"A bold plan to construct a manned base on the Moon as a precursor to astronauts visiting Mars is expected to be announced by the US President George W Bush next week."
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994551
Pretty crazy considering the USA has loads of debt already really
'tis quite old news now
Funny how elections are coming up isn't it.
Not to worry though, they've landed bots on mars to get the screenshots. Nice bit of photoshop, couple of spacemen, a buggy, american flag, Job done
Instead of doing that they should do something for the people, spend the money on something that they will benefit from
But people will benefit from it. Huge amounts of government money spent on developing technology, we all benefit!
Erm, thats the thing I don't understand how can they afford it, hasn't the USA got something like a 4000 Billion trade deficit?
TiG
-- Hexus Meets Rock! --
This scares me terribly.
2 out of every 3 missions to Mars fails. NASA has lost 2 shuttles in the past 20 years, caused by technical faults that NASA's engineers were aware of but, due to poor communication in the company, couldn't fix.
If NASA is going to do this then they need a massive boost in funding. It's going to cost a minimum of $50bil if they're going to do it right and I doubt there's the political or public will to do it any more.
The American Military Industrial Complex is a well documented phenomenon. The American economy actually relies on stuff like this to keep going (roughly a third of America's economy is military based). Whbile the usual trendy simplistic lefty bunnies will rant about hospitals etc, they oversimplify because you will believe them without double-checking.
Don't believe me? Look at how well Germany did after the war - it was all becasue of having massive rebuilding programmes and having to create stuff for reparations to the 'victors'.
I once read an aticle that said It would take 18months to sent a man to Mars (because its so much futher away than the moon), and then another 18months back...thats 3 years.
Oxygen to breath x 3 years
Food and water/drink for 3 years,
Fuel to transport all this weight.
It would be so expensive its not even worth thinking about it.
Twigman
they said we could never get to the moon, now your bacon doesn't stick to your frying pan. think of the inventions and ideas that will be generated from such a goal.
nasa apparently receives very little funding compared to other departments. they're also going to incoporate the military more heavily with nasa, that may make china a bit worried, but with the money they've got - anything is possible.
Fuel isnt an issue, get a craft into space, get it all fueled up/refueled n then 1 good blast to get it upto speed using the earth/moon to accelerate as well then break orbit n off to mars, same on the way back...
probably...
Trig is right about the fuel. The vast, vast, vast majority of fuel is used in escaping the planet's atmosphere.
Water and oxygen can be recycled but the filters to do so will need replacing at regular intevals.
On a 3 year mission, there's a lot that can go wrong though.
They need to invent a new type of propulsion tbh
Have they not already started playing with ION drives?
They already have, it's just nasa hasn't had the budget to do much with it.
For example, ion drives already exist, but unlike star-trek they aren't hugely powerful, but they have the ability to keep accelerating for decades, so it makes them ideal for deep space probes, there are also a few other ideas for more immediate propulsion, but there's not much info available on them as they're heavily classified.
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