Bases on Mars? What's the holdup?

If there ever is a large solar flare while the cosmonauts are working on Mars they would be in great peril. They would only have minutes to seek shelter or be exposed to some of the most powerful radiation ever imagined. Since there's really no atmosphere to speak of on Mars there's nothing to protect them there.

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the satellites will warn of the upcoming radiation outburst.

 

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afther some reflection that ESA report was absolute bullocks, Considering on solar flares really that's not important solar thingys come in eleven years cycles and their not so bad ones you get to know them yust hide away underground when their getting moody, considering the planet is a dessert they'l have plenty of time shoveling sand.

 

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Again, someone has already done it, and was fine. You keep harping on this issue, but there is no reason to suspect that it will be a problem. You talk about "breaking endurance records" as if previous long-duration stays in space were just barely possible, and staying any longer would have been some sort of challenge. In fact, that wasn't the case - there weren't any unmanageable problems, and if anyone wanted to stay in space longer than the current record of 15 months there is no reason to suspect that they couldn't.

"No plans to do it" is not at all the same as "we couldn't do it," nor is it even close to "we couldn't do it in 20 years if we started working on it now."

The ISS only receives about 2.5 tons of supplies for its crew of 3 every 5 months. Even if we assume that a Mars mission is no better at recycling etc. than the ISS, you are still only talking about something like 20 tons of supplies for a crew of 4 for 30 months (which is the mission profile that NASA has in mind). In other words, less than a single space shuttle load's worth of supplies. And like I said, that’s assuming that a Mars mission wouldn’t be any more efficient than the ISS. It seems absurd to suggest that we couldn’t make any improvemnets in resource recycling in the next 20 years.

I said that we could do it if we wanted to, and if we were willing to pay - I never said that our current plan/budget would do it. If we wanted to, we could definitely build a rocket with the capacity to launch 120 tons into low earth orbit or 50 tons into mars transfer orbit in just five years. Heck, we could probably build one substantially larger than that if we wanted.

Nuclear engines that ran successfully with specific impulses of over 800 seconds were built and tested (on the ground) by NASA in the late 1960s/early 1970s. NASA assumed that they would be using Saturn Vs with nuclear engines in the upper stages by the late 1970s. So, yeah, if NASA thought they were a few years away in 1970, I suspect that we could have them ready within 20 years, especially since a lot of additional design work has gone into them over the last few decades.

Most plans for Mars missions don't involve any resupply of the crew - they are expected to take everything with them. But if we really want to, you can just launch shipments of extra supplies that land automatically before the crew ever departs, so that the extra supplies are waiting for the crew when they arrive. If the supply shipment fails, try again and wait a little longer to launch your crew.

And yet nuclear reactors have already been used in space for years at a time back in the 1980s. It is pointless to try to argue that a nuclear reactor can't be used in space, because they already have been.

I'm not talking about simply radioisotope thermoelectric generators. The Russians launched a series of radar satellites that were used to track ocean-going ships from low earth orbit. They featrued actual uranium dioxide fission reactors with movable moderators and reflectors. I recall that they produced many kw of power and ran for years with no service. I can't remember the exact numbers, but I might be able to dig them up if you really want them.

There are also serious designs for small multi-megawatt reactors such as the SAFE-400 design that only mass a few tons and can run for years with no service. So far as I know, these have not actually been built. But do you really think it would take over 20 years to get them working? I doubt that very much.

 

Fine, that will only give them about 15 minutes to seek shelter. That's not much if anyone is out exploring somewhere away from a base.

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Rubbish.

You think that NASA that is US Government funded is just going to make a probe for taking pretty pictures of a planets surface, think again. It cost a lot of money to make an orbiting probe as did it cost to send the probe to Mar's in the first place. You can tell that if such money was going to be spent, they wouldn't be spending it on a few "Holiday snaps". They'red rig a multi-spectral probe up that wouldn't just take shots of the surface but would actually probe the Martian planets makeup. It's crust, fault lines, Cavities (Cave's and old lava tunnel), any water/ice under it's surface as well as any inclination towards such substances as oil.

Obviously if oil had been spotted they wouldn't keep it a secret, after all with so many self-perpetuated businessmen willing to war over oil and destroy the planet we are on, wouldn't it make sense letting them know that there's oil over there not to war over and get them funding Martian trips?

Simply put the vast library of data that exists on the NASA website from it's probes and landers will pretty much state the absence of anything to define life was ever there. The only sites you'll find stating otherwise are seeing shapes in rock formations.

 

Quite simply, not true. The closest to what you are thinking are various infrared frequencies, which are operationally used to scan the atmosphere to a certain depth, and C- and X-band radar, which have been experimentally used to see through ice and very dry sand. No space-borne instrumentation can see through rock. For the most part, oil exploration via satellite imagery is done by looking at good old Landsat data to identify surface rocks that correlated with oil deposits. The Earth gravity models developed by measurements of the satellite location (and very intense number crunching) is a newer development that might aid in identifying deep underground oil deposits because those oil deposits should show up as anomalies in the gravity field.

More on the functionality of terrestrial versus Mars satellites later. Assuming we could develop a satellite to see through rock (but see above), why in in the world would do so at Mars? There is no reason to think that there is oil inside Mars, and we have much more basic questions to answer first (e.g., is there or has there ever been life on Mars).

