At a time when space exploration has become a competition between world powers, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plans to send an unmanned probe to Mars by 2021, which will be the Arab world's first mission to another planet.
A new UAE Space Agency will be created to coordinate the UAE's growing space technology sector and to supervise the mission. The mission will be led by Emiratis and will expand the nation's human capital through knowledge transfer from international partners, as well as increasing human knowledge about space exploration and distant planets.
"The UAE Mars probe represents the Islamic world's entry into the era of space exploration. We will prove that we are capable of delivering new scientific contributions to humanity," UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan said in a statement Wednesday.
Do you think this is likely? I do not know of any country which was able to launch such missions in only 7 years.
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The United Arab Emirates will build domes in the desert to test technologies that could be used to make a Mars colony:
A new project to build a Mars Science City in the United Arab Emirates was unveiled during annual government meetings on Sept. 26, 2017, in Abu Dhabi. The ambitious $136 million (AED 500 million) project was launched by Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The goal is to inspire youth to pursue careers in science and engineering as the UAE continues to position itself as an emerging player in space exploration.
The project is being led by a team of engineers from the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre and Dubai Municipality in cooperation with architect Bjarke Ingels. The facility will include a series of domes manufactured using 3-D printing processes out of sand from the Emirati desert.
In addition to demonstrating construction and building techniques that could be employed in building a city on the Red Planet, Mars Science City will feature laboratories simulating the Martian surface to aid in the development of other technologies that could be used in Mars exploration. Project planners also hope to combat problems on Earth using technology developed for the project.
"The UAE seeks to establish international efforts to develop technologies that benefit humankind," said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid in a news release. "We also want to consolidate the passion for leadership in science in the UAE, contributing to improving life on Earth and to developing innovative solutions to many of our global challenges."
The UAE also plans to send an unmanned probe to Mars by 2021.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by cykros on Thursday July 17 2014, @01:33PM
While it may be true that no other country has done this much in so little time so far, it's important not to rule out how much time is saved by learning from the mistakes of others, as well as from their successes. How much of that data is directly shared and how much is held a little closer to the chest, otoh, is something I'm not particularly aware of, but I assume they'll at least be able to shave off a good chunk of time regardless.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday July 17 2014, @01:49PM
In other news, the newly-formed UAE space agency has partnered with the North Korean military to develop a delivery vehicle capable of reaching Mars.
...T-minus 3...2...1...Liftoff! And, SPLAT! Alalalalalalalala! 72 virgins to all brave astronauts! Allahu Akhbar! Camels!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Thursday July 17 2014, @06:58PM
You know you're scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have to resort to stereotype comedy that's even less sophisticated than South Park or Family Guy would put on the air.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Funny) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday July 17 2014, @07:24PM
GOOD COMEDY?
OK, find the Qibla [wikipedia.org], and point to the Kaaba, in Mecca, from Meridiani Planum [wikipedia.org].
Degrees of precision? Off by an angstrom, and you focus prayers on Arcturus or the interstellar void.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17 2014, @01:45PM
It certainly sounds like the only reason they want to do this is to show the rest of the world they can, not because they actually want to go to mars. While this might, at first sight, seem like a very bad motivation to do anything, remember that the exact same motives are what put man on the moon in the first place.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:08PM
True enough.
Of course, an argument could be made that NASA's efforts to put a man on the moon were largely pointless, because they never followed it up with anything long-term. No moonbases, no asteroid mining, the US just kind of got bored and wandered off, leaving the technology and know-how to rot. I can imagine the UAE doing something similar.
I guess it was worth it just to prove that it can be done, if nothing else.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Spook brat on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:31PM
What putting a man on the moon proved was that we could place a payload wherever we wanted in the Human sphere of influence. The conclusion I draw from lack of further interest/funding is that once the Cold-War point of "imagine that this was a bomb" had been made for Russia to see, the actual mission was accomplished.
