The Final Frontier...
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Still watchin' MacGyver on DVD...
For further reading if you're curious about more on the Spaceramp post...

Is the Shuttle Grounded Forever?
A discussion about the workability of modern Space Travel
Mars Direct at Scientific American

There's an interesting point brought up in some of these articles regarding a trip to Mars. Simply put, Martian surface Gravity is roughly 38% of "Earth Normal", whereas the gravity on the moon is roughly 17% Earth Normal. Excluding atmospheric influences, the Apollo moonlander(s) only had to generate a relatively tiny bit of thrust to take off relative to what it would require to take off on Earth and return its astronaut payload home...

So how are we going to get back from a planet with a denser atmosphere than the moon, which is our only extraterrestrial return-trip experience? A mars lander can't be blocky like the lunar lander. It'll need to be at least somewhat aerodynamic. The lander will pretty much need to be a proper reusable spacecraft in its own right, just to overcome the forces pulling on it as it tries to relaunch for the homeward trip!

Just to reach Low Earth Orbit (125-700 miles altitude give or take), the space shuttle has to exceed 15,000 mph (partially due to the density of the Earth's atmosphere). On the moon it was less than a sixth that, so simple boosters were all they really needed to get off the ground... how are we going to do that coming back from Mars? We'd have to carry sufficient fuel for an atmosphere launch, build a gantry or ramp or runway or whatever and take off again, facing many of the same problems (actually, about 38% of them, I suppose) a space launch faces taking off from Earth.

A sticky wicket and that's no lie.

Some serious people are considering the possibility of what I'm going to call 'disposable astronauts'. People we can send up and not come back! Yes, astronauts sent to explore another planet with no expectation of return, living out the rest of their natural (?!) lives on another planet, researching their new home and presumably sending back regular reports.

That sounds horrible but at some point, we're going to make the attempt to colonize an extraterrestrial environment beyond the International Space Station. This means people living, dying, and being borne off-planet. Mayhaps it's high time we got used to the idea?

I wouldn't want to do it, but then... I have to admit, I've always been intrigued by that last great feat in mountaineering... being the first to summit Mons Olympus on Mars, the highest peak in the solar system!

Eat yer heart out Sir Edmund Hillary!

-Scott