolete notions in an effort to get funding.

    Related links:
    http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs /sp acsetl.htm [aol.com]
    http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/s ett le.htm [aol.com]
    http://www.permanent.com/ [permanent.com]
    http://science.n as. nasa.gov/Services/Education/SpaceSettlement/ [nasa.gov]
    http://www.luf.org/ [luf.org]

  • AFAIR the metric system was invented by the Dutch and braught into France by Napoleon.
  • ...there should be. Us.

  • Mars has the longest period between launch windows - 2.2 years. All other planets have periods of about 1 year, or less for the inner planets. So we can launch to Pluto every year. But you are right we are running out of time for sending a worthwhile mission to Pluto since its atmoshere will be freezing. I think we are late already.
  • no he means pioneer 10, we are still in contact with voyager 1 and will be for a while, besided 2145-170=1975, i didn't know NASA lost contact with voyager 1 in 1975, yeah thats what i though, next time think before you post. a bugg
  • nasa should buy mir from russia and push it towards mars. nasa's mission would be to use it as an orbiting platform in which to base future manned missions to the surface of mars, but we all know how nasa's mars missions have been going. mir, after some unexplained technical difficulties, disappears from the radar map as it enters orbit. in reality, it crashes to the planet's surface. we now know that organic matter from outer space can survive on a meteorite after it impacts to earth. a little big of the fungus on mir survives the crash and multiplies. so by the time we actually send people to mars (3000ad), mars will be full of plant life and breathable air!
  • (note: I do not support the type of science funding that went into the creation of AIDS...

    um. yes, you are a very intelligent person. so intelligent, in fact, that you seem to have forgotten the minute detail that AIDS isn't a disease, or a virus. It's a condition. (e.g. a minute number of "European-American" blood cells to "Native-American" blood cells. Sorry i didn't give them their proper cell names, but then i'd be being a cell-ist wouldn't i?)

    you're thinking of HIV. but, like i said, you're smart and you knew that the evil white man invented it to give to the African-African population. Here's a quick question though (i figure you know this answer already because you're smart). How come, when my fellow European-Americans engineered this virus and stuck it in the Congo waiting for some monkeys to contract it, then give it to African-Africans, they forgot to make sure that the same genetics that cause a difference in melanin in European-American's ensured that "my people" would never contract it. I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me (as an obviosly racist scientist, right) to make a disease intended to kill African-Africans, African-Europeans, African-Asians, African-Australians, African-Antarcticans, African-South Americans, and African-North Americans and completely forget to make sure that it didn't kill European-North Americans, European-South Americans, European-Europeans, European-Asians, European-Australians, and European-Antarcticans.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • They already have -- we just can't see, 'cause it's dark.


  • Six new missions to Mars? What on Earth for?

    The Pluto-Keiper Express is starving for funds while its restricted launch window draws ever closer, and they want to blow $1 billion to return Mars rock samples which they can pick up from the Antarctic ice-shelf for a fraction of the cost? The fact that they can launch Mars missions with such frequency means that delaying them a year or two to concentrate on PKE isn't going to make a lot of difference to the Mars program, but not doing this will definitely kill PKE.

    It looks to me that NASA is gambling on generating PR through "gee whiz" gadgetry (e.g. rovers) in order to obtain more funds, but they are doing so at the expense of science. Are these new missions really going to tell us a lot more about Mars that the last ones?

    If NASA learnt anything from the Apollo Moon missions, it's that the public gets bored very quickly. They've done the rover thing and MGS is producing loads of high resolution images of the surface - what can they do now that won't be "samey"?
  • I stand corrected, that is what they get for hiring a bad pr agent...
  • Heck when are we going to put a man back on the moon?
    The reason that we aren't going to put a man (or woman) back on the moon anytime soon is because there really isn't any point to it. A moon mission is a really big investment, and until we establish a permenant base there, there's no point to spending all the money. I think that instead of building the ISS, we should be building an international base on the moon. It would be much more permenant, wouldn't have to worry about a degrading orbit. Also, it could be used as a future point from which to launch spacecraft. If we could harvest fuel from the moon or from space debris, and transport all the materials up to the moon, then it would be very efficient to do continuous lauches from the moon. -- Lawrence Thank you for listening, we now return you to your regularly scheduled chaos.
  • NASA is doing lots of stuff. As we speak, the Mars Global Surveyor mission http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/ is sending back tons of images and mapping the surface of the entire planet in great detail. Unfortunately, the last two probes arriving there both failed, but the US has sent lots of probes to Mars to set all this up. With the two failures comes a lot of finger-pointing, so they now have to take a couple steps back and start working their way toward the Mars missions they really want to do. They just realize (especially with this being an election year) that Congressional cretins will sieze on their recent failures to make reasonable sounding (to the sheeple) cuts in NASA's budget if they propose anything too dramatic.
  • just wanted to thank you, man.
    *smears-tear-from-eye*
  • Personally I don't see any world government putting another person on the moon again

    China might. OK, they're starting with bought-in Russian tech, but they might go for it for the glory of China. And like the Russians, they might get too upset every time an astronaut dies. (What DOES China call their spacemen?)
    India is also shooting for the moon, first with unmanned probes as you can read here [spacedaily.com], but who knows what else.
    Actually, I hope China and India both make it, and establish bases there.
    More people might then go to the moon and ask "What do you fancy tonight? Chinese or a curry?"


    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
  • "Weiler said the current plans would spend about $450 million a year, but the sample return mission may cost as much as $1 billion."
    So what you're saying here is that you could have two sample return missions for the price of one B2 Stealth Bomber, the plane which is so ludicrously expensive the US Air Force didn't use them in the Gulf War in case one got shot down! A plane which has to be kept in a specially air-conditioned hangar, as in the wrong conditions the stealth covering comes off, and has to have a new coat of stealth covering after each flight!
    An aircraft so wonderfully stealthy that when one came to a UK Air Show, British Radar picked it up while it was still over the Atlantic, flying at full stealth capacity! Strangely, they've not sent one over since.
    (F117 Stealth Fighters probably cost hundreds of millions, and they're a bit crap too. Fighter my arse, a WWII Spitfire would fly rings around it and then shoot it down!)
    A $1 Billion mars programme sounds like a bargain! Why not spend more money on it and make sure it's going to work this time?

    Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems
  • Let's hope these missions are more like Pathfinder/Sojourner and not like Mars Explorer, Mars Global Surveyor, or either of the Russian ones that never made it. Mars Pathfinder can be regarded as one of the agency's greatest successes, and won NASA much good press until they failed to send yet another robot scout to Mars successfully.

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • 9999 - Ladies and Gentlemen. I am proud to announce... Man made his first step on Mars

    unfortunatly he will never make it back to earth as civilisation was destroyed by the Year 10,000 bug.
  • I was interested to see that they're not considering air-bag landings for the robot landers, as they apparently add too much weight to the package.

    I think there are a couple of reasons why they want to use active-landing systems instead of the passive airbags -- and I don't think that weight has much to do with it. First, they're interested in landing within a much smaller footprint than is possible with a purely-ballistic system (with the airbags, all the aiming is done prior to entering the martian atmosphere -- they want fine control for return missions). Second, I suspect that most of the people involved with Pathfinder were holding their breath, hoping the airbags would work -- you have no idea how much finagling it took to make them even halfway acceptable, once it was clear there would probably be a large horizontal velocity component on impact (which the system wasn't designed for!). I know I nearly had a heart attack before the beacon stopped moving, but didn't stop broadcasting...

    Guess they're going to have to work a lot harder on those thruster-assisted landings then!

    Oh, they know how to do those -- they did it twice in 1976, with the Viking& lt;/I> landers. [friends-partners.org] The problem with the Polar Lander was that they didn't use the proven technology, but instead went with something quick and dirty^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H I mean "cheaper," which turned out to have one of the most predictable failure modes around... but they didn't budget time or money to check for that, it seems.

    They don't have to go to the moon to find the flaw in the MPL design: it was clear to the investigators what had happened, once people actually looked at the test results. Besides, it's almost as expensive landing something on the moon as it is on Mars -- the extra velocity needed is actually fairly small. Nah, the better way to design a lander is with your eyes open!

    ---

  • Does anyone else get the feeling that the more we know the more we know how little we know?

    I think this is always the case when one does science with one's eyes open. It's only when confirmation of pet theories is sought (ignoring evetything that doesn't fit the theory) that we appear to gaining on the Universe's complexity. Was it Haldane who said something about the Universe not only being stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine?

    ---

  • "Weiler said the current plans would spend about $450 million a year, but the sample return mission may cost as much as $1 billion."

    Can anybody else think of better, more necessary things to do with those billions of TAX dollars? Yeah, like build more Seawolf-class attack submarines, which go for about 2.5 billion each. Fortunately we only have 3. :)

  • Let's privatize all this and get going.

    If we continue to allow greedy, money hungry, selfish corporate whores lead the planet we'll all be dead LONG before we get off this planet - at least you and I and our children. If your part of the 0.000000000001 privliged enough to escape at the last minute good for you. Id rather include the rest of humanity. Wake up and realize privitization = enslavement.

  • why not put it to a GOOD use, one that will benefit us here on earth

    That is a perfectly shortsighted, selfish and simple idea. Good work.

    Never mind that the sheeple (like yourself) are too stupid to save themselves (population growth*environmental damage). Getting off this planet and giving our people some perspective about our importance in the universe is of immense value. Our our mere existance - and continued existance had better become a priority

    "when do I get to have MYYYYYYYY turn, when do i get MYYYYYYYY stuff, I want a shiney new SUV, and a new LAWN MOWER, and a new DISHWASHER and the gov is taking all MYYYYY money with TAXXESSSS for other people's STUFFFF" .

    Unless we stop thinking like "benefit us here" and we "better send african americans" and other simple selfish crap were all going to continue our march into oblivion.

  • My ancestors struggled for centuries to overcome people like you. I studied issues like this in college, and even did one of my senior theses on the issue of europeans capturing African slaves.
    Even if African Tribes-people were involved in slave trafficing, that doesn't relegate the europeans from the consequences of their actions.

    So Europeans have comitted a more heinous crime by enslaving blacks than blacks did by enslaving one another?

    Explain this please... Let me guess - that all of Africa's history has been retold to absolve Eurpeans of their guilt, that Africans are the only noble peoples on the planet - that Eurpeans (because they participated in slavery) are evil throughout eternity - and your owed repartition of some sort... get on with your racism please...

  • Funny.... Seems to be that when NASA was trying to re-establish contact with the last lander, they received a signal back from Mars. It was later determined that the sognal was not from the lander. That's ALL that was said. So, what the hell was sending signals back? Isn't all the other junk on the Red Rock electronically dead? Maybe another entity got first post on Mars, let some of our toys land, and started fouling up the rest.....
  • Thanks - this is one of the funniest things I've read here in quite a while!!

    Keep up the good work!

    ---

  • Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought I read somewhere that people with dark skin (African americans, people of color, I dunno which is the latest american P.C. term) have better resistance to radiation and stuff like that, therefore making better astronauts.

    Maybe I read that in some classic Golden-Age sci-fi story. Im not sure.
  • If you are against pure science for its own sake, then you must also be against funding for the arts. The opera won't get anyone out of the gutter, a fine novel won't get anyone off drugs, and a painting won't put food on the table (not even for the artist in most cases). Well, come to that, perhaps you ARE against arts funding. Sometimes the government seems to be.

    But, if you are going to target the space program, then you should also target government funded history studies. Talk about a waste of money. When was the last time history produced anything new, except bad feelings towards people and things long past?

    I'm not really against the study of history. History is wonderful and it helps us understand who we are and where we came from. Well, exploratory science achieves exactly that same purpose, among others. The more we can learn about other planets, the more we can learn about our own, where it has been and where it is going. For instance, it was only during studies of the atmosphere of Venus (partially undertaken by robot probes) that scientists gained the first inklings of something called the "greenhouse effect."

