

Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now - TriinT
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/how-to-go-to-marsright-now

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smhinsey
I think the most interesting aspect of the Mars Direct-style plans is that
they can potentially be one-way. The largest expense with a trip to Mars in
terms of technology and resources is getting back out of the Martian gravity
well and back to Earth. If you go far enough into the Mars Direct-style
approach, there's no particular reason why you need to be in any hurry to come
back and you can think about sending crews in the dozens rather than single
digits.

I'm not sure I can see NASA doing a one-way mission, but I'll be first in line
if SpaceX or whoever tries it.

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DanHulton
I just watched Apollo 13 last night and I have to say, I'm sad i wasn't alive
during the space race - the very concept thrills me.

But it appears that while we have the technology to get to Mars today, we lack
the impetus - something that the article addresses, but not wholly.

We went to the moon to beat the Soviets. It would be more likely that we would
persue a manned Mars program if we had someone to beat.

As it stands, I feel it's more likely that a manned Mars program will be
undertaken by the various commercial ventures out there than by any
government.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_We went to the moon to beat the Soviets._

That's half the truth. The rest of the truth is: We went to the Moon out of
_sheer terror_.

In fact, the Moon trip itself was a side effect. The space race took the form
of a race to the moon because "the race to the Moon" was a much more joyful
marketing slogan than "the race to design and build the next generation of
ICBMs that will enable cities and towns like yours to be destroyed with even
greater precision."

Remember that the Moon race was conceived in the early 1960s. ICBMs were a
brand new technology. Everybody knew that we had to build more of them, keep
improving them, stay ahead in them -- they'd seen the H-bomb tests. People who
had lived through the 1940s -- Stalingrad, Auschwitz, Nanking, Bataan,
Dresden, Nagasaki -- naturally found it difficult to have faith in human
decency and restraint; they all thought World War III was inevitable, and
probably imminent. This was several years before the Cuban missile crisis and
a decade before the ABM treaty.

But it was hard to stay cheerful when talking about the world's rapidly
expanding nuclear arsenals, so the space race was portrayed as a game to get
astronauts and/or cosmonauts to the moon, and everyone had a lot of fun
playing along. Enormous quantities of money were poured into rocket research,
the military on both sides of the Cold War got their high-tech missiles and
spy satellites and electronics, and in the end we got to watch some truly
amazing pictures of people walking on the moon and feel proud. Smiles all
around. A big win for everyone.

But the Moon itself was a secondary goal. A Macguffin. The Soviets didn't even
bother to go, and their effort seems to me to have been rather halfhearted. By
1969 they had long since achieved the important goal anyway: Better rockets.
The USA followed through but quickly got bored with the actual "moon" part.
The _Apollo 13_ movie talked all about that: Mere months after the first moon
missions, the remaining ones attracted scant public interest.

So I find the space race fascinating, and I understand the nostalgia for it,
and I'm glad some good came out of the cold war, but I don't want to live
through anything like it if I don't have to.

~~~
jibiki
I'm fascinated by comments like this one, which relate a historical narrative
explaining what motivated some event. How do I tell if it's true? What would
it mean for it to be false? If it's true (which it is, presumably,) could you
tell another story that was just as true, but completely different? There's
nothing controversial about the idea that the space program was motivated by
the desire to test military technology (indeed, everyone assumed this was the
purpose of North Korea's recent "satellite launch" or whatever.) And yet the
story being told here is much "bigger" than that fact.

(If you have trouble seeing what I mean, here's an example:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624495> . People see the same facts and
write completely different stories.)

~~~
smhinsey
This is something I recently ran into in another thread, and I didn't get into
it there because it seemed too meta and unproductive, but this seems like a
good opportunity.

When we talk about history we are not talking about a binary system, we're
talking about experiences related through perspectives. There is rarely an
absolute truth to history, and the longer back we go the less certain our
understanding tends to be. The situation is even worse when we start talking
about motivations.

In this case, the motivations of the space program weren't simply military, or
rather, they were military to the military, but if you read about or speak to
the people involved, you're not necessarily going to hear that. For some of
the people, the moon race was genuinely about exploration and wonder, for
others it was exploration used as cover for ICBM research, etc. It is very
easy to conflate the motivations of the individual with the motivations of the
institutions they are associated with, and this frequently ends up cheapening
one or the other.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_It is very easy to conflate the motivations of the individual with the
motivations of the institutions they are associated with, and this frequently
ends up cheapening one or the other._

Very well put.

It would be a mistake to see the space race as something which was "only"
about military ambition. It was about different things to different people,
and it grew more meanings over time.

