7 ms·

Buzz Aldrin: Cancel Ares, reprieve shuttle, colonise Mars

16 points by dhs 17y ago

edw519 17y ago
Sounds like Obama needs to pull a "Kennedy" and define the goal. Amazing what smart people can do with a little vision.
- sketerpot 17y ago
  It helps to have funding that won't be cut off in two years by a mercurial congress.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    Yes. Politicians have a lot of vision, but little commitment. We would have not went to the moon in the 1960s without the cold war.
TweedHeads 17y ago
Colonise Mars? Coming from a man who's been in space, that is a stupid claim to do without first colonizing the moon and learning in the process. Walk, run, fly.
- gaius 17y ago
  Nonsense! Go and read some Robert Zubrin.
  - tom_rath 17y ago
    ...then question some of the 'miracle technologies' used in Zubrin's infrastructure. Yes, if we had Single Stage to Orbit fully reusable rockets and if all issues involved in living on another world were understood, Zubrin's plan(s) would be a shoo-in. However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial biosphere fully enclosed here on Earth! Learn to walk before you try to run. Let's work on sustained outposts on a world no more than three days' travel away first.
    - stcredzero 17y ago
      Yes, if we had Single Stage to Orbit fully reusable rockets Certainly not essential to Zubrin's plan. There are modifications to Zubrin's plan that can be implemented with existing boosters, with on-orbit assembly limited to linking together 4 components. Seems doable to me. However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial biosphere fully enclosed here on Earth! Where do you get that from? For one thing, the most publicized efforts were tried by questionable people. I think a legitimate effort would account for things like curing concrete absorbing lots of oxygen. For another thing, there's a huge difference between a biosphere and air/water recycling combined with local agriculture. The point is not to get a 100% viable self-regulating biosphere. It's just to be able to use local resources. For initial colonization, it's just life support for plants. The 100% viable self-regulating biospheres will take decades to get right, but we'll have decades and lots of economic incentive once the colonization efforts are under way. Learn to walk before you try to run. Let's work on sustained outposts on a world no more than three days' travel away first. If the only thing to be gained from the moon is a stepping stone to Mars, then it's a waste of time. The environmental challenges are just about all different, so it's not even a good rehearsal. That's more like "Learn to swim before you run. Let's work on movement while partially buoyant, not subject to a full G, first." I'm sure you could train babies to swim-crawl-walk. But if you want to walk, it's an unnecessary detour.
      - tom_rath 17y ago
        I'd like to believe in Zubrin's plan more than anyone (I still have a well-highlighted copy of his "Mars Direct - Humans to the Red Planet by 1999" Acta Astronautica paper amongst my many cabinets of the stuff) but that plan is built on assumption. >However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial >biosphere fully enclosed here on Earth! Where do you get that from? From the fact that no one has done it yet. Ever. We just don't know how to live on other worlds. We are almost completely ignorant of the complexities involved in the process and have a whole bunch of unpleasant discoveries to make yet. That's not to say it _can't_ be done and that we don't know what should happen in theory, but we have never done it before. Ever. There is no experience to build upon. If you want another flags and footprints mission to plant a candelabra of pennants on Mars and then scurry back after a few days of visiting, by all means piss away hundreds of billions of dollars and go to Mars direct for a quick visit. However, if you want to learn the actual skills required to live and work on other worlds, you should focus on building missions which demonstrate and refine the skills required to live and work on other worlds. Doing so on our Moon and near-Earth asteroids (the nearest locations to support and safety) is the best way to do that and will give us the tools needed to move outwards permanently.
- dkberktas 17y ago
  Colonizing moon before mars is not a perquisite. Although it can teach us how to cope with complex engineering problems, still I believe we have already have the capability to colonize mars.
Locke1689 17y ago
From what I hear, it seems like reprieving the shuttle isn't really an option. It's so out of date and unsafe that NASA isn't willing to use it anymore. Sure there are problems with Ares, but isn't that what engineers are for?
- rbanffy 17y ago
  It's fine, as long as you let them design the system. The shuttle, as it is, came out of an engineer's drawing board, but not before addressing the wishes of a lot of politicians. I am all in for Ares, as long as engineers are in control. It seems they are not.
TriinT 17y ago
