On to the Moon, and to Mars, via von Braun

In 1952, Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who spearheaded America's first two decades of space efforts, laid out a step-by-step blueprint of space exploration, starting with putting a satellite in orbit around Earth.

The next steps in von Braun's blueprint read like NASA's achievements of the past four decades: launching astronauts into orbit, sending astronauts to the Moon, the space shuttle, a space station. Only the order was changed when President John F. Kennedy made the push for sending people to the Moon. That goal was originally supposed to come after the space shuttle and the space station.

Today, in remarks at NASA headquarters in Washington, President Bush is expected to announce new efforts to complete the last two items on von Braun's list: a permanent Moon base and a mission to Mars.

"It would be the culmination of the von Braun paradigm," said Roger D. Launius, chairman of the division of space history at the National Air and Space Museum and a former chief historian at NASA. "The von Braun paradigm has been played out almost religiously since it was first enunciated in the 1950's. It was very logical. It's easy to grasp."

This will be NASA's third major push for Mars. A couple of months after Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon in 1969, von Braun and NASA advocated an ambitious sequel: a space station in Earth orbit, a fleet of space shuttles, a second space station around the Moon, a base on the Moon, a nuclear-powered shuttle to and from the Moon, and an expedition to Mars as early as the 1980's.

President Richard M. Nixon agreed to only the space shuttle and Skylab, a rudimentary space station that circled Earth in the 1970's.

In 1989, the first President George Bush announced plans for a permanent Moon base and sending astronauts to Mars. But the plans died after NASA estimated it would cost more than $400 billion to get to Mars.

After that costly proposal, engineers at Martin Marietta contended that a Mars mission could be achieved at a fraction of the cost by sending a robot ship first that would manufacture fuel for the return trip.

NASA has since incorporated many of those ideas into a proposal, last updated in 1998, that would cost $50 billion.

"Still my country suffers from it" [Communism]. - Post #38

"Still germans pay taxes in the country they live in- unlike Americans" - I consider it to be freedom to have the possibility to escape the taxation of the country you have a passport from.

They all expect it.

Sure, and the state has to pay Sozialhilfe as long it can afford it. Of course, we have to probe what´s necessary and who does not need the help. Our system which was meant to be a social net, pushing people, who have fallen, up again has changed to a social bed, making it too comfortable to contribute again. People have to learn again that its not the state working for them, and I KNOW that people learning that right now.

It´s just another proof for different policys - there´re issues where Americans can be considered more free and issues where Europeans are more free. I see no material difference. In the end, we live in free and democratic societies - that you were able to change your citizenship is another point for that.

It is more freedom to pay taxes in the country you live in instead of the country you get a passport from. A US citizen cannot choose - he/she always is subject to US taxation, a German citizen can escape from German taxation by changing his residence.

Well, Michael, since I worked in Germany for a US firm, you are treading on my expertise.
First, there is a double taxation treaty in place between Germany and the US. (By the way between most countries)
The US always maintains that those treaties are enforced.
Here is the formula in short. The first $75 000 of income is exempt from US taxes, then the taxes paid to the foreign Government are CREDITED directly to the US taxes, per the Tax Table. Since Germany had higher taxes than the US, there was always an overpayment that I galdly took in subsequent years as a Tax credit in future years after I came back home.
If Germany decides not to adhere to the treaty and let people off the hook, so be it.

I'm 100 per cent behind sending probes to Mars, and 100 per cent opposed to human missions to Mars in the foreseeable future. It's a matter of cost and practicality.

Second Mars Rover sends pictures to Earth
by Andrew Bridges
Jan. 25, 2004
"I am flabbergasted. I am astonished. I am blown away. Opportunity has touched down in an alien and bizarre landscape," Steven Squyres, the mission's main scientist, said early Sunday. "I still don't know what we're looking at." ...Mission members hooted and hollered as the images splashed on a screen in mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was there with his wife, Maria Shriver, to watch the drama unfold, and walked through mission control shaking hands with the scientists... Together, the twin 384-pound rovers make up a $820 million mission to seek out geologic evidence that Mars was a wetter world possibly capable of sustaining life.

Just to save time, I'll say that Mars has never been a wetter world possibly capable of sustaining life. It does however have microbial life in the soil, as was shown by the Viking lander 25 years ago (and then denied by NASA ever since).

Why is Mars red?
by Hazel Muir
"There is something of a paradox about Mars," agrees Joshua Bandfield of Arizona State University in Tempe. His team recently showed that the planet has no large deposits of carbonates, which should have formed if giant pools of water had persisted on the surface. Bandfield suggests that liquid water must have occasionally burst out of the ground, carving channels and gullies, but that it quickly froze again in the frigid Martian climate.

Mars has always been about the size it is now. To find on Earth the kind of atmospheric pressure found on Mars, one has to be at 40 MILES altitude. On Mars water ice sublimes to water vapor, without being liquid, and due to Mars' size and density, those conditions have always prevailed.

The only exception would be due to an impact, which could produce enough water vapor to create a temporary atmosphere dense enough for liquid water to flow. That is exactly the kind of thing seen on Mars -- erosion leading from nowhere to nowhere.

A while back the local paper here had an article about Christopher McCay's "second genesis" theory about Mars. Luckily, it closed with this:

A consensus is now growing among planetary specialists, however, that except for brief early periods more than 4 billion years ago when gigantic meteors might have heated the Martian surface and melted subsurface waters, the Red Planet has always been a cold and icy object, according to Philip Christensen of Arizona State University.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.