Commercial Spaceflight critical for future human exploration

[rcsplinters]

Brian, I respect what you are trying to say. I don't believe it, further, I don't think anyone in a position to make it happen believes it either. If it were practical to mount a Mars program so cheaply, the politician pushing it would go down in history. They'd make Kennedy's commitment to the moon pale in comparison. It would be the feat of this century and the century is just getting started.

I know that doesn't sound like respect, but I truly wish you were right. However, I'm afraid that Mars will be won not by the quick hit and fast fix. It will yield to slow plodding progress as so much in science does. As I've stated, I fear we only get to Mars at great expense and huge sacrifice, both of which I think are wise investments and the price of pushing a frontier.

There's not an engineering bone in my body that thinks Mars will yield so easily as you hope. I don't think there are many in a decision making capacity that thinks Mars will be so easily reached either which likely means that it will not happen that way. That said, I hope you are right. I don't mind being wrong on such matters.

 

[neutrino78x]

Brian, I respect what you are trying to say. I don't believe it, further, I don't think anyone in a position to make it happen believes it either. If it were practical to mount a Mars program so cheaply, the politician pushing it would go down in history.

It is practical to do it, if the project is managed properly. See Robert Zubrin's book The Case for Mars (he was a rocket engineer at Martin Marietta for years). The way NASA does things these days, unlikely. But, regardless, it would not be a good idea politically, because we are fighting two wars right now, and we don't need "national commitment" to something which should be primarily a private venture.

The colonization of North America was done primarily as a private venture, not by His Majesty's Royal Navy.

It will yield to slow plodding progress as so much in science does.

We are already on Mars for science; I do not support sending humans to Mars for science. That is why there are robotic space probes. In 1969, we didn't have the technology we do now, and also, we didn't go to the Moon for science then either. We went to the Moon for national security reasons, to beat the Soviet Union, so they couldn't use it for military purposes, as well as trying to bankrupt them. I'm talking about establishing a human presence on Mars for its own sake, to make a New World.

--Brian

 

[neutrino78x]

Case for Mars should be required reading on here, anybody who still supports The Old NASA Way of Doing Things needs to read that book!!!

--Brian

 

[Yuri_Armstrong]

They won't go solely for science, but there will still be science experiments done when they get there. On the Moon they brought back huge amounts of moon rocks for later scientific study. But I do agree that they will go there for more than just science experiments. This time around though, NASA should commit to a long term outpost. They could've had one on the moon in the 70's if Nixon hadn't cancelled it.

And while I haven't read the case for mars yet, I agree that enormous expenses like the 1 billion dollar launch cost of the Ares is not the best way to go about doing this. People will surely complain that it will cost too much money, and if we don't get the outpost going there that will create further backlash.

 

[neutrino78x]

They won't go solely for science, but there will still be science experiments done when they get there.

That's fine, as long as we don't send humans until their purpose is to establish a colony which will eventually declare independence from the USA. I don't mind if they also do science, but in my opinion, it is a waste of money and potential waste of precious human life to go to Mars for science. No one should ever die just to get scientific data. Robots are far cheaper, and no one cries if they are destroyed. Human life is irreplaceable.

And while I haven't read the case for mars yet, I agree that enormous expenses like the 1 billion dollar launch cost of the Ares is not the best way to go about doing this. People will surely complain that it will cost too much money, and if we don't get the outpost going there that will create further backlash.

Yeah, Zubrin does advocate a heavy lift booster, and when his book came out, I agreed with him, but my views have changed on heavy lift. I don't support it if it is going to cost billions just to develop the rocket. Just use commercial rockets. Any mission to Mars should use existing commercial technology. Maybe they can build a hab, but it has to be a hab module which can be used on the Moon and asteroid missions as well.

So, Mars Direct using commercial rockets (EELV etc) is Mars for Less.

--Brian

 

[Yuri_Armstrong]

If there will be continous flights to Mars, it would make more sense to have the ships launch from low gravity places such as an asteroid or space station. The moon would be better than nothing but the gravity there is still kinda high.

 

[vulture4]

Regarding SteveCNCs point on the rings of Saturn, they might be quite useful for ISRU for a base near Saturn but there is the problem of potential collisions in the rings. The trip is almost seven years each way.