Hercules was pretty much correct. I don't know which part of Hercules' post you aimed that rubbish comment at. I've already addressed the concept of looking for oil. (BTW, I don't think Hercules was touting an oil-hiding conspiracy. He was merely commenting that our probes can't look for it.) The first statement, "The various Mars orbital probes are not the same functionality as the terrestrial satellites you are referring to" is spot on. There have been several thousand remote sensing satellites placed in low Earth orbit, and only a handful or two around Mars, and these Martian probes are much less capable that terrestrial probes. There are many reasons for this:

• There is a lot more immediate value in learning about our own planet than in learning about Mars. In economic terms, the terrestrial remote sensing satellites are without a doubt the best thing to come out of NASA. Learning about Mars might have some economic value in the future, but not now. The positive return on value from our Earth satellites does not apply to Mars probes. Mars probes have a negative economic return. This can be muted by making the probes more capable, but increased capabilities costs more money.
  
  
• It costs a whole lot more to send a probe to Mars than it does to send a probe into Earth orbit. We can launch many Earth orbiting satellites for the cost of one Mars probe.
  
  
• Placing satellites into Earth orbit has become almost routing. The same does not apply to Mars probes. We have at best a spotty history of success in delivering probes to Mars. Summary of first three points: It costs a lot more to get something in orbit around Mars versus in orbit around Earth, the chance of getting something in orbit Mars is a whole lot less than getting in orbit around Earth, and the economic payoffs are incomparable. (Positive versus negative ROI.)
  
  
• Power is an issue at Mars. Mars is 1.5 AU from the Sun. A Martian probe needs more than twice the solar arrays needed by an Earth-orbiting satellite to generate the same amount of solar power as does the Earth-orbiting satellite.
  
  
• Satellites orbiting Mars are a lot further from the Earth than are satellites orbiting the Earth. Those Martian probes need a whole lot more power to transmit information to Earth-based receivers than do Earth orbiting satellites. The reduced power availability coupled with the need for greater power greatly limits the functionality of Martian probes.

 

You said;

The IDEA. The IDEA was shown to the general public in film 40 years ago. THE IDEA IS NOT NEW.

 

What you don't seem to grasp is that one person only so far in the entire history of space exploration has achieved this, and the proposed nuclear reactor requires a crew of six, and launch windows mean crew will spend longer than the minimun nine months round trip on/to Mars. It will be difficult, you can't just handwave over the psychological aspects of being on another planet so far away from Earth with no chance of rescue.

There are very real health issues associated with long term space flights, and there is a psychological element we have very little experience of (the closest being the guys that set foot on the Moon). Handwaving over it does not solve any of these issues.

Also, handwaving over the money doesn't solve anything. It's not going to happen on the timescales stated exactly because of money. We can't do things without funding, so it's all pie in the sky if there's no dirty cash.

 

well I dout count film as having expressed the idea, because film is creating an illusion of it working, illusion is not a representation of the idea.

 

I think you are the one who is trying to "hand wave" issues, trying to conjure them up where none exist. I'm getting tired of arguing about this, so I think I'll just provide a quote from the NASA Mars Design Reference Mission:

NASA apparently doesn't think that the time in zero gravity would be a problem. I am inclined to take their word for it. You can email them and argue about it if you think they are wrong.

I am not "handwaving over the money." I have repeatedly stated in my posts here that it's all a matter of how much we're willing to pay. In fact, my very first post in this discussion opened with the line "It's all a matter of how much you're willing to spend."

 

you know its the same thing with the Russian space agency, recently head of Roskosmos was talking about the new spaceship (Kliper) Russia would be building along with the spaceship factory (http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2214212/russia-build-orbital-factory) in space by 2015, well he said the same exact thing, "its all about how much the government gives us" And how much do they get? $1.4 billion dollars ... against $ 16.8 billion dollars of NASA

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But anyways the problem is of course with the funding on both grounds. Would Roskosmos accomplish Mars mission with NASA's budget? Oh defenetely. Would NASA accomplish what Roskosmos/RKA Energia accomplished with Russian budget? no way

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exactly...and the metal in that sand is plenty to use against radiation repelling. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/31jan_sandsofmars.html

Anyways the astronaut team will have a safehaven from all the duststorms and radiation storms, they will live in a bunker in the Martian ground

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Of course, NASA are always right, like the Space Shuttle being the future is cheaper spaceflight because it's reusable, ....

Spending around two years in space has some serious ramafications, and yes, you and NASA appear to be handwaving.

Anyway, that manned reactor on Mars ain't going to happen by 2030.

 

NASA not only knows that the time in zero-G is a problem, it is even concerned with the time at reduced gravity (i.e., the time on surface of the Moon or Mars). I suggest you look at the bioastronautics roadmap. Table 7-3 summarizes 45 risks for human space flight. Of those 45, only 2 received the lowest risk rating (category 3, risk exists but we know exactly how to counter it) for a mission to Mars. Several received the highest risk rating (category 1, risk is significant and we don't have the foggiest idea of how to counter it).

 

oh yes we do...plenty of exercise and calcitriol

 

Bone loss is category 2 for Mars, category 3 for short-term missions, not category 1. Look at the roadmap. Bottom line, we will not be sending people to Mars for a long, long time because we know there are many risks that we know we do not know how to address.

 

people generally accept risks as part of the deal. And Russia is especially not new to such

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Like I have been saying ,we need to solve the problems of the human condition before we can go to mars.

 

NASA wants astronauts who will accept reasonable risks. They do not want suicidal maniacs. With current technology, a human mission to Mars is significantly riskier than playing Russian roulette.