Obama sets U.S sights on Mars

Linky

Great news, looks like we are finally going to do what we should have done 20 years ago.

My question is this though, to those in the know. If we somehow manage to get the rockets developed for 2015, how long after that before we can attempt a manned mission. Anyone have any knowledge about this? Just want to see it in my lifetime thats all!

Anyway, very excited

oh, another question. How long will they spend there to make it worthwhile, assuming a 6 month each way trip? Will they send off loads of goodies first so they have a base to assemble when they get there? They can soft land delicate bits and pieces of equipment, such as the rovers, so can they send enough hardware there first to assemble some sort of permanent base? Could we make it a colony of earth?

im awaiting the experts here

I'm no expert.....but man expatwhite, your avatar scared the crap out of me!


No, seriously though, I thought the last word from the current administration was no-go on the moon and defund the heck out of NASA? This is certainly interesting, thanks for posting!

Originally posted by treemanx
I'm no expert.....but man expatwhite, your avatar scared the crap out of me!

No, seriously though, I thought the last word from the current administration was no-go on the moon and defund the heck out of NASA? This is certainly interesting, thanks for posting!

Sorry for the avatar!!! reflects my anger management issues i think

Yeah, i thought they were reducing the budget too, now it looks like, for whatever reason, the money will be in place and obama wants to go to Mars. This fascinates me, think the sooner we set up permanent colonies on other worlds the better it will be for the human race.

More importantly, R.C.Hoegland was right than, he said Obama (Mr.Barry) Would talk about it...

reply to post by ChemBreather


please people remember dont join the bandwagon of obama now

I have to say this article is strange, and I am forced to assume that it was writtren by somone who knows nothing or at least very little of what's going on in the realm of all things space.

First off the article is predicting what Obama will say on the 15th, and presenting it as fact. Maybe the source of the article is on the inside and leaking information early, but leaks by inside sources are often wrong or flat out disinformation. Plus the article doesn't make any note of inside sources, so it makes me wonder how they can report on something that has not happened yet.

Secondly, a heavy lift rocket that would lift large payloads into low Earth orbit is not the same as an advanced propulsion sytem that would be used to get us to a place like Mars in less time. The author seems to act as though they are one in the same and they are not. Both are being talked about quite a bit in the space community, and I belive Obama's budget has already called for both, but they are not the same thing. We will almost certainly hear more about both of these things later today.

Then you have this...

But White House officials said that President Obama wants NASA to begin work on building a new heavy lift rocket sooner than envisioned under the cancelled Constellation programme, with a commitment to decide in 2015 on the specific rocket that will take astronauts deeper into space.

"This is a rocket that is going to happen two years earlier than would've happened under the past programme," a senior White House official said.

This is really a confusing mess of junk. As I already said it seems like he is talking about two different things as though they are one. A heavy lift rocket will not take us deeper into space (Constellations now cancelled Ares V was a heavy lift rocket) It would just put larger payloads into Earth orbit. Something like VASAMIR(sp?) would be the type of thing that would take us "deeper into space".

What is really nessed up though is that according to this article we will take 5 YEARS!!! to simply decide on what rocket we will eventually build. Is this a joke!? FIVE YEARS just to pick a design!? I hope the author of the article is confusing two different things and talking about them as one, because if we wait till 2005 to decide what kind of advanced propulsion we will commit to then I guess that's OK, but to wait 5 years just to decide on how we should go about building a heavy lift rocket is the dumbest thing I've heard in a long long time.

How can "a White House senior official" say that the rocket will happen TWO years sooner than the Constellation plan would have taken, when Constellation picked a design several years ago and had already started basic testing of the design, but this new plan won't even pick a design for another FIVE years?

Originally posted by fieryjaguarpaw
A heavy lift rocket will not take us deeper into space (Constellations now cancelled Ares V was a heavy lift rocket) It would just put larger payloads into Earth orbit. Something like VASAMIR(sp?) would be the type of thing that would take us "deeper into space".

I don't think they literally meant that a HLV would take one deeper into space, but it does allow for larger payloads, like a spaceship, to escape Earth's gravity and get beyond LEO. Just like the Saturn V did for Apollo.

What is really nessed up though is that according to this article we will take 5 YEARS!!! to simply decide on what rocket we will eventually build. Is this a joke!? FIVE YEARS just to pick a design!?

Well I assume they're scraping the Ares V design and starting from scratch on a totally new design. It could take a few years for various companies to come up with and finalize a new design.

But I believe that there could be some political reasons for waiting that long. It means that Obama doesn't have to commit a bunch of money to it right away. Since the design won't be picked until 2015, near the end of Obama's second term (IF he gets one that is), there would still be time for the next President to cancel it before it's too far in development.

How can "a White House senior official" say that the rocket will happen TWO years sooner than the Constellation plan would have taken, when Constellation picked a design several years ago and had already started basic testing of the design, but this new plan won't even pick a design for another FIVE years?

Little to nothing has been done with the Ares V so far. Not even basic testing to my knowledge. NASA has just been focusing on the Ares I and Orion spacecraft up until this point. The first test flight for the Ares V would have been around 2018 if not later. So if a new HLV starts in 2015, it has the potential to be ready to go sooner than the Ares V.

This is going to sound REALLY stupid i know, but hey, deny ignorance!!

But isnt it important to find heavy lift engines as they carry more fuel? And wouldnt we need lots of fuel to go to Mars and back? So are the two not linked? Or would we need some new exotic propulsion system to get us there? Always thought you just needed a push to set off and let it coast after that due to no friction in space?

reply to post by jra


I guess your right. It was the Ares 1 not the Ares 5 that they had done some basic testing on.

But it still seems silly that we are going to wait five years to decide on a design when we allready had one several years ago. There are a lot of different configurations and ideas out there, lot's of different methods to making an HLV. It may not have been in the testing phase as I stated earlier, but we had at least decided the basic configuration. Now we have to wait five more years to get back to where we were a few years ago.
(or am I wrong on that point as well? Now that I think about it I only recall ever seeing fancy CGI graphics for Ares I.)

One idea is to use shuttle tech. Like the SRBs and the current fuel tank. What if five years from now we decided that that route would be the best way to go? Will we just have a cry about the fact that we had closed down the shuttle program 5 years erlier and let all the staff go? Would we actually restart programs five years from now that we are planning to shut down in the comming months? Will we continue operating the shuttle for another five years, but only sending up one or two a year(worst plan ever by the way)?

More waiste. Just think what we could accomplish if our tax dollars were actually spent intelligently. But no, it looks like at least another decade of foolishness. Instead of taking the bull by the horns and getting straight to work on an HLV we are just going to piddle around with climate change and pay the Russians almost twice what they would charge a private citizen to go for a ride on one of their rockets.

Blehg. I'm trying not to be so negative before Obama gives us the official skinny on what he wants to do later to day, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that after his speach I'll only have a million other things to be fustrated about...

Obama should be a ninja.

I've never seen anyone backflip that quickly.