Posted on 05/02/2016 11:27:29 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The plan begins with a Dragon capsule, similar to one of the cargo ships now parked at the International Space Station, blasting off for Mars aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket as early as 2018.
The Falcon Heavy, which will have 27 first-stage engines, compared to the nine aboard SpaceX’s current Falcon rocket, is scheduled for its first flight before the end of this year. Falcon Heavy will be the most powerful U.S. rocket to fly since NASA’s Saturn 5 moon rockets of the 1970s.
...
SpaceX, which has multibillion-dollar contracts with NASA to fly cargo and crew to the space station, won’t be getting financial support from NASA for its debut Mars mission, known as Red Dragon.
The prospect of SpaceX’s self-financed journey to Mars, one which Musk clearly intends to develop to the point of landing people, casts new light on NASA’s own Mars program. The project costs NASA about $4 billion per year and does not yet include development of a habitat for deep-space travel or a vehicle to land and then take off again from the surface.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
No one is going to Mars.
of course. NASA is mis-directed.. its now an IslamoNazi ego boosting outfit
thanks, O!
Ever?
NASA will win the race they have all the smart muslims on board now...
Definitely not in our lifetimes.
Naw, it'll happen, it just won't be NASA that does it, if anything they'll put up red tape to try to stop it.
I like the idea they are self funding. I don’t like Musks politics, but I like Spacex.
Let’s see if they can get their rocket off the ground and back again early Thursday morning. Don’t count your planets before they are hatched.
They’ll have to do a “Martian Environmental Impact study” before they go. Will take decades.
Yep, and hundreds, if not thousands of volunteers will line up for a one way suicide mission to "be the first".
Nope, the big problem is getting propulsion that would cut the trip down to weeks instead of a couple years.
A 2 year trip in deep space would cook the astronauts like filets with the radiation.
I agree.
They've had astronauts spend up to a year on the ISS with no filet-like symptoms.
Space X has done something NASA probably thought of thirty years ago and rejected it as un-doable
Space X said, "Wann'a bet?"
I wish I was a younger man in my 20's or 30's right now ...
We live in exciting times
The ISS is still within the Earth’s magnetic field. The only people who have been outside were Apollo astronauts, and only for a short time.
Cultural appropriation of Martian culture, and micro-aggressions against them...and an influx of Martian refugees.
No thanks.
Yup, the long term ISS missions proved that with considerable effort, you can survive in microgravity that long.
IIRC, one of the Apollo missions was shortly followed by solar flare that would have killed them.
How about some hard numbers?
What specific kinds of radiation are you speaking of?
What specific energies of that radiation are you speaking of?
What specific dose rates due to those energies and kinds are you speaking of?
Are these doe rate levels static or changing over time and has that been accounted for?
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