    Exploration of all kinds is worthy. We can never know what it will show us. If we do eventually get everyone equal and happy, it will make us all proud to have that knowledge.

    Besides, even if we do halt government space exploration, how much money do you really think that will free up? A few billion? Most of that will go straight into the military and what's left will be spread around into a multitude of other goverment programs, only a few of which have anything to do with betteering the lives of the poor, starving, and ignorant. And the ignorant will have that much less to learn about even if they do get into schools.

    Peace.
  • According to you we are only ethically allowed to do things that "save" other people. No one would like to live in a world like that, so there's no point to it. Sometimes, groups of people have to do things that are just plain fun. The space program is more than fun, of course. It's an extension of the exploration that brought our ancestors up from the sea and down from the trees. If they had stopped to make sure everyone was up to speed, we'd still be picking lice off one another. No, thanks.
  • You target the space program because it is obvious and because you don't see the use of it. The truth is that the space program gets only a few percent of the national budget. Confiscating this and redistributing it to "worthy" causes is not likely to make much of a difference.

    We're never going to solve all of our problems, so we might as well try to make a tiny amount of forward progress in science and exploration while fighting the good fight at the same time. We don't know what we'll find or what use it might some day be to us. There is wealth out there, and need for amazing technology that will find uses back on earth, if only we can keep striving towards it.
  • If we halt all scientific and exploratory work until everyone is happy, we'll never make any advancements or learn anything new and there won't be any point to being alive. There are worse wastes of money than science. Go pick on those.
  • EZ 2 do.

    We run "Survivor II: Mission to Mars" where 10 people go through brutal and degrading training to get a spot on the Mars mission.

    Wait, they're doing that with Mir?

    OK, wait.

    Get a corporate sponsor like Pepsi to sponsor "Mars: 2005" - the concert tour - and send Sting!!!! Big money sponsors pay the way!!!

    And we get rid of Sting for a while!
  • I think you need to get your facts straight and stop lumping things together. The defense budget for 2000 is about $278 billion. NASA's 2000 budget was $14 billion. Much of that goes to manned space missions, but research in microgravity, aeronautics, and earth sciences comes out of it as well. That's like saying if I cut out going to the movies on Friday nights and stop my $150 a day crack addiction I'll be able to feed my kids. Two totally different things with two totally different moral stigmas which have a hell of a lot of difference in the price tag. How about we muddy the waters and throw some facts in:


    Budget items FY2000

    Agriculture: $17 billion

    Education: $34 billion

    Health and Human Services: $43 billion

    House and Urban Development: $34 billion

    Veterans Affairs: $20 billion

    Environmental Protection Agency: $7 billion

    Federal Emergency Management Agency: $3 billion

    Internation Assistance Programs: $12 billion

    National Science Foundation: $3 billion

    When it comes down to it, general science, space and technology spending is $19 billion. Revenue from all sources was $1.9 trillion in 2000. For you non-math majors, that's only about 1% of the total revenue being spent on space, general science, and technology.

    Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid account for over 42% of that $1.9 trillion. So before you continue to spout off biased liberal feel-good views, we ARE feeding the hungry, housing and homeless and protecting the environment.

    SOURCE: http://w3.access.g po. gov/usbudget/fy2001/pdf/guide.pdf [gpo.gov]

  • AFAIK, you're wrong. Quick google search yielded this [essex1.com].

    It was introduced before Napoleon, BTW.


    --

  • I know that for many people this will sound like nuke flame. But I know what I'm talking...

    It's women one of the factors that stopped Space Exploration. More correctly to say, wifes did it.

    Because US values could not pick with the risks of Space Exploration. For a country that highly values the "family values" the picture of widows and orphans in such a media boost was a big cost. Specially if their husbands die of being fried on capsules. Or nearly freeze on them in front of millions.

    Not only the high politics but also this simple factor was determinant to stop Space Exploration. Sending excellent officers, good fathers and exemplary husbands to Space and get them back in a fridge or a pan was too much. Specially if we consider the conservative character of most women. For them this was coming from nonsense up to a irrational suicide commitement from the part of their partners. So sooner or later we would see shattered families, divorced astronauts or family conflicts. On that epoch, such situation was absolutely unnacceptable to Washington politicians.

    If anyone gets offended with this let me tell you that I work in a critical field and I perfectly know the relations of women in relation to such kamikadzes like me or some of my colleagues. Things go up to the surrealistic/paranoid behaviour of "hunting other hidden skirt" beyond tons of cables and computer hardware. I'm "divorced" for the third time. And I'm already five days in my workplace 'round the clock.

    "With whom you have been? - WITH HER! You know how beautiful she is? Shinning white, her corners are smooth and her head SHINES! And I've been making love with my head and her the whole night! How I love her!" - real citation
  • It's a pitty that you, as a person of African origin does not know very well the fate of your "historical motherland". As you would probably be a lot more interested in such things. Even if we sent penguins as astronauts.

    Let me note you a things: Africa possesses one of the largest meteoritic crater systems on dry land in the world. A system that covers nearly 1200km of Sahara. The biggest craters has a diameter of 600km. If that thing hit today then Africa, and a good piece of the World would turn into Microwave Shaker in a matter of seconds. Even you, in America, would not survive.

    The craters have a few millions of years. That's a lot? Well Africa - Part II: Ancient Egypt. Have you heard of a story called Atlantis that some Egyptian preachers told to one greek. A tragedy so big that almost all culture was wiped out from Earth. I don't wanna discuss here what this Atlantis was. However let me note that there are several facts confirming that Egyptians were not just talking tales.

    Good that's 2500 years ago. So what? Africa - Part III: Cool let's go to our century and search for a weird metallic meteorite called, if I'm not mistaken, Goba. The thing managed to "land" on Earth because it has a funny table-like form. However if that thing went full force into Earth, it would make a beautiful hole of a few hundreds of meters or more in South Africa.

