Manned space exploration

[SKIRRID5]

Have you noticed the recent news that the UK is to commit to getting more involved in manned space exploration?
Professor Bob Park, on his excellent website which I hope everyone knows, has for long campaigned against US involvement in this activity, as he believes unmanned probes are much more practical use (and of course a hell of a lot cheaper). Anyway,the last I heard, current technology is not at present capable of landing a man on Mars, which I'd guess is the main focus.

[seren]

*sniff*
Seems to me a womanned mission would be better organised. ;)

[Lord Muck oGentry]

*sniff*
Seems to me a womanned mission would be better organised. ;)

seren,

We can afford to lose men, the best of 'em included. But our best women? :smiley:

[Cuddles]

Anyway,the last I heard, current technology is not at present capable of landing a man on Mars, which I'd guess is the main focus.

Oh, the technology is certainly capable of it, it has been since at least the 60s. Getting to Mars isn't really any harder than getting to Moon, it's just that there is a lot more opportunity for things to go wrong.

The major problem with manned space flight is that, as Prof Park says, it's a complete waste of time and money, and quite possibly lives. Manned flight is far more expensive than unmanned, since you need a lot of space for people to live in, food, drink and of course the people themselves. Plus, you have to bring them back again. And there's really very little benefit. People are great at making quick decisions, and are generally quicker and more versatile than robots, but that really doesn't matter. There aren't any sudden surprises on the Moon, Mars or wherever that a human would need to deal with.

Unfortunately, it seems that the decision has already been made. Many of us suspected that the recent issues with physics funding were probably due to the space program, and the more news that comes out, the more likely that looks.

[SKIRRID5]

No the technology isn't capable of putting a man (or woman) on Mars yet. There was a piece by some rocket scientist or such, explaining in detail, not a damn word of which I remember, of course. I think I mailed Park about it, and he didn't contradict the statements. I'll see if I can find the item again, but I don't know about you, it always seems amazingly hard to re-find stuff online. I think the simple matter of weight comes into it, and problems of decelerating just before landing. Retro rockets have their own problems, and the Martian atmosphere is too thin to use parachute drag. See, I remembered a little!

[SKIRRID5]

I'm not sure how to post a nice blue link, but this seems to be the address of the, or an, article about the problem.

http://www.universetoday.com/2007/07/17/
the-mars-landing-approach-getting-large-payloads-to-the-surface-of-the-red-
planet/

Incidentally, I wince every time I see the phrase "Red Planet", which is used every single time Mars is mentioned on the BBC news site. Shoddy journalism!

[Mulder]

Surely you can compromise and send robot craft controlled by virtual reality software. So, you can walk around Mars while actually in a warehouse in Epping while a robot does the real thing under your command on Mars. Of course, the time delay in sending and receiving data could be a problem ... :smiley:

[SKIRRID5]

Well, that's cleared something up. Now I know why I'm clumsy: I'm actually a CGI being operated by someone on Mars!