A sample text widget
Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis
euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.
Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan.
Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem,
suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.
|
Spirit has stood up, and is expected to roll off of the lander Tuesday night.
In the comments to this post, Keith Cowing of NASAWatch offers this advice regarding Bob Zubrin and the Mars Society:
Why would anyone listen to anything he says from now on? He has torpedoed any credibility he has – regardless of the merits of the plans he proposes. You folks should keep (most of) his ideas and jettison him as a spokesman.
(emphasis mine)
What do you think? Should the Mars Society hire a spokesman to speak for it in Bob’s place? Should it hire an editor or PR expert to oversee Bob’s public statements? Should members move to replace Bob entirely, and find a new President? Or should it maintain things as they are now?
To frame the discussion more broadly, is Bob Zubrin a help or a hindrance to the future of the Mars Society? Why do you think that way? And if you see him as a hindrance, what would you propose doing about it?
Not even off of its lander yet, and Spirit has already found evidence of fossil life on Mars.
The upside: no more worries about biological contamination of Mars by manned missions!
The downside: someone is bound to make the argument, as against a return to the Moon, that we’ve “been there, done that” (never mind it was Homo Habilis or some such anthropoid and not, strictly speaking, “we” who did it).
[via Sven Knuth. And yes, I’m joking here.]
Bob Zubrin has reacted to the Bush Plan rumor with a list of things that that plan should include:
1. The goal needs to be REAL, which means that it must be sufficiently imminent in character to force NASA to change its spending from its current random activity to focused action to develop, build and fly a coherent set of hardware to implement the program plan.
2. While Lunar precursor activities can play a role, the true goal of the program needs to be understood as humans to Mars. Thus the hardware set designed should be suitable for supporting manned Mars missions. It is fine to use lunar missions as an intermediate milestone to test out and exercise a subset of the Mars hardware. But we do NOT want a stand alone Lunar program, undertaken with the assurance that the experience will be useful at some future date when
Mars missions are considered. To save money, accelerate the program, and maximize the validity of Lunar testing to prepare the Mars mission, commonality of hardware is key, allowing the Lunar missions to be done with a subset of the Mars hardware. This overall coherence needs to be designed into the program from the start.
3. The Mars mission must actually go to Mars. Missions that simply fly by Mars, go into Mars orbit, or to the Martian moons are insufficient. The purpose of sending humans to Mars is not to set a new altitude record for the aviation almanac. The purpose is to explore and pioneer a new world. This can only be done with astronauts on the Martian surface.
Between this article at CNN, and the comments to this post at Transterrestrial Musings, the responses I heard at work today to the Bush Moon-Mars plan rumors were pretty well covered.
The responses could be categorized in the following general categories:
- Skepticism, that the policy will be as rumored when announced, or that it will be announced at all.
- Excitement, including the sentiment that this is just the kind of thing we joined the aerospace industry to do (I heard the phrase “giddy” used at one point).
- Cynicism, over whether NASA will follow its usual habits with respect to carry-through (or fear of failure), completing 90% of the work, then shrugging, yanking the plug, and starting over from square one again.
- Doubt, about whether NASA is at all competent to carry out such a program, especially if not given unlimited resources.
- Worry, that current parochial interests may be adversely affected by the plan, particularly the portion dealing with early retirement of the Shuttle.
- Lust (for lack of a better term), for the very cool work that might take the place of the Shuttle work should the fleet be retired.
- Confusion, over what this means for our current activities, our near- and long-term planning, and exactly what we should be doing right now if everything is going to change next week.
I’ve said this many times before:
As the United States sets its sights on a manned mission to Mars, Australian astrobiologist Paul Davies says he has the perfect way to cut costs – don’t bring the astronauts back…
“I see no particular reason that the astronauts who go to Mars should come back again,” Professor Davies said.
“I’m in favour of a one-way mission to Mars. It would dramatically cut the costs.
“You might think that’s terrible – you’re sending them to their deaths. But that’s not what I had in mind.
“I have in mind resupplying them every two years as a sort of cycle of the Martian orbit.
“We could send on the food parcels from home and other things that are required to keep a tiny colony, maybe four or six people, going perhaps for many years.”
Though that’s not precisely my idea — I would send another permanent crew every launch opportunity, along with additional supplies and hardware for building up a beachhead on the planet. These early settler-astronauts could do some exploration, but their primary role would be the construction of a semi-self-supporting base (including food production greenhouses, atmosphere synthesis for inhabitants, fuel production for surface vehicles, machine shops, extraction/refining of common useful materials, etc.). Once the base has crossed a threshold point, defined by the number of settlers and the degree of development of the base’s “mini-economy”, wide-ranging exploration could begin. All the while, at every launch opportunity, an increasing number of settlers and equipment could be ferried out to Mars.
Keith Cowing claims that the Administration will be making The Big Announcement…next week.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
<whine>
Hey…how come Rand Simberg got a review copy of Bob Zubrin’s new book, but I didn’t?
Rand’s not even a member!
</whine>
David Grinspoon pines for a kinder, gentler approach to settling Mars.
I can just imagine Martians of a century or two hence looking back in fondness and pride on the brave animationers and cultivationizers who came from Earth and established the Thirteen Original Peoplings.
I’ll second Mark Whittington’s comment on this article, but I’ll also give Grinspoon credit for coining an amusing term: Ameriforming. Heh. I like the sound of that…sure beats the alternatives.
Various opinions on why we should go to Mars instead of the Moon, or else use a return to the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars and not as an ultimate destination in itself.
|
|