    What this thing has to do with Mars? Well, there, recently, something hit it badly. Too badly. People at NASA say it was milliards ago, but now even they are in doubt. Some other experts say something of millions or hundreds of thousands. Some others mention a few interesting features and say its could be just a few thousands.

    Cool and what this has to do with me, you may ask. Well Do you wanna Tunguska hardcore party to happen right over your head? In Russia it was just 92 years ago. Sikhote-Alin was just 53 years ago. A few years ago there was one in Greenland. Last year another one nearly happened in New Zealand. You may think that barely can happen to you and you are a lucky guy. Pompei citizens were also very sure of themselves when Vesuvio started roaming. Btw. Africans lived there...
  • First stop a little bit on your words. Caucasian for me is the same as nigger for you. I am no Caucasian fuss, ok? If you have a problem with your race it's your problem not mine. Here we cut these problems short. Here, you either keep being a nigger and die straight on the frost, or you hold up and become a russian. And it's no matter what skin you are. Alexander Pushkin's grand-grand-father was from Africa (yeah a blackman like you). And he was not a slave in chains but a general of the Russian Army who fought against the Swedes. And Mr. Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was the founder of modern Russian language if you wanna know.

    If you are not going to learn anything with this damn Mars is also your problem. I am interested in Mars and there are lot of people also interested on it. Including blacks. And what concerns they will "write some nice reports". Who reads them? We read the original info...
  • If NASA can't correctly calculate the position of Mars so that the lander can make it to the surface, then this whole project needs to be placed into the hands of corporations who will actually hire competent mathematicians and scientists to do the math.

    Perhaps they could hire some folks away from Firestone and Microsoft. Yup, corporations are just naturally better at hiring competent people, aren't they? Say, maybe the ex-captain of the Exxon Valdez might be interested in running the project ...

  • Hey, more parking spaces available for the rest of us. I'm all for it!

    I swear, the next time I see a Pathfinder or some other obnoxious subdivision-sized SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle? Don't make me laugh!) parked across two spaces, or crammed into a 'small car' space, I'm going to, oh, get really angry and swear a bit (OK, bit of an anti-climax at the end there).

    Just to keep us on-topic here...

    I was interested to see that they're not considering air-bag landings for the robot landers, as they apparently add too much weight to the package. Guess they're going to have to work a lot harder on those thruster-assisted landings then!

    I wonder if they've considered sending some purely lander prototypes (i.e. just stick a minimal science package on it) to the moon to test? I know that the moon's gravitational field is significantly less than Mars', but they could have at least diagnosed problems like landing strut deployment causing premature engine shut-down. Not only that, but it takes far less time to find out that your lander has a fundamental flaw ;-)

    --
  • ...is whether they'll be able to get Congressional support for the funding of these missions.

    It doesn't matter how forward thinking NASA's current mission plans and objectives are, without the financial backing necessary to realise them they're going nowhere.

    Here's hoping that the next administration gives NASA the backing and support that this type of 'big science' needs and deserves.

    --
  • As the great man once said, let's mine the sucker and strip it dry.

    Seriously though, we're never going to get anywhere until serious business dollars are thrown behind the effort of getting us off this rock. Let's privatize all this and get going.

  • The images of the Cydonia face have gone through a number of enhancements since the one released to the press by NASA.

    Click here to see. [geocities.com]

    I don't think there have been any images of the feature published since that one.

  • How about an even cheaper way to find out if a lander works: Land it on EARTH!!! I mean, how expensive would it be to have a lander land in some desert in Midwest. I would guess that'd be much cheaper than a moonlanding, and more information would be gathered.

    Now, the interesting thing is how long until NASA will send the first human to another planet; or again to the moon.

    Another good use of sending more stuff to the moon would be to check out the fisibility of setting up a station there that is mostly self-supporting.

  • I am amazed at how much they do with so little in funding.

    The thing about "faster, better, cheaper" funding is that there's a threshold beneath which you can't reliably do the job -- as they found out with the Polar Lander and Orbiter last year.

    Pathfinder by itself -- the one lander -- cost as much as the Polar Lander and Orbiter together. That's part of why it worked... (another other part was luck, 'cause the airbags are a little marginal).

    The rest of why they can do it with so little funding is that they don't even try to do the science that the two Viking landers did -- the experiments are fewer and less sophisticated (in terms of todays technology, anyway) -- and operational budgets are small, because the landers are solar powered and therefore don't last more than a few months. Remember how citizens chipped in money to keep Viking operating, after NASA's ops funding ran dry many years into the mission?

    But Viking used RTGs, not solar... and I'm not gonna go there -- at least in this thread. ;)

    ---

  • so long as this means no more crappy Mars movies.... I swear that red planet holds so much for NASA, but nothing for Hollywood.

    ----

  • I have heard talk of mars missions for the last 5 years. THey have graced the cover of Time magazine, popular science, popular mechanics, and all sorts of websites. I have heard all sorts of people say that we will be on Mars in just a couple years now. I have yet to see ANY action towards it. Every new news story about mars gives vague promises about life on mars and people going. I don't think it is gonna happen in my lifetime. I am not at all optimistic about it. I would love to be proven wrong, but all these new developments with mars projects have never gone through. There isn't enough money in NASA's budget, and there is no way they will get more after the last couple mishaps. Someone wake me up when they actually go. But for now, I don't care to see a new news story about it every other day.

  • The supposition is that exploration and yearning for advancement that isn't explicitely financially rewarding in the immediate vicinity creates the advancements of technology that expand the depth of the growth of financial markets and gives us something to look up to beyond just next week's paycheck. I'm all for spending my tax dollars on things like this but I don't think it is generating enough interest in the public sector and should be privatized (with strict rules on ownership et al enforced strongly, which is a fear we should have). If we didn't yearn to explore, many things in history would have changed. Columbus wouldn't likely make more money using his new route to India which he was exploring, but it would have been worth it in the long run if it was discovered. When it was discovered to not be any route to india, explorations continued and eventually people came to live here (and not for financial reasons either, technically). I thank them for that because now we have this continent which we occupy (and stole from other peoples, unfortunately).