EF's heavily-downmodded joke about the Arab space race was actually on topic. Honestly, if the North Koreans put an honest effort into manned orbital spaceflight they'd be worrying us a whole lot more than they are with their ineffective missile launches. Military analysts will be watching news of this closely to see if we need to start caring about ICBMs being launched out of the Persian Gulf.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:38PM
You don't need to get to the moon to prove that. Just have John Glenn kick a nuke out the door during one of his 3 orbits and you can save the next 7 years' worth of effort and money.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17 2014, @07:01PM
(Score: 1) by Lemming on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:45PM
The Apollo missions brought us a lot of technology and know-how which is usable not only in future space missions, but also in our daily life. For example, the Apollo program pushed the development of computers and microchips.
Some links:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135690/NASA_s_Apollo_technology_has_changed_history [computerworld.com]
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/80660main_ApolloFS.pdf [nasa.gov]
(Score: 2) by khallow on Thursday July 17 2014, @05:51PM
Integrated circuits and microchips would have been pushed anyway even if the federal government had done absolutely nothing. (And where's the word about the far bigger contribution from the US military?) Banks for example were huge early adopters.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 17 2014, @08:12PM
And the UAE hired all of the laid off space techies.
This, like much else in the UAE, is a thin Arab wrapper around hired western expertise.
Not that they have no scientific training, they send all their favorite sons to prestigious western universities.
But they have no expertise in this area, since its not taught in universities.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday July 18 2014, @06:27AM
Uhhh...I thought that like their guns they bought their experts from the former USSR? After all that is where Iraq and Iran were/are getting their nuclear tech from and if you want to build a dependable cheap rocket to get from point A to point B you really can't beat Soyuz or Russian rocket motors, they aren't pretty but like most Russian military gear its built like a tank and tough as hell. Seeing as how we couldn't come up with anything worthwhile after Apollo* you really can't blame them for going with the former USSR where the track record is better.
*.-if you look up the original mission statement for the shuttle it failed every single metric in its design goal, instead of being a quick reliable "space truck" with a large payload, cheap to use, and replaced rapidly with new designs you got a slow easily damaged ship with not enough payload to carry most of the military loads, cost a mint, and was kept on more than 20 years after it was supposed to be put out to pasture. Now I don't know about you but I would call that a fail in my book.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday July 18 2014, @11:15PM
It's also a "Flying Brick [metacafe.com]."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by prospectacle on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:10PM
Whether they succeed or not, I applaud every effort of a government (or anyone, really) to reach some space-exploration milestone.
These are some of the hardest engineering and logistics problems around, and the techniques and technologies that come out of their attempts will often spawn whole new industries.
In that regard it's kind of like war, but in this case they try to avoid killing people most of the time.
Some people say "let's feed everyone in the world first". I agree, but since they're not going to do that, and we can't make them, let's at acknowledge that among the things governments are willing to do, space-races are good for the species.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 1) by subs on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:26PM
7 years can be done if and only if they purchase technology and probably even launch services from others. Developing even a small orbit-capable launch vehicle from scratch requires enormous amounts of investment and time. They could make it though if they aim for a modest goal, say a Mars orbiter, and involve a lot of international cooperation in the project by reusing an existing satellite bus, they hook existing (or upcoming) scientific payloads onto it and launch on a commercially available launcher (Arianne 5/6, Proton, Falcon 9).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17 2014, @02:46PM
I think you underestimate the scale of resources that a consortium of oil-rich countries can apply. I suspect you also underestimate the difficulties created by bureaucratic mandates that each of the 50 states must manufacture at least one part of any space vehicle and how differently things work in a true kingdom. Think, instead, about how quickly SpaceShipOne got into space, and that was just a couple of billionaires' pet project.
A lot of the Middle East is aware that oil won't last forever. Some of them are working hard at developing industries and technology that will maintain their prosperity when the oil does run out. If a couple of them figure that "Space" is going to be the thing, then I think they could give Russia some serious competition in the space race. The US seems pretty much to have dropped out of that race, at least at a national scale, and I'd like to see a real race start up again.
