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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 11 2017, @08:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the one-small-orbit-for-man dept.

Buzz Aldrin has said that NASA should stop spending $3.5 billion per year on the International Space Station and relinquish low Earth orbit activities to private companies, such as SpaceX, Orbital ATK, Boeing, Bigelow Aerospace, and Axiom Space. This would allow for the funding of "cyclers" to enable a base on the moon and eventually a permanent presence on Mars:

http://www.space.com/36787-buzz-aldrin-retire-international-space-station-for-mars.html

Establishing private outposts in LEO is just the first step in Aldrin's plan for Mars colonization, which depends heavily on "cyclers" — spacecraft that move continuously between two cosmic destinations, efficiently delivering people and cargo back and forth. "The foundation of human transportation is the cycler," the 87-year-old former astronaut said. "Very rugged, so it'll last 30 years or so; no external moving parts."

Step two involves the international spaceflight community coming together to build cyclers that ply cislunar space, taking people on trips to the moon and back. Such spacecraft, and the activities they enable, would allow the construction of a crewed lunar base, where humanity could learn and test the techniques required for Mars colonization, such as how to manufacture propellant from local resources, Aldrin said. Then would come Earth-Mars cyclers, which Aldrin described as "an evolutionary development" of the prior cyclers.

[...] NASA officials have repeatedly said that the ISS is a key part of the agency's "Journey to Mars" vision, which aims to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet sometime in the 2030s.

Is the ISS a key part of the "Journey to Mars" or a key roadblock?


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  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Friday May 12 2017, @12:24AM (8 children)

    by tftp (806) on Friday May 12 2017, @12:24AM (#508409) Homepage

    Being in the tin can, on site, getting first hand data and more importantly immersion exposure to the challenges, should be enough value add to justify the tin can mission

    One manned expedition will cost as much as 100 unmanned probes. Robots can be sent to different points of the planet and be set up for different research. I do not see /any/ value in sending humans and a small lab if those humans do not also have mobility on the planet. Imagine, we have them there. They walked out and dug up a pit in the sand. Let's assume the walls did not cave in. They found some rocks. That took two days. Now what? They spent one year going there, and there will be one year flying back. And twenty years off of their lifespan because of radiation - which we cannot mitigate. There will be deaths in that expedition - more than one, if the scientists are going to push the limits.

    IMO, at this point manned expeditions are too expensive, too dangerous, too long and too pointless. If you find an alien ship on the surface - sure, then at least there is a good purpose. But to fly there just to wade in the sand? What scientific results are worth such an expense?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday May 12 2017, @02:02AM (5 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday May 12 2017, @02:02AM (#508428) Journal

    And twenty years off of their lifespan because of radiation - which we cannot mitigate.

    You had a good comment until you threw this bullshit in there. The radiation risks of a trip to Mars are minimal. Astronauts will be exposed to more radiation than NASA recommendations would allow, but the limits are conservative. Weightlessness will do far more damage to the astronauts than radiation will, and that's a problem that could be fixed by rotating part of the spacecraft.

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    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @02:28AM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 12 2017, @02:28AM (#508436)

      Radiation concerns are real, but trimming 20 years off lifespan is overblowing it.

      Occasionally one astronaut will get unlucky with the radiation effects and lose 20 years of life to it. Just like commuting to work on the freeway will occasionally do terrible things to lifespan, but not most of the time.

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    • (Score: 1) by tftp on Friday May 12 2017, @02:38AM (3 children)

      by tftp (806) on Friday May 12 2017, @02:38AM (#508439) Homepage

      Not everyone is so quick [space.com] to dismiss the danger of radiation:

      The Mars rover Curiosity has allowed us to finally calculate an average dose over the 180-day journey. It is approximately 300 mSv, the equivalent of 24 CAT scans. In just getting to Mars, an explorer would be exposed to more than 15 times an annual radiation limit for a worker in a nuclear power plant.

      We can debate whether the limits are conservative, but the absolute figure of 0.3 Sv (one way) is scary. The astronaut will collect about 1 Sv over the trip - and that is already radiation poisoning [xkcd.com], and there will be no treatment until return to Earth. Once on Mars, researchers cannot stay underground - they have to do research on the surface.

      Everything else, like gravity, can be dealt with. But there is no sufficiently powerful source of energy yet (like a small and clean thermonuclear reactor) to create, say, a magnetic deflector for the solar wind. Another good plan is to fly much faster. Both methods require technology that is not yet available. I believe people should focus on that - and on better robots.

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 12 2017, @04:37AM

        by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday May 12 2017, @04:37AM (#508470) Journal

        I am totally fine with postponing human missions to Mars until they take 30-60 days one-way instead of 180. It will be too bad if those propulsion technologies are not ready to use by the 2030s.

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      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday May 12 2017, @04:54AM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday May 12 2017, @04:54AM (#508479) Journal

        Not to mention that, once there, the astronauts might no longer remember how to get back. [go.com]

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      • (Score: 2) by Alphatool on Friday May 12 2017, @12:51PM

        by Alphatool (1145) on Friday May 12 2017, @12:51PM (#508588)

        Radiation doses don't add up like that. To get radiation poisoning from 1 Sv all of the dose needs to be delivered over a short time span, think hours rather than days. If the dose is spread out to e.g. 10 mSv per day for 100 days there will be no immediate health effects. There would be an increase in the risk of cancer (maybe 5% per Sv more likely to die from cancer but it's complicated) but in the context of interplanetary space travel 2 mSv per day is nothing to worry about.

        There are some serious and genuine concerns about brain damage from really high energy cosmic radiation (see the reply by by maxwell demon), but that is a very different problem than anything from a conventional radiation dose.

  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 12 2017, @02:15AM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday May 12 2017, @02:15AM (#508430)

    But one manned mission will get funded, 100 unmanned probes will not get funded in the same timeframe.

    Keep the political reality in focus - whether you like it or not, it exists and will not only influence but determine funding.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 12 2017, @05:52AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 12 2017, @05:52AM (#508505) Journal

    Imagine, we have them there. They walked out and dug up a pit in the sand. Let's assume the walls did not cave in. They found some rocks. That took two days. Now what?

    Right there, that's the equivalent of one or more robotic missions. The answer to "now what?" is that we keep having the humans do more such tasks. They can stay for years, not merely a couple of days.

    And twenty years off of their lifespan because of radiation - which we cannot mitigate.

    Except through simple engineering like radiation shielding. High energy cosmic rays, which are difficult, but not impossible to shield against, only make up part of the space radiation environment. So shielding will protect against much of what radiation is actually in space (even if we don't go all the way to shield against cosmic rays and the resulting particle sprays associated with cosmic rays), particularly from the Sun, which is the most dangerous source of radiation in space.