    Go to mars? why not...for oil? uh duh, course not...thats not economically feasible in even the most abstract thinking. For the advancement of technology, the technological market, and for the advancement of human understanding in general? Yes.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Never mind all the rover/probe missions to Mars. If we are not commited to sending Man to Mars - forget it. I believe were fairly confident that there are no martians, and only an idiot would feel that there is no life outside of Earth - so finding microbe sized fossils is really a little ho-hum. If we dont find them no Mars we'll say "oh well - they are probably on some other planet" and if we do it will be "we were right, there is life on other planets". One way or the other Im sure scientists are confident of life outside of Earth - somewhere.

    The future for humanity is life off this planet - if not on Mars, lets goto the moon. And AND STAY THERE lets NOT go looking for rocks and whatnot on Mars, instead lets put a base on the moon, and use the IIS (another waste of energy) to construct the crafts and supply. I recognize that the shuttle cannot be the freight system for such a project so we will not be able until the next-gen reusable launch vehicle is in use.

    Humans living off the planet is obviously the ultimate goal of the space program, so why bother toying around with the idea?

    LETS GO DAMMIT!

  • Picked this up from 0Karma oblivion... pretty wise for an AC

    how hard to find 20 billions for sending humans? (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27,@06:29PM EDT (#133)

    I don't see the interest in sending a sample-return robot to mars in 2014 when humans will have walked on mars allready in 2008, and brang back tons of rocks at that time. We just need a president that dares to make a kennedy-speach about going there fast, for the sake of our children who have nothing to dream about anymore.

    Let's convince the SoccerMoms(TM) that we need to do it for the chillldreeen!!
    You can get anything if its for the chillldreen!

  • Hey,

    He said missions in this decade will concentrate on finding the best spot on Mars to pick up rock samples.

    Man, that must be one seriously satisfying job. Imagine going to meetings...

    Manager: So, what have you accomplished this decade, John?
    John: I have identified a selection of potential candidate sites for landing a robot on Mars to pick up bits of rock!
    Manager: Good work!

    Michael

    ...another comment from Michael Tandy.

  • As far as I know these plans don't require additional funding for the Mars Surveyor Program. As long as the funding remains the way it is at the moment (something like $100 million per year or so I think) they should be fine.

    If they got more funding, then they could probably accelerate the timetable a bit.

  • And if you want some past history:

    http://www.n-jcenter.com/repr ise /mars/mars1205.htm [n-jcenter.com]

    Interesting on how the number of missions that have succeded happens to be exactly how many they're planning.
  • Look for life on one of these new moons around Saturn [cornell.edu] (Note the cool photo-flip animation! =)


    --
  • NASA peaked with the first moon landing.

    They have been streamlining for years, "adjusting expectations." And still, if it weren't for the Russians making the US space program look good, there may not be a US space program.

    I agree. It's time to end the monopoly that NASA has on the ionosphere and get on with it.

    full coverage of the Playstation2 debalce [ridiculopathy.com]

  • ... is spark the interest of 1000 kids in science, it will be worth the money. If it gets 100 Americans to think outside their own little world for 10 minutes or so, again, money well spent.

    Anybody remember where we got fuelcells? Tang? Personal computers, advanced medical equipment [CAT Scanners and MRI technology (Computer-Aided Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging) used in hospitals worldwide, came from technology developed to computer-enhance pictures of the moon for the Apollo program], communications satellites, cordless power tools....

    Personally, I think Tang is worth a few billion right there.

    So let's go to Mars. Fuck it, best reason to do it is that we can. Doesn't mean we won't try to help the needy, but as long ago as Jesus people said "the poor will be with us always." Let's go. And don't forget the Tang.
  • But the space program is a veritable island in a sea of pork.

    Shouldn't that be "vegetable"?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Finally we're going back to the red rock. and maybe after this mission Hollywood can stop making horror movies about strange aliens and heroic missions to the damned planet. We don't even know whats there, and maybe after these missions we'll have a better idea of what kind of rocks dust and other stuff is there. Also we can find out if those aliens we insist on making movies about actually existed at one time, or if they still exist maybe we'll lose contact with our robots...again. I just hope that this time we can get things right and not make complete fools of ourselves and get some things done.
  • The way I look at, why are we sending missions to mars when we could be putting the money to better use right here at home.

    What are these missions going to do for me, and African-Americans in general. That's the question you gotta ask yourself. Even if these missions lead to the eventual habitization of mars, you think they're going to be taking any African-Americans? I don't.

    If America doesn't even think it's got enough money to pay reparations to those of African ascent for the harms done by slavery, why do we have enough money to go to mars? Answer me that. On top of that, there are even more ways we could use this money.

    For starters, we could expand the war on poverty. And there are many social programs that are underfunded. And if it turns out that we can fully fund all these programs and have money left, why not put it to a GOOD use, one that will benefit us here on earth. Like, funding fro the arts and education.

    I am,

  • Re:Short Sighted (Score:3)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @03:57PM (#670000) Journal
    Last year in a highly popular russian e-journal this poll was made:

    Wanna live in Russia : 39%
    Wanna live in the West : 21%

    Well people hold your breath. The webmasters thought that two questions was not enough. So they thought, thougth, thought, thought and decided that a "funny question" would be enough:
    "Ain't there another globe?"

    And what you think? How many people choose this question? 39%!!!!!

    The poll was used by nearly 50 000 users. It was a scandal that even several TV stations mentioned it in their news. There were even experts who commented it! A bomb. Nearly half-Russia is ready to get the Hell outta here at first chance. West? Noooooo. Mars, The Moon, Jupiter, Milky Way, Andromeda...

  • Re:NASA, please stop! (Score:3)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @01:32PM (#670001) Journal
    What you express here is mostly what stops Space Exploration. "Dispatch a nuke". Do you have some knowledge of rocketry? Nukes are suborbital engines! They are mostly designed for parabolic orbits and surely not for interplantary travel. Even SATAN, the scariest of Russian nukes had to be redesigned to carry orbital loads.
    In this way, probably think 90% of your representatives and senators. Don't worry. Our Duma thinks the same way...

