Landing On Mars

[springbulb81]

Why have they not yet commissioned a manned flight and landing on Mars? They clearly have the technology and know how to do it? Also due to the atmosphere and composition Jupiter, could you physically land on it ignoring how far away it is?

[jake-the-peg]

I think if you think they clearly have the technology you don't understand the full difficulty of the issue!

I won't go through all the problems but here are just two

The moon is a quarter of a million miles away and was a few days - Mars even relatively close is about 200 times as far. Any Mars mission would be several years and so the craft would need to be pretty self sufficient - that is large. As you build large you need to assemble in orbit and you need a lot of fuel for the trip. The Apollo command and service modules were 5.5 tonnes, the ISS is nearly 100 times that.

If you're in flight for a few days you can probably get up and back in a time of quiet solar activity - on a trip to Mars you're not going to avoid a solar storm - protecting the crew is a major issue.

But that's not the big reason - the big reason is why on Earth would you want to? The cost would be horrendus! The ISS itself has drained the science budgets of many contributers - why would you spend so much to send people when robots are so capable?

To live out some "star trek" fantasy?

The only thing I can see that would even start to make it worth thinking about is if some real evidence of past life were to be found there

[woofgang]

simple answer to your question......who's gonna pay?

[modeller]

Jupiter is a gas giant 90% of which is hydrogen. What would you land on ?

[Bazile]

A wing and a prayer

[ZedBloke]

This is science not chatterbank.

How do they "clearly have the technology"? please explain yourself.

lets' leave Jupiter for now shall we.

[Teddio]

A trip to Mars, using the lowest energy route, would take about 10 months. The crew would need protection from cosmic rays and solar radiation: a huge problem to overcome. "They" clearly do not have the technology yet for a manned flight.

The expense for such a mission would be a large fraction of the gross domestic product of any country or federation. What would be the political or scientific gain for such a huge financial outlay?

Jupiter is a gas giant and doesn't have a solid surface although it may have a very hot solid core. "Landing" on it could involve floating in its atmosphere.

[ludwig]

The fact that your eyeballs pop out of your head in the martian atmosphere is always going to be a showstopper I reckon.
That's what happened to Arnie in Total Recall.

[Richie88]

Regardless of the cost and feasibility. They do have the technology, end of.

[jomifl]

They have the technology to land corpses on Mars, what would be the point of that?

[Old_Geezer]

I was under the impression that Robert Zubrin had formulated a solution named "Mars Direct" years ago.

Cost, well per taxpayer it is trivial. Safety ? Intrepid explorers of the past accepted danger, they were the personality type to take risks for the reward of life experience. Why would we ? Because it's there.

It'd be nice to think they could get this sorted before I shuffle off this mortal coil, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Richie88]

They wouldn't wouldn't be corpses. You're telling me with all the knowledge and
Technology we have today we can't support a team of humans to live for
10 months journey to Mars?

[beso]

What would be the point? For a fraction of the cost and risk we can have unmanned missions driving around analysing samples for months.

[jake-the-peg]

Its 10 months there - how long do you want to stay and do you want to come back?

It mounts up!

I think we don't have the technology right now but it's not that far off probably no more than Apollo 11 technology was at the start of the Mercury flights.

Look at all the supply flights to the ISS!

You'd probably need something about that size and you'd need to burn all the fuel to get it to Mars and stop it.

You have to carry the fuel to land on Mars and take off again (Mars' gravity is a lot stronger than the moon's) and all the fuel to get back to Earth again.

There have been sensible discussions about whether the first trip would be a 1 way ticket! - that would certainly make it a lot easier

Amazingly you'd still probably have a queue of applicants

[Bazile]

So we are a long way off the system like the matter/anti-matter reactor with a dilithium regulated reaction (which generates the high levels of power that are needed for use with the warp drive system) used on the Enterprise .

[jomifl]

Much easier to just use a bigger 'beamer upper' than the one used on the Enterprise or even just borrow a Klingon space ship :-)

[EDDIE51]

The main reason there are very unlikely to be manned missions to other plants is that robots and computers are so much better at it. The new Mars rover will be there for several years , it is going to take 2 years yet just to get to the crater that is it's main target. It may well be still working 10 or more years yet. The Cassini mission to Jupiter and the outer planets is still producing stunning results after several years . Just think how much computers and artificial intelligence have progressed since the days of the Moon landing while 'rocket science' has progressed very little. ( The Saturn 5 is still the largest and most powerful rocket ever made. )

[EDDIE51]

Other 'Planets ' sorry !

[EDDIE51]

Here is Cassini's home page updated daily
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/
Cassini is currently orbiting Saturn's moon Titan .

[Old_Geezer]

Not the same though is it Eddie. (A bit like being on the mountain looking at the view compared to looking at someone else's holiday snap of it.) Ultimately we want the dream of out species moving out into the universe to be a reality. Ok we personally might not go ourself, but someone should, many should. Robots etc, will always be easier/cheaper but that means we are condemning our species to never getting off our home planet, merely looking at data returned.

[atalanta]

Astronauts lose a great deal of bone density, just on trips in the Space station. Bones lose density because of the lack of gravity.
A journey to Mars would probably result in such weakness that astronauts landing on Mars would immediately break their legs.