Two questions: 1) why isn't the URL linking to the article on Popular Mechanics? (which is a lot better than this article) http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4322647.html http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4322647.ht... 2) would someone care to explain what the point in colonising Mars is? Unmanned exploration of Mars would be a whole lot cheaper because robots don't need life-support systems. Moreover, losing a couple of robots is more acceptable than losing a couple of human astronauts. Sure, we could colonise Mars, but at what cost, and what for? In case Aldrin hasn't noticed, the USA is not in the same financial situation as in 1960.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  Humans living on Mars are in a much better position to access the resources of the Solar System than humans living on Earth. With a 24 hour day-night cycle, local access to water and necessary elements, it's also a lot easier to grow food. These two facts alone are enough to position human settlement on Mars for economic, military, and political domination of the Solar System. Basically, colonizing Mars is desirable for the same reasons that colonizing North America was. Whichever nation does it can expect the resulting civilization to break away and surpass those on Earth. But the "old country" can expect much better relations with the new superpower. (Actually, we could build a space elevator on Mars with materials we already have. The citizens of a Mars colony could eventually access space with the same ease with which we fly overseas.)
  - TriinT 17y ago
    "Humans living on Mars are in a much better position to access the resources of the Solar System than humans living on Earth." Has the Earth run out of resources already? What is the rationale here: the Chinese seize the resources on Earth, so the USA goes to outer space to seize the resources of the Solar System? If this endeavor were cheap, it could be worth it. But let's face it: it won't be cheap. I understand the allure of colonizing Mars. But I also believe in prioritizing. The US is fighting two unwinnable wars, and is in a grim financial situation. One step at a time. In a few decades the time might be right. Sending humans to Mars in the next couple of decades would be a bad investment imho. Why not start small? We could keep sending robots to Mars. Since Mars has ice and CO2, one could introduce plants in Mars and try to start recycling all that CO2 into oxygen. That would perhaps create a tiny habitat and make things easier for the first humans to ever land on the red planet.
ars 17y ago
I thought the problem was that humans can't get to mars! Because there is too much solar and cosmic radiation, and no one would survive the trip. And enough shielding to block it is too heavy to launch (from earth). Which is why we want to go to the moon first.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  I thought the problem was that humans can't get to mars! Because there is too much solar and cosmic radiation, Nonsense. If you can hop in a shelter to avoid the occasional solar storm that can kill you instantly, the remaining associated risks are like smoking. And enough shielding to block it is too heavy to launch (from earth). Again nonsense. Water is a very good shield medium. You'll need to carry a lot of it anyhow, and you only need to shield a small short-duration shelter for radiation storms. So we can extract the shielding from the moon? Waste of time for exploration. So you save on launch costs for the expedition. How much is it going to cost to launch the lunar shielding extraction equipment? Yes, it's desirable to have infrastructure on the moon, eventually. But for exploring Mars, it's superfluous. It's like Lewis and Clark needing to establish Tulsa before going to the Pacific. Read Zubrin. He's got the facts on his side.
  - ars 17y ago
    > Nonsense. If you can hop in a shelter to avoid the occasional solar storm that can kill you instantly, the remaining associated risks are like smoking. You are wrong. The radiation is lethal. What you wrote only applies near earth. And it's not solar particles that are the main problem. It's cosmic particles, which have much much higher energies, and do not come in bursts. See here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=magnet-force-field http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=magnet-forc... and here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shielding-space-travelers http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shielding-s... and here: http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/the_real_reason_why_we_wont_go_to_mars_in_my_lifet_1.html http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/the_real_reas... and here: http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/0004/files/rapp_mars_2006_0004.pdf http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/0004/files/rapp_mars_20... (pdf) and here: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080331-radiation-shielding.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080331-radiation-shield... Is that enough? We are not going to mars anytime soon. Even a colony on the moon is not possible right now. We would either need to send people on once only short term construction trips, or some sort of robotic construction to make a shield first. Or a biological protectant of some kind.