    Your concern about billions of dollars is understandable. However I should note you that not going to Mars is a mistake. I have seen in detail nearly 40% of the surface of that rock and I tell you that we need to get there. No matter the cost. That is not a planet. No it is not what we may think of a planet, its evolution and nature. As an example: there is a place near Acidalia Planitia that shows a small valley with a depth nearly one kilometer. There are several things that tell that this valley was formed in a matter of minutes and I'm sure it was water that did it. I also tell you that this thing is really small. There are bigger and deeper valleys around. In fact that region is a mess of gigantic canyons crossing each other. In Mars there are several of them.
    No knowledge we have today is able to explain such thing. It seems that something hit Mars and hit it badly. And hit it very recently. No it is not aliens or the forces of Pandora's Box. But it is something that ripped of a good chunk out of the planet, left it vibrating like mad, wiped its water and atmosphere. The most critical is that this thing is not so old as NASA tries to show.

    And it is scary that it seems that this could be more than one blow in the History of this planet.

    and it is even more scary that we Russians and you Americans can't manage to reach that planet in most cases. We send to every corner of the Solar System several probes. Only a few failed. But on Mars 80% of probes went into limbo in the most strange ways. It seems we are missing something but I wouldn't risk to say aliens. In their good minds they would avoid that place. Because there are things much more weird than Fussy Faces and Hoagland's mirages...

    Like craters laying around an nearly oval mound. Like if something carefully choose to hit its base and sides. Only... All around the mound...

  • Re:Sending pathfinders to Mars (Score:3)

    by Mindwarp ( 15738 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @10:58AM (#670002) Homepage Journal
    How about an even cheaper way to find out if a lander works: Land it on EARTH!!!

    The primary reasons that I was thinking of the Moon rather than Earth was the fact that conditions here are radically different from Mars. Firstly, you're dealing with a soupy-thick atmosphere (well, compared to Mars and the Moon you are, anyway). Secondly, you're dealing with a relatively stable and narrow temperature range (again, compared to the temperatures that are experienced on Mars and the Moon). Thirdly, gravity is way higher here.

    I was just thinking that the Moon would provide greater validity for the test than here.

    As an aside, NASA already test their technologies on Earth before blasting them into the depths.

    --

  • Re:How long is a Meter (Score:3)

    by Mindwarp ( 15738 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:36AM (#670003) Homepage Journal
    NASA has some great ideas, and these robots will pave the way for more exploration, but when are we going to put a man on mars?

    I see these missions as more of the 'ground work' necessary before putting a human on Mars rather than as an alternative to doing so. I am confident that mankind will one day walk on the surface of Mars. However, we must remember that a journey to Mars is radically more difficult than the journey to the moon. A journey time of months rather than days introduces hoards of new technical problems to solve (exposure to solar radiation, how to minimise bone-density loss, the enlargement of certain vital organs due to micro/zero gravity environment.) The International Space Station, coupled with the Russian experiences with Mir will hopefully help us to find solutions to these issues.

    Of course, there is also the technical challenge of building a craft/lander large enough to sustain the human crew for the duration of the flight there and back, plus their stay on the Red Planet itself. We've experimented with sealed-system ecologies already, and those experiments have show us just how difficult it would be to balance such a closed system. I believe that considerably more research into technologies such as hydroponics are needed before we can think of providing the long-term support systems that a mission to Mars would require.

    Heck when are we going to put a man back on the moon?


    Personally I don't see any world government putting another person on the moon again. The first gargantuan effort was undertaken primarily for political reasons, and I don't believe that there is enough scientific justification for funding more manned moon missions. That doesn't mean that I don't believe that people wont once again walk on the surface of the moon though. I just don't think it'll happen until some corporation works out how to cost-effectively access the moon's mineral wealth.

    --

  • Re:Who actually cares? (Score:3)

    by Stonehand ( 71085 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @10:51AM (#670004) Homepage
    Well, at some point, we should think about establishing a second colony. Right now, Earth is a single point of failure... and we can't rectify the situation without space research, including acceptance of risk.

  • How long is a Meter (Score:3)

    by cluge ( 114877 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:24AM (#670005) Homepage
    And before we begin ladies and gentleman an inch is 2.54 centimeters long, thus a meter is 39.37 inches, or 3.28 feet. Please remember this the when planning a SOFT landing on the red planet. Robots generally don't like high impact velocities.

    NASA has some great ideas, and these robots will pave the way for more exploration, but when are we going to put a man on mars? Heck when are we going to put a man back on the moon?

  • Re:i want to see some action (Score:3)

    by MousePotato ( 124958 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @10:44AM (#670006) Homepage Journal
    Sadly, the previous budget cuts are partly to blame for the failures. In the past NASA used to design/build/launch missions as pairs ala Voyager, Pioneer and the all to pertinent Viking [nasa.gov]. It has been a long time since the budget allowed them the luxury of building and launching 2 of everything (albeit usually months apart etc). The twin mission sets provided for redundancy in the best possible cases: the cost is about 1.5 times the cost of building a single project, improvements in the design/build process benefit the prgoram, if one fails you still have the second not too far behind. I think the psycological value of this is better in the case of the sheeples too:One failure and one success on the same mission type makes it a bit easier to downplay the failure with all the wonderful data you get from the success.

  • Re:How long is a Meter (Score:3)

    by HiyaPower ( 131263 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:41AM (#670007)
    Now if folks would only use the sensible English units of measure all of this mars stuff could have been pre-empted. But noooo, they have to use the French system of measurement sponsered by the French Revolution. Why the meter isn't even the correct sub-multiple of the distance from the pole to the equator that it was supposed to be. From here on, they should use only furlongs/fortnight for speed, stones per square ell for pressure, and other sensible units of measure... Now how much is that in old pence?

  • 30 years ago... (Score:3)

    by doorbot.com ( 184378 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:52AM (#670008) Journal
    We could have a colony on Mars right now. Not a massive metropolis, but something similar to SkyLab. It would have taken 30 years back in the 60s, but it was possible. It's over 30 years later an no station on Mars. Now we're considering missions to Mars at phenomenal costs.

