Russians Want U.S. to Send Them to Mars (My title)

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian space officials proposed an ambitious project on Friday to send a six-person team to Mars by the year 2015, a trip that would mark a milestone in space travel and international space cooperation.

Russia's space program hopes to work closely with the American agency NASA and the European Space Agency to build two spaceships capable of transporting the crew to Mars, supporting them on the planet for up to two months and safely bringing them home, said Nikolai Anfimov, head of the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building.

The roughly 440-day trip is expected to cost about $20 billion, with Russia suggesting it would contribute 30 percent.

"It must be an international project," said Vitaly Semyonov, head of the Mars project at the M.V. Keldysha Space Research Center. "No one country could cope alone with this task."

Russian space officials said they are receiving encouraging signs of interest from NASA and European counterparts.

But NASA spokeswoman Delores Beasley said Friday that the Russians have not submitted any formal plan and that the agency would not comment on the proposed trip before then. Because of demands from Congress to scale back costs, human travel to Mars has not been on NASA's radar recently.

"We are still very far away," conceded Alain Fournier-Sicre, head of the European Space Agency's permanent mission in Russia. "But this kind of program is a long-term initiative for every space agency in the world," he said, adding that he held a meeting with Russian space officials this week to discuss the project.

Landing humans on Mars has long been a dream of Russian space scientists. But even in the heyday of the Soviet space program, when Moscow reported success after success, its attempts to reach the Red Planet were marked by failure. Soviet scientists began whispering about a "Mars curse."

The Soviet Union kicked off Mars exploration in 1960 by launching two unmanned spacecraft four days apart, but both failed even to make it as far as Earth's orbit. One resulted in an engine explosion that scattered debris and contamination over the Baikonur launch pad in one of the worst accidents in Soviet space history.

That was followed by repeated attempts and often repeated disappointment. The bad luck for Russia continued on Nov. 16, 1996, when the Russians launched an ambitious $300 million spacecraft, Mars 96, which they hoped would prove to the world that despite their economic struggles after the Soviet breakup, they could still run a first-rate space program. Mars 96 suffered an engine failure just after launch and crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

Anfimov said that despite the setbacks, "we never stopped planning and seeking opportunities to reach our next goal: Mars."

NASA's Mars program, plagued by its own series of setbacks, got back on track earlier this year when the unmanned Mars Odyssey spacecraft entered orbit around the planet and began mapping the mineral and chemical makeup of the surface.

Anatoly Grigoryev, director of the Institute of Medical-Biological Problems, which works with all of Russia's cosmonauts, said Russia's plan calls for a cargo and a manned ship, which would consist of a commander, a second pilot, a flight engineer, a doctor and two researchers. Three members of the team would descend to Mars, while the other three would remain onboard the ship in orbit.

Grigoryev said the trip could answer many of the remaining questions about Earth's mysterious neighbor.

"Is there life on Mars? If there is, what kind of life?" Grigoryev said, barely able to suppress his excitement. "This would be historic."

It wasn't "lost". It was MURDERED by a coalition of leftists, united largely by their hatred of the US (and themselves). That coalition was fostered by the Communist ideology, and has outlived the state Communism that financed it--becoming self-supporting through "tax-exempt foundations" like the P-yew (Pew) Foundataion and similar.

This is the absolute truth! Question is, how do we turn this around and save our children, our progeny? How do we shame, goad, prod, encourage, force our government to 'git goin'"!

I hate to tell you this, because I'm an engineer and I've been working for over twenty years, but I constantly advise the young people that I meet to avoid engineering as a career. How can you compete against a billion people in India and a billion people in China?

Silicon Valley has a new caste system, it's Chinese and East Indians for engineering, Caucasians for marketing, Hispanics for food service, groundskeeping and janitorial, and Black people get to work in Human Resources. This is the caste system of the future. The only professional jobs left for Caucasians is marketing. If you can minor in engineering while majoring in marketing then your job prospects are wonderful. If you want to work as an engineer realize that you are going to be competing with someone who is here on an H1-B, who is willing to work for $35k a year (with a six year degree!) and is expected to work unlimited free overtime, sometimes up to 70 hours a week. Gee, I can't imagine why more American kids aren't interested in learning engineering? Maybe because if they put the same amount of time into a law degree they can make ten times as much?

I've had a good career, and I'm glad I got in when I did, but there is no way I would want to become an engineer today.

A few billion was 30 at my last recollection, also over .6 billion per service flight. The Space Station is not a gas station or assembly area, never was; that was propaganda. Serves no useful purpose for a Mars mission. The present 3 man crew will barely be able to keep it running. It is major blood sucker in the NASA budget.

President Bush knows that the power of free enterprise, not government largess will open up space access for all missions, including going to Mars.

By allowing a competitive marketplace for Earth-to-orbit launch vehicles, the price of launching everything into space will come down significantly. When that happens, then Mars exploration (and lunar exploration) missions become politically (and even privately) financially viable. If you don't drive down that cost, anything you do in space will continue to be prohibitably expensive and non-starters beyond plans and viewgraphs like this latest Russian fantasy.

Unfortunately there is always a segment that believes if you just find the right mission or technology to do in space, you can find the money to fly the mission. But the Cold War is over and neither the Russians nor the US (or even the Chinese) can bully their taxpayers to put up the Trillions of Dollars necessary to do it with existing expensive launchers.

So let us focus on realistic solutions to build a robust and cost effective launch infrastructure (market-based), so we can do all of the amazing missions in space that we desire - including making money, so these missions help not hurt the terrestrial economy.

Still a pittance. And 30 billion over WHAT PERIOD OF TIME?? Of course the current space station is not a "gas station or assembly area", but it is the core of one. What else are you gonna use???

The major "blood sucker" in the NASA budget is/are all the non-essential missions tacked into NASA at the behest of powerful congressmen. Eliminate THOSE and focus on EXPANDING the space station and getting a cheaper SSTO capability, instead of the expensive "government charity" to the aerospace industry that is the "spaceplane" project.

There is a worldwide surplus of launch capability. Partly that's due to cost since only high-value projects get launched. In the commsat business, the launch costs are only a part of the business plan, and it's not a stopper.

If you want to launch a Winnebago complete with family and dog, the cost is way too high. But that's where we want to be: cheap launches and cheap payloads that anybody can afford.

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.