16 points by dhs 17y ago

edw519 17y ago

Sounds like Obama needs to pull a "Kennedy" and define the goal. Amazing what smart people can do with a little vision.

sketerpot 17y ago
It helps to have funding that won't be cut off in two years by a mercurial congress.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  Yes. Politicians have a lot of vision, but little commitment. We would have not went to the moon in the 1960s without the cold war.

TweedHeads 17y ago

Colonise Mars? Coming from a man who's been in space, that is a stupid claim to do without first colonizing the moon and learning in the process. Walk, run, fly.

gaius 17y ago
Nonsense! Go and read some Robert Zubrin.
- tom_rath 17y ago
  ...then question some of the 'miracle technologies' used in Zubrin's infrastructure. Yes, if we had Single Stage to Orbit fully reusable rockets and if all issues involved in living on another world were understood, Zubrin's plan(s) would be a shoo-in. However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial biosphere fully enclosed here on Earth! Learn to walk before you try to run. Let's work on sustained outposts on a world no more than three days' travel away first.
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    Yes, if we had Single Stage to Orbit fully reusable rockets Certainly not essential to Zubrin's plan. There are modifications to Zubrin's plan that can be implemented with existing boosters, with on-orbit assembly limited to linking together 4 components. Seems doable to me. However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial biosphere fully enclosed here on Earth! Where do you get that from? For one thing, the most publicized efforts were tried by questionable people. I think a legitimate effort would account for things like curing concrete absorbing lots of oxygen. For another thing, there's a huge difference between a biosphere and air/water recycling combined with local agriculture. The point is not to get a 100% viable self-regulating biosphere. It's just to be able to use local resources. For initial colonization, it's just life support for plants. The 100% viable self-regulating biospheres will take decades to get right, but we'll have decades and lots of economic incentive once the colonization efforts are under way. Learn to walk before you try to run. Let's work on sustained outposts on a world no more than three days' travel away first. If the only thing to be gained from the moon is a stepping stone to Mars, then it's a waste of time. The environmental challenges are just about all different, so it's not even a good rehearsal. That's more like "Learn to swim before you run. Let's work on movement while partially buoyant, not subject to a full G, first." I'm sure you could train babies to swim-crawl-walk. But if you want to walk, it's an unnecessary detour.
    - tom_rath 17y ago
      I'd like to believe in Zubrin's plan more than anyone (I still have a well-highlighted copy of his "Mars Direct - Humans to the Red Planet by 1999" Acta Astronautica paper amongst my many cabinets of the stuff) but that plan is built on assumption. >However, we can't even construct a reliable artificial >biosphere fully enclosed here on Earth! Where do you get that from? From the fact that no one has done it yet. Ever. We just don't know how to live on other worlds. We are almost completely ignorant of the complexities involved in the process and have a whole bunch of unpleasant discoveries to make yet. That's not to say it _can't_ be done and that we don't know what should happen in theory, but we have never done it before. Ever. There is no experience to build upon. If you want another flags and footprints mission to plant a candelabra of pennants on Mars and then scurry back after a few days of visiting, by all means piss away hundreds of billions of dollars and go to Mars direct for a quick visit. However, if you want to learn the actual skills required to live and work on other worlds, you should focus on building missions which demonstrate and refine the skills required to live and work on other worlds. Doing so on our Moon and near-Earth asteroids (the nearest locations to support and safety) is the best way to do that and will give us the tools needed to move outwards permanently.
dkberktas 17y ago
Colonizing moon before mars is not a perquisite. Although it can teach us how to cope with complex engineering problems, still I believe we have already have the capability to colonize mars.

Locke1689 17y ago

From what I hear, it seems like reprieving the shuttle isn't really an option. It's so out of date and unsafe that NASA isn't willing to use it anymore. Sure there are problems with Ares, but isn't that what engineers are for?

rbanffy 17y ago
It's fine, as long as you let them design the system. The shuttle, as it is, came out of an engineer's drawing board, but not before addressing the wishes of a lot of politicians. I am all in for Ares, as long as engineers are in control. It seems they are not.