    The system was essentially a flower with the Earth at the center and Mars at the end of the "petals." You'd have under 10 petals, each representing the path a space craft would take to meet Mars in it's orbit. The shuttles would provide supplies and transport people to the Mars station, keeping them resupplied every 6 months (or 3 months, depending on the number of shuttles, etc).

    Why didn't we do it in the 60s? We'd been to the moon, and that had satisfied the public's lust for space exploration. The space race was essentially over and political tides were turning. The "hippie generation" was speaking it's mind, and wanted to cut the space program. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, the voters pay for the programs, so they should decide where the money gets spent. The problem is that it's always more expensive the longer you wait... sure it cost a lot then, but it costs far more today (adjusted for inflation!).

    Sadly, many fantastic advances have come from defense spending (and the space program). Things like the semiconductor. These technologies eventually trickle down (oh no, here it comes ;)) to the commercial market. Can you imagine buying night vision goggles 15 years ago?

  • Funding problems are the Feds/NASA's fault. (Score:3)

    by b0z ( 191086 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:34AM (#670009) Homepage Journal
    This is my opinion and I may be completely wrong, but if they want money, they have to use capitalism. They should not keep all this stuff secret, but let companies like lockheed martin, boeing (damn that name...too hard to spell, should be "BOING!") and others try to get there first. The most logical means to do so I would think would be to set up a moon base, as that would be the best way to do testing and eventual takeoff to leave the Earth completely. Even though going to Mars may not provide us with anything useful, but it would beat the hell out of the billions of dollars we spend on the entertainment industry now just so we can see some fake movies. I think a lot of people all over the world would be interested to see the first people to step foot on another planet...who knows...I bet others would get involved too...take the little pepsi girl up and let her sing "bah buh bah bap bah" before launching her towards the Sun...anyways, it is just my fantasy...I think a moon base would be a good place to start...it would be pretty neat to be able to look up at the moon and see lights on the dark parts at night...sorta like the death star. :oD Oh well.
  • Companies like Lockheed and Boeing are allready part of these missions. They are hired as contractors to help construct the spacecraft and whatnot. The problem with privatizing the space industry is that it would require a large capital investment with acceptance for a high probability of failure.

    NASA is staffed by the best in the field. If you look at their hiring boards and whatnot almost anything to do with the space program requires that you have your doctorate - and they have thousands of these people working for them, day in, day out. Often the public is just sent out the figures for how much 'a' mission is going to cost but no-one realizes just how many people and how much time coordinate the entire venture.

    Private industry in space is pretty much limited right now to telecommunications - and even at that they fail on a much larger basis. You think NASA is bad, you should see how often you get a firecracker out of a multi-million dollar satellite launch. The scary thing is that these satellites are allways insured, usually at well over 50% of what they cost in the first place! In terms of complexity these private launches are nothing compared to sending probes to other planets.

    I guess what I'm trying to get down to saying is that for a private industry to get into space exploration it would require a monumental investment and a lot of guts. Maybe if a driving force for private space exploration existed you would see something, but I don't think there is a reason to go private that will outweigh the costs.

    I guess that's why it takes the richest nation in the world to collectively put money into it, if everyone chips in a bit and the loss occurs at least it won't result in a catastrophe for the people involved.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:31AM (#670011)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • More weird news... (Score:4)

    by superdoo ( 13097 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:35AM (#670012) Homepage
    What I find kinda of humourous is that we're whizzing all these satellites around and have hundreds of telescopes, thousands of astronomers staring at stuff 24/7/365.25 and yet we just found 4 more moons around Saturn [yahoo.com] and a possible planet between Neptune and Pluto [slashdot.org]. Does anyone else get the feeling that the more we know the more we know how little we know?

  • Unmanned missions? Bah! (Score:4)

    by thesparkle ( 174382 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:41AM (#670013) Homepage
    6 missions, the best of which will get us some rocks. If we are lucky?

    I have learned a few things by watching late night movies. Obviously more than those pencil-heads at NASA.

    * The best way to get to Mars is on a V2 rocket. The kind with fins developed by the Germans during WWII and used extensively during our 1950's, RKO pictures-sponsored manned space program.

    * Why only get rocks? What about one of those beautiful Martian women? You know, the kind that lives in that city where there are no men, kissing or Coca-Cola?

    * Why all the science? You can tell that Mars is habitable because of those canals that line its surface. Mars looks like a big version of Venice, Italy!

    * Is the air breathable? You don't need a bunch of gizmos to find out. Have the mission's captain take off his fish bowl helmet and take a deep breath after he tests the oxygen content with his cigarrette lighter.

    We'd better quit this probin' pussyfootin' around business. Anyday now one of them Martian saucers will land in New Jersey and start deathraying us!

  • Sending pathfinders to Mars (Score:4)

    by Hairy_Potter ( 219096 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:23AM (#670014) Homepage
    I see the link talks about sending pathfinders to Mars.

    Great, they'll be full of overweight soccer moms drinking Starbucks and running econoboxes off the road.

    Unless the Firestones blow halfway to Mars.

  • Martians (Score:4)

    by bmongar ( 230600 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:25AM (#670015)

    What makes them think the Martian Defense Force won't shoot them down again like they did the polar lander

  • They'll never make it. (Score:5)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:50AM (#670016) Homepage Journal
    If Bush becomes President (likely, despite the high probability that it'll bring on the end of the world), there won't be any more NASA. It'll be replaced with a coca-cola bottling plant, on the grounds that it's cheaper, more profitable and actually works.

    IMHO, the first REAL Mars missions will come when Ozrock or one of the other major national hobbyist groups manages to get to (and past) orbit. These guys are doing more R&D these days than the US, Europe and Chinese combined on rocket technology. No great surprise, there. When was the last time you saw a politician encourage people to branch out and create something novel?

