Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
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Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
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Re: Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
#2I 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.
Re: Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
#3Interesting 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).
Re: Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
#4I 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 s…
Re: Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
#5it 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.
Re: Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
#6it 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.
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.
Re: Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
#7it 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.
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 wo…
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.
Re: Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
#8it 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.
Like Earth, the resources on Mars are at the bottom of a gravity well and lack the benefit of Earth's breathable atmosphere, massive infrastructure and ~7 Billion inhabitants. What, exactly, would you profit from by owning 250 miles of that? A business would do better to snag 1 mile of diamond-yielding tundra here instead.
Want something valuable? Mine an asteroid for platinum, build fuel cells out of it, and undercut the terrestrial competition while cleaning up on the profit. Right there you've identified a competitive advantage (low-cost of scarce resources) to satisfy a growing market which exists today.
Re: Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
#9I 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.
Re: Robert Zubrin: how to go to Mars right now
#10I 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 s…
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.