TriinT 17y ago

Two questions: 1) why isn't the URL linking to the article on Popular Mechanics? (which is a lot better than this article) http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4322647.html http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4322647.ht... 2) would someone care to explain what the point in colonising Mars is? Unmanned exploration of Mars would be a whole lot cheaper because robots don't need life-support systems. Moreover, losing a couple of robots is more acceptable than losing a couple of human astronauts. Sure, we could colonise Mars, but at what cost, and what for? In case Aldrin hasn't noticed, the USA is not in the same financial situation as in 1960.

stcredzero 17y ago
Humans living on Mars are in a much better position to access the resources of the Solar System than humans living on Earth. With a 24 hour day-night cycle, local access to water and necessary elements, it's also a lot easier to grow food. These two facts alone are enough to position human settlement on Mars for economic, military, and political domination of the Solar System. Basically, colonizing Mars is desirable for the same reasons that colonizing North America was. Whichever nation does it can expect the resulting civilization to break away and surpass those on Earth. But the "old country" can expect much better relations with the new superpower. (Actually, we could build a space elevator on Mars with materials we already have. The citizens of a Mars colony could eventually access space with the same ease with which we fly overseas.)
- TriinT 17y ago
  "Humans living on Mars are in a much better position to access the resources of the Solar System than humans living on Earth." Has the Earth run out of resources already? What is the rationale here: the Chinese seize the resources on Earth, so the USA goes to outer space to seize the resources of the Solar System? If this endeavor were cheap, it could be worth it. But let's face it: it won't be cheap. I understand the allure of colonizing Mars. But I also believe in prioritizing. The US is fighting two unwinnable wars, and is in a grim financial situation. One step at a time. In a few decades the time might be right. Sending humans to Mars in the next couple of decades would be a bad investment imho. Why not start small? We could keep sending robots to Mars. Since Mars has ice and CO2, one could introduce plants in Mars and try to start recycling all that CO2 into oxygen. That would perhaps create a tiny habitat and make things easier for the first humans to ever land on the red planet.

ars 17y ago

I thought the problem was that humans can't get to mars! Because there is too much solar and cosmic radiation, and no one would survive the trip. And enough shielding to block it is too heavy to launch (from earth). Which is why we want to go to the moon first.

stcredzero 17y ago
I thought the problem was that humans can't get to mars! Because there is too much solar and cosmic radiation, Nonsense. If you can hop in a shelter to avoid the occasional solar storm that can kill you instantly, the remaining associated risks are like smoking. And enough shielding to block it is too heavy to launch (from earth). Again nonsense. Water is a very good shield medium. You'll need to carry a lot of it anyhow, and you only need to shield a small short-duration shelter for radiation storms. So we can extract the shielding from the moon? Waste of time for exploration. So you save on launch costs for the expedition. How much is it going to cost to launch the lunar shielding extraction equipment? Yes, it's desirable to have infrastructure on the moon, eventually. But for exploring Mars, it's superfluous. It's like Lewis and Clark needing to establish Tulsa before going to the Pacific. Read Zubrin. He's got the facts on his side.
- ars 17y ago
  > Nonsense. If you can hop in a shelter to avoid the occasional solar storm that can kill you instantly, the remaining associated risks are like smoking. You are wrong. The radiation is lethal. What you wrote only applies near earth. And it's not solar particles that are the main problem. It's cosmic particles, which have much much higher energies, and do not come in bursts. See here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=magnet-force-field http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=magnet-forc... and here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shielding-space-travelers http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=shielding-s... and here: http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/the_real_reason_why_we_wont_go_to_mars_in_my_lifet_1.html http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/the_real_reas... and here: http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/0004/files/rapp_mars_2006_0004.pdf http://marsjournal.org/contents/2006/0004/files/rapp_mars_20... (pdf) and here: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080331-radiation-shielding.html http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/080331-radiation-shield... Is that enough? We are not going to mars anytime soon. Even a colony on the moon is not possible right now. We would either need to send people on once only short term construction trips, or some sort of robotic construction to make a shield first. Or a biological protectant of some kind.