    My revised timetable for space science is as follows:

    • 2001
      • NASA loses another probe. Space Station suffers first major GPF. Reset switch is inside.
      • Chinese land dissidents on moon. Fail to provide return ticket.
      • Commercial sector puts more adverts on the side of rockets. Doesn't really catch on with customers. Further attempts are abandoned.
      • Hobbyists reach Low Earth Orbit. Apart from a mention on Slashdot, nobody really notices.
    • 2010
      • NASA finally gets a probe to land on Phobos. Unfortunately, a navigation error places it in Phobos, Virginia, USA.
      • Europe launches Arianne VII, amid great publicity. It explodes on take-off, destroying a multi-billion dollar deep-space probe and three slices of lemon. The lemon is blamed for the fault.
      • Hobbyists reach the moon, and build an Open Source base there.
    • 2020
      • NASA's board of directors is replaced by two white mice. ("It can't hurt to try", said the President.)
      • The Russians consider bringing Mir down. The Mir Telethon raises more money, and it's kept up "another year". The fungus develops intelligence and cracks the Telethon's bank account to ensure survival.
      • Hobbyists colonise the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman argue over the licences new bases should be released under.
    • 2100
      • NASA completes the International Space Station, which promptly disintegrates from old age.
      • The commercial sector launches three orbiting bill-boards, claiming that nobody will ever need more bill-boards than that.
      • The Free Software Foundation moves it's main database to the Greate Magellanic Cloud, which it now controls. The Open Source Initiative counters with forming a major empire in the Andromeda galaxy. Linux vs OpenBSD debates in the M25 galaxy reach no firm conclusion, after it is discovered that there are no translations into local dialects and that nobody there really wants to learn any Terran languages.

  • Too optimistic (Score:5)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:42AM (#670017) Journal
    2000 - We plan to send 6 missions to Mars
    2001 - We are planning to send 6 missions to Mars
    2002 - Due to economy plans and cuts, missions will be 5.
    2003 - Send one mission. Ooops...
    2004 - Well someone forgot the scredriver in the engine. That will not happen again. So now we will send three missions.
    2005 - We said three? Well two. The Senate was too furious to cut only one...
    2006 - We are reading the new missions. Yeah we had to loose one year due to all these studies, controls and checks.
    2007 - Launched another one. Ohhhh Daaaamnnn...
    2008 - Well either the thing touched a meteorite or it fell in a canyon. No of course we don't believe in "alien conspirations"...
    2009 - We are planning one mission.
    2010 - We are still planning it.
    2011 - Planning.
    2012 - I ALREADY TOLD YOU! THERE ARE NO GREYS THERE!
    2013 - Well... Hmmm... Launched another one. We made everything we could... Even choosed a lsower path just in case... Cross fingers...
    2014 - Hurrah!!!!! ?????????!!!!
    2015 - Well... it seems we got something anyway. Now we are planning six more missions...
    ...
    9999 - Ladies and Gentlemen. I am proud to announce... Man made his first step on Mars. A small step for a man a LONG step for Mankind... OH DAMN!

  • Re:Of course, the BIG question... (Score:5)

    by Mindwarp ( 15738 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:53AM (#670018) Homepage Journal
    It would be nice if we'd spend tax money on feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and protecting the environment before defense and space missions.

    You know, we could do all that right now without having to cut back on spending on scientific research. The reason that this isn't done now is that there's not enough political capital in writing off third world debt, and there's certainly not enough corporate capital in giving away the various technolgies (genetic/chemical/information) required for the developing nations to feed and house themselves. I don't believe for a moment that any money cut from the NASA and scientific research budgets would ever go toward helping the poor.

    People often consider money put into scientific research and these 'big science' projects to be lost, as if the tens of billions of dollars allocated just falls into a huge black hole, never to be seen again. This isn't typically the case. The dollars put into research end up fuelling the growth of the high tech industries within this country, creating new jobs and increasing the demand and requirement for a highly skilled high-tech workforce. This in turn can only help the research efforts that are currently concentrating on finding solutions to the world's more mundane problems such as poverty, starvation and illness.

    The stimulation of high-technology industry within the U.S.A. can only be good for this country in the global economy. Who knows, with the increase in foreign trade income that the growth of technology industries should produce, maybe the U.S.A. will feel generous enough to forget foreign debt?

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  • Re:On the move again (Score:5)

    by Smitty825 ( 114634 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @09:58AM (#670019) Homepage Journal
    This isn't the right direction for NASA. I think that they are doing this "Astro-biology" thing just so that they can get publicity. IMHO, adding six new Mars missions and then canceling (uh, I mean postponing) the Pluto-Kuiper misson is a big mistake. The reason is that Pluto has an athmosphere right now, which is expected to freeze over for 200 years in around 2015. If we don't get a probe there before that date, then we will lose lots of scientific data about Pluto.

    The important fact to remember is that we can launch to Mars every 2 years, but we only get 1 opportunity to reach Pluto. For more information, check out Pluto Mission [plutomisson.com].

    ...but I do it would be cool to send a person to Mars, though!

  • Re:NASA, please stop! (Score:5)

    by Vociferous Troll ( 224149 ) on Friday October 27, 2000 @10:09AM (#670020) Homepage
    You idiots are funny. I get a kick out of you.

    The US government spends billions upon billions of dollars studying things such as cow farts (this is true) and how mice react to having their nads shocked. The military budget this year included billions of dollars for a couple of naval vessels that the Pentagon didn't even want -- simply because a key Congressman on the Armed Services Committee happens to reside in a state that has a large defense contractor who needs the money (corporate welfare, anyone?) The amount of government waste is incredible.

    And yet when you "don't-waste-my-taxes" buffoons come blubbering along, it's the space program you complain about. You're going to have to forgive us if we don't take you seriously. You're much more fun to laugh at.

    Space exploration is not cheap. Nobody is saying that it is. But the space program is a veritable island in a sea of pork. The fact that you single it out suggests that you are not against government waste, but against the space program itself -- which would seem to suggest that you're some kind of bumpkin or religious extremist. In either case, your opinion is noted, but completely and utterly devoid of worth.

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