What? No talk about the Mars Rover?

[Loser]

Originally posted by JurijD:
Yeah I too was SO annoyed when they canceled Venture Star... I mean why the hell did they do that. It was almost working and they had several ful-size engies and a smaller prototype of the thing built and estimates said it would reduce the cost of goin to space by 70%-90% compared to the space shuttle. Those stupid %#&#"!"$#!

It was canceled because it wasn't working, wasn't going to work. The entire project depended on a whole suite of unobtainable technologies. The folks that sold the idea to the government budget people led them to believe that each of these technologies only needed a little more time, just a little more money thrown at it, before they would all be ready and work together.

Well, they didn't. It sucked and should have gotten the boot a hell of a lot sooner. Instead it sat around eating up money that could have been spent on projects with real world potential. Tragic.

The simple fact is that we, the humans of Earth, simply lack the technology required for single-stage-to-orbit. Anyone who tells you otherwise is blowing smoke in your ear.

Oh, and the Soviet Rocket worth attention is the Energia. It is the largest rocket in the world and is capable of getting enough mass far enough out to put a man on Mars, if I recall correctly. Unfortunately, the trip would be made with minimal shielding against radiation and there would be no provision for a return.

[geoschmo]

Space elevators. Once we get the tech working on those babies we'll really start making some progress in space. Once the infrastructure is up, the cost to orbit will be pennies on the dollar over anything else we can think of today. A vacation to an orbiting space hotel will be not much more expensive then a first class vacation today, and not any harder physically on the body then a conventional airliner flight. I am holding out hope yet of retiring to an old folks home up there.

[Cyrien]

I just loved Bush Jrs speech on going back to the moon. Robots by 2008. Of course a nice year considering that even if Bush gets reelected it will be at the far tail end of his Last possible term. Lets just push it off to the next guy. And 2015 for manned landings building upto a base. What are the odds of that going uninterrupted.

Oh well. We can still hope.

[henk brouwer]

I don't see much difference in the Mars landscape since the Last one, but I guess that was to be expected.
[/QB]

Well, it seems that NASA knows people are expecting mars to have a red-coloured landscape, and they seem to have processed al pictures using a red filter to meet our expectations.
Here is the url of a website that has tried to convert the pictures to how mars would look if you saw it with your own eyes:

http://www.keithlaney.com/spirit_color_images.htm

It's still red, but it doesn't hurt your eyes like the red/orange nasa pictures.

There's a panel on the lander for which the colors are known. They converted the picture to the right colors using this panel as a reference.

[ January 16, 2004, 11:28: Message edited by: henk brouwer ]

[gregebowman]

Originally posted by Cyrien:
I just loved Bush Jrs speech on going back to the moon. Robots by 2008. Of course a nice year considering that even if Bush gets reelected it will be at the far tail end of his Last possible term. Lets just push it off to the next guy. And 2015 for manned landings building upto a base. What are the odds of that going uninterrupted.

Oh well. We can still hope.

I'm glad Bush made that speed. What I'm dreading is that the next Democrat to get elected will drastically reduce NASA's budget and basically wreck Bush's plans for outer space. Hopefully, his plans will survive the next few elections, and maybe my son will be able to become an astronaut and go to the moon or Mars. he's only 3, but one can hope....

[Phoenix-D]

And now we have the first casulty of the Bush program- the Hubble Space Telescope. all the shuttle flights from now until thye are retired will be going to ISS. When Hubble needs servicing again, it won't get it.

[geoschmo]

Actually they were talking about having to phase out the Hubble before this. It's more a result of the Columbia disaster then any change in priorities.