But, though there are a thousand different histories that can be written about
any event, some historical perspectives are more useful than others for
answering particular questions. For example, when you ask "how come the
country was happy to write NASA a series of blank checks during the 1960s, but
not since?" it's valuable to remember the military angle. In the 1960s the
development of better space technology was understood to be a matter of life
and death for millions if not billions. Now... not so much.

~~~
jibiki
> But, though there are a thousand different histories that can be written
> about any event, some historical perspectives are more useful than others
> for answering particular questions.

This seems like a really good way to evaluate historical scholarship (amongst
other metrics, of course, unless Mencius Moldbug and Howard Zinn happen to be
our greatest living historians.)

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bart
I think that Moon is much important milestone than mars in the shorterm. The
main reason is that Moonh is the huge resource of Helium-3, which should be a
main energy resource of the next centuries. Who dominate the moon will also
dominate the energy of the future. This is the main reason, why Chine, USA and
Russia take a look more at the Moon than Mars.

~~~
troels
Without knowing anything specific, I'd venture to guess that the distance has
something to say too.

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improbable42
I don't think it's ever been the technology that's prevented us going to Mars
- its the cost and the will of the people. A 25% bigger budget for NASA is
still bigger, and considering right now even the ISS looks to be in trouble,
you would need someone or something very special to get the public behind more
space missions.

~~~
warfangle
Hmm.

NASA: 17.6 Billion. TARP Bailout: 700 Billion.

Your tax dollars at work...

I'd love to see what a company like SpaceX could do if they had a yearly grant
(qualified by demonstrable successes) of 25% NASA's budget.

~~~
dan_the_welder
Nice comparison. Sad though.

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ars
Interesting plan, but massively glosses over some very hard things.

Land 40 tons using a parachute????

And of course galactic radiation that is going to be bad for the crew (how bad
is a subject of debate that I already had, so am not going to repeat).

~~~
smhinsey
One of the cornerstones of the Mars Direct approach is that it takes advantage
of the solar system's orbital mechanics such that the actual trip is
relatively short in comparison with the duration humans have spent in space so
far. I think you probably have a point about 40 tons aerobraking in the
atmosphere and then popping a parachute, but I wouldn't expect either to be a
deal breaker.

The NASA Design Reference mission is essentially a modified version of Mars
Direct, so I would expect reading up on this would provide solutions to these
problems, or at least it will go into more detail than this brief article.

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poutine
We need a permanent presence in space, not a series of one off jaunts. Mars is
too far and our technology too limited to colonize. It would just be a flag
plant. However the moon is within our reach.

Spending resources on Mars now will only delay our permanent presence in
space.

Manned missions to the Moon to set up a colony. Robotics for the rest of the
solar system. It's the only way.

~~~
gaius
I don't understand this at all. Your first sentence is bold yet your second is
hesitant. Make up your mind, my friend! :-)

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mynameishere
Relevant:

[http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/animation/watch/v...](http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/animation/watch/v14085830Cq24yFjf)

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vaksel
it needs competition, private companies would be all over this if they could
profit from space exploration. Setup a law that states that any landing on the
planet will get the lander all land for 250 miles, and you'd have hundreds of
missions lifting off trying to get a piece of the pie.

~~~
TriinT
I am all for private enterprise and creating incentives, but would that work?
We know that there are metals and minerals that could be mined in asteroids
and other planets. But, so far no private mission has been carried out. In
fact, only recently have private companies started launching satellites into
orbit, which is kind of trivial when compared to mining the Moon, or Mars.

Last but not least, suppose that you would grant any spaceship landing in Mars
the right to own all land within 250 miles. Sounds great, but why wouldn't
they explore and mine the entire planet if they could?!? It's not like you
have CCTV cameras on Mars to know what they're doing, where they're mining,
etc. Hence, in a way that's a false incentive.

~~~
vaksel
That's because the cost does not justify the payout. Sure you could go and
mine on Mars, but there is no guarantee you'll keep the land if you find
anything. By setting up a rule that if you explore it, it's yours...you'd have
companies rushing to plant their flag...not because they wish to explore, but
to lay a claim of ownership on the area for the future.

As far as companies mining the entire planet, sure they could, but they'd be
poachers. The 250 mile area claim would have legal rights of ownership backed
by earth governments.

The rule would obviously need to add some extra provisions to drive
innovation. I dunno, require colonies within 100 years, or trips every decade
to show the flag etc.

There is a reason that pretty much every single explorer on earth was
financially backed by either a company or a gov't grant.