(Score: 1) by subs on Thursday July 17 2014, @06:06PM
If you think SpaceShipOne or any of Virgin Galactic's efforts is comparable to the difficulty of getting an orbit-capable launch vehicle, you have no clue of the scale of the problem. Getting into space is easy and that's all Virgin Galactic is doing - a brief hop above 100km in altitude so that people can enjoy weightlessness for a few minutes. But getting into orbit is much more difficult. On Earth, to get into space all you need is about 1.5km/s of delta-V. To get into orbit it takes about 9km/s. And due to the exponential nature of the rocket equation, this means that you need a launch vehicle that is about 13x heavier to get into orbit than to just do a short suborbital space flight.
To illustrate, take a highly efficiently run private development program that actually did result in an orbit-capable rocket: SpaceX's Falcon 1. It took 6 years from start of the company until the first successful launch. And they already had plenty of rocket engineering talent to hire from (lots of their key people were formerly aerospace engineers at places like Lockheed and Boeing) AND their rocket was extremely rudimentary (pressure-fed upper stage with about 500kg (claimed) LEO capability, which means capability to Mars: essentially zero kg). Going beyond LEO requires still more effort - deep space communications, maneuvering, spacecraft hibernation, precise heat management, developing radiation hardening, etc.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday July 18 2014, @11:19PM
While all your points are valid, we might be underestimating the fear of being thrown into UAE's prisons, or other "motivations."
(Score: 1) by subs on Saturday July 19 2014, @12:40PM
Iron Man 1 wasn't a documentary.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Sunday July 20 2014, @12:21AM
Perhaps it was "inspired" by some aspects?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:23PM
if they really want to proof that having "islam" as a religion doesn't hinder scientific questioning and progress then really close your borders now and reopen them after the craft has made it into mars orbit. else i assume it was bought from non-islam-ics and worse(?) people who don't believe that god exists?
srsly though i wish somebody would come up with a ISO-standard for space exploration of sorts. non binding of course.
but it would be perfect for a case like this: no real use, just bragging rights.
the standard would lay out long term plan and would involve some standards. compare it to lego blocks.
so if you want to "shot soemthign into outerspace because we can!" but don't really know what to do with it, then consult this ISO-long-term plan thingy and contribute to it.
who knows, maybe with all this "by dick is also big" shooting stuff into outerspace we might get a patchworky moon-base or space station at lagrand point?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cykros on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:40PM
I gotta say, all this UAE = allahu akbar stuff is a little weird. Say UAE and my first thought goes to Dubai...hardly a bastion of religious extremism (unless we're calling Capitalism a religion now).
(Score: 2, Informative) by sqrt(-1) on Thursday July 17 2014, @04:39PM
(Score: 1) by richtopia on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:58PM
Use the Koreans as the main contractor, then they will hire Indians to build it. And India already has some pretty good launch vehicles.
(Score: 1) by BananaPhone on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:59PM
I think it's just words but even if they put a credible effort it should wake up the existing Space capable nations to get their asses to Mars.
Meh, probably not. The whole f'n globe of rich people (save Elon Musk) has decided to chase money at all costs. Just like Star Trek's Ferengi.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Thursday July 17 2014, @04:30PM
So, what you're saying is, the way to get the rest of the world to go into space is to get the Swiss to move their banking services there first? Might be onto something here. Especially since I'm sure a good few eccentric millionaire types could be convinced to pay more for space storage due to the added "security" of being offworld...
(Score: 4, Funny) by TK on Thursday July 17 2014, @05:39PM
From TFA:
Everybody pitch in $5 and we can buy the world's spaceships and rename them Soylentships.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday July 17 2014, @06:45PM
In my opinion, that's what they'll need! It's the only indigenous technology the Arabs have which could be put to use for this endeavor. They'll have to buy or steal the rest.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.