Posted on 12/16/2016 9:21:50 PM PST by BenLurkin
NASA wants to wait until SpaceX proves it can pull off a soft landing on the Red Planet before committing millions of dollars' worth of equipment to the spaceflight company's "Red Dragon" effort, said Jim Green, head of the agency's Planetary Science Division.
"Landing on Mars is hard," Green said during a talk Tuesday (Dec. 13) here at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). "I want to wait this one out."
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has said the company plans to launch uncrewed Dragon capsules toward the Red Planet at every launch opportunity for the foreseeable future, ideally beginning in 2018. (Such windows come just once every 26 months, when Earth and Mars align favorably.)
The main goal is to practice landing heavy payloads on Mars, to help pave the way for human settlement there — a long-standing priority for Musk. The Red Dragon missions also should have significant scientific returns, since they'll allow researchers to send a variety of gear to the Red Planet, Musk has said.
NASA will take advantage of such opportunities, as soon as the first Red Dragon is in the books, Green said.
"I can't wait for it to be successful, because it opens up our opportunities to deliver important science instruments into the Mars environment," he said.
NASA is providing technical support to the first Red Dragon mission in a number of areas, via an unfunded Space Act Agreement. The space agency will get something out of the deal as well: access to most of the data gathered during Dragon's landing on Mars.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Let’s send Matt Damon again! He blasted off from Mars in a rocket ship covered with a tarp, and he would’t be missed.
I imagine there are a few countries, and maybe some private groups along with SpaceX that would love to put their hardware on the flight.
Red Dragon is a terrible name. Sounds like a ChiCom spaceship.
I would not “bring him home.”
He should have thought of a different name than ‘Falcon’ for the launcher. I admit, it is a perfect name for a spacecraft for hire.
The problem I see is these folks have no real experience in space outside launching a couple of rockets and landing a couple of times. They do not have the right stuff NASA showed us in the 60s when the US space program was in its infancy.
Where is the astronaut training program and lunar landings that should be done before attempting a 9 month 1 way journey.
. . . especially when he paints those launchers blue. . . (evil grin)
Fire him. No one’s life is at risk, and we don’t need the government to do everything in space. You can’t develop private expertise in space if NASA keeps taking all the marbles and going home.
I guess we’d better hope SpaceX does well, if only for resupply missions to the ISS. I had missed that Russia lost another Progress mission, the most recent a supply mission to the ISS, the 1st of this month.
http://spacenews.com/progress-launch-to-space-station-fails/
To be fair, has ANYONE else besides SpaceX successfully done a powered landing of a booster that took a payload to orbit? I thought the 4 landings they did at sea earlier this year (plus one on land in Dec. of 2015) were fairly impressive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZXu_rYF51M
(At least one is planned for re-use shortly.)
I’d also point out that SpaceX now has made 26(!) successful launches, with 2 failures. Their ability to keep costs down has already been quite impressive. If they can get their “reusable” tech costs down anywhere near their stated goals, a Mars program becomes significantly more feasible (though still a daunting goal).
Musk is a hard charger — maybe he can pull it off. Even if I think Musk is a little loopy about climate issues, the SpaceX story, failures and all, is definitely one I can respect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
Getting back to landings, and doing a little thinking out of the box, I suspect practice landings on the Moon are not necessary. In fact, they might be “too easy” compared to correctly structured “practice” on Earth. Then SpaceX will surely have several unmanned missions to Mars preceding a manned mission.
I do agree about astronaut training for a Mars mission. However... I would think that’d be a primary area for cooperation with NASA. NASA would surely not jump on the astronaut training (for a Mars mission) until SpaceX had successfully landed at least a couple unmanned landers on Mars. So, I would not expect astronaut training to begin until 2020 at the very soonest, with perhaps a mission in the first good launch window after 2026, at the earliest.
I always hoped Man would make it to Mars in my lifetime — in the ‘70’s, I was sure it would happen. Now, I know both I, and the effort to get there, will have to be on the lucky side of things for sure...
I was looking at the proposed specs for the SpaceX ITS launch vehicle. My goodness: It has roughly, depending on configuration, 2-1/2 to 3x the payload of the Saturn 5, or even the final iteration of the SLS that NASA is working on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITS_launch_vehicle
I sure would like to be on hand for a launch!
If SpaceX can prove out their “Raptor” engine (they seem to be well on the way with the “reuseable booster” technology), and be remotely in the “ballpark” Musk projects for costs... would Trump be inclined to cut a deal?
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