POLL: Will NASA Ever Go to Mars?

[kk434]

Ahm.. The martian atmosphere is UNABLE to slow down a heavy payload, you can land a MSL at most but anything heavy will just crash at the surface. An enormus ablation shield can help but 3 tonne+ payload is IMPOSSIBLE to land with todays tech. I just read a extensive JPL rapport about landing on mars and it was a real bummer. no one knows how to land a human sized module on mars.

http://www.universetoday.com/7024/the-m ... ed-planet/

read this stuff and you get an depression.

 

[csmyth3025]

As I understand it, when Kennedy announced that we would go to the moon "by the end of the decade", nobody at NASA knew how we would do it or even if it could be done.

The article about the challenges facing us in regard to landing large payloads on Mars paints a bleak picture, indeed.

Nonetheless, I'm convinced that if we really want to land large payloads (and people) on Mars, we'll find a way to do it.

Chris

 

[JonClarke]

A very tough call. There is a paper out there that proves the impossibility to land a 1 tone+ payload on mars. The Martian atmosphere is to thin to slow down a big payload and the MSL is the largest thing possible to land. This paper is written by JPL personel and too me as an engineer it's very convincing.

So all the other papers out there that show how heavy payloads can be landed are wrong?

 

[Yuri_Armstrong]

A very tough call. There is a paper out there that proves the impossibility to land a 1 tone+ payload on mars. The Martian atmosphere is to thin to slow down a big payload and the MSL is the largest thing possible to land. This paper is written by JPL personel and too me as an engineer it's very convincing.

Couldn't retrorockets be used on descent to slow down the payload as it goest towards the surface?

 

[neutrino78x]

A very tough call. There is a paper out there that proves the impossibility to land a 1 tone+ payload on mars. The Martian atmosphere is to thin to slow down a big payload and the MSL is the largest thing possible to land. This paper is written by JPL personel and too me as an engineer it's very convincing.

Without having seen it, I strongly disagree with the paper, if it says what you are suggesting.

The Apollo Lunar Module was 14 metric tonnes and it landed on the Moon, which has no atmosphere at all.

--Brian

 

[neutrino78x]

If they qualified it by saying that aerobraking will not work on a lander larger than 1 metric tonne, I might agree...

I think the other poster was referring to this article.

I would say, why not fire your retrorockets when you are up beyond the atmosphere, to slow down? But I'm not an engineer.

--Brian

 

[neutrino78x]

In any case, a colony on Mars would not be settled by NASA astronauts, but by civilians. It would be Jamestown Settlement, not Columbus.

We could pay for it by selling the land on Mars, just like Britain sold land in North America before anyone established a colony. See Paying for Mars.

--Brian

 

[JonClarke]

If they qualified it by saying that aerobraking will not work on a lander larger than 1 metric tonne, I might agree...

I think the other poster was referring to this article.

I suspected they were. But that article is a misrepresentation of the issues. Manning does not say it is impossible to land large payloads on Mars, just that existing technologies can't be scaled up to do so. This is something of a strawman as nobody has suggested that we should.

The fact is the atmospheric brakingh is the best way to shed most of the entry velocity. It is not however sufficient to remove all of it. Somewhere below about Mach 3 you need to to use other means to deaccelerate further, either with rocket thrust or via an intermediate stage with a ballute, parachute or similar device, before using rockets for the final soft landing.

I would say, why not fire your retrorockets when you are up beyond the atmosphere, to slow down? But I'm not an engineer.

If you do that you just pick up velocity again as you fall to the surface. You use rockets only to break orbit and the final landing.

 

[Yuri_Armstrong]

In any case, a colony on Mars would not be settled by NASA astronauts, but by civilians. It would be Jamestown Settlement, not Columbus.

We could pay for it by selling the land on Mars, just like Britain sold land in North America before anyone established a colony. See Paying for Mars.

--Brian

I don't think that will be the case. There's going to be either an international or government outpost there first before civilians start going to settle it. We will need to learn the living techniques on Mars and get good at them before we start sending average people.

 

[csmyth3025]

If there were to be someone (or a group of investors) who could afford the enormous cost of developing the hardware to get to Mars - I wonder whether our (US) government or any other govwernment would try to stop them. It reminds me of the plot line for the movie "The Astronaut Farmer".

Chris

 

[JonClarke]

If there were to be someone (or a group of investors) who could afford the enormous cost of developing the hardware to get to Mars - I wonder whether our (US) government or any other govwernment would try to stop them. It reminds me of the plot line for the movie "The Astronaut Farmer".

Of course they wouldn't. That was a silly movie. In real life the US government has supported SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Scaled Composites, Biglow and the rest.

The only exception would be if it was feared (rightly or wrongly) that the organisation were a front for something more sinister, as was the case with OTRAG in the 80s. Which is a pity as OTRAG had a very innovative approach.

That said, no private company is going to invest in a Mars mission on their own except as part of a government lead program. There is nothing else that would justify the investment.

 

[kelvinzero]

That new Curiosity rover is apparently about the size of a Mini Cooper.

Imagine colonizing mars with Mini Coopers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Scien ... h.2Fweight
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini