Russia plans to put people on Mars

Zardon

Russian space officials have announced an ambitious project to send people to Mars by 2015.

Leaders of the Russian space programme said the plan needed international co-operation and they hoped to win support from both the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) and the European Space Agency.

Scientists have planned the basics of a 440-day mission by six people which would break a huge barrier in space exploration.

Preliminary talks have been held with possible international partners for the plan which Russia said would cost around $20bn and for which it could contribute 30%.

Vitaly Semyonov, head of the Mars project at the Keldysh Research Centre, said: "It must be an international project.

"No one country could cope alone with this task."

The outline of the plan calls for two spaceships - one manned with six crew members and one for cargo.

Anatoly Grigoryev, director of the Institute of Medical-Biological Problems which works with all of Russia's cosmonauts, said three members of the team would descend to Mars, while the other three would remain in orbit.
Russian space officials said they are receiving encouraging signs of interest from Nasa and European counterparts.
Nasa spokeswoman Delores Beasley said the Russians had not yet submitted a formal plan which would be necessary before decisions were taken.

Alain Fournier-Sicre, head of the European Space Agency's permanent mission in Russia, said he had discussed the project with Russian officials.

"We are still very far away," he said.

"But this kind of programme is a long-term initiative for every space agency in the world."

Nasa told BBC News Online last month that the administration was doing what it needed to send humans to Mars at some point.


Nasa's Mars Odyssey craft entered orbit around the planet earlier this year and began mapping the mineral and chemical make-up of the surface.

The Odyssey's discovery of water on Mars also heightened interest and added possibilities for manned missions to Mars.

Russian scientists have long dreamed of landing humans on Mars, but even in the heyday of the Soviet space programme its attempts to reach the Red Planet were so marked by failure, that people began talking of a "Mars curse".

More recently, Russia tried to launch a $300m spacecraft to Mars in 1996, hoping to show they were still a force in the space discovery despite the Soviet break-up.

But the craft suffered an engine failure after launch and crashed in the Pacific Ocean.

BBC news

kinetic

Whoever goes to Mars face some extreme conditions. Winds in the upper atmosphere reach speeds of almost 500mph, the average surface temp is -63c and the atmosphere is very thin. Huge dust storms several kilometres in height can swirl across the planet for months so any landing is going to be extremely hazardous. A British led spacecraft (Beagle 2) is due to land on Mars in December 2003 and is going to carry all sorts of meterological instruments which should gather some extremely useful information for any future manned landing. Whoever does go is a braver man than me

Dom

You guy's think there will be a race between American & Russia to get to Mars first, like with the Moon?

Yeti

Yeah, a race LOL

Nope that ain't happenin....

BTW, the winds in our upper atmosphere can also reach around 500mph... and quite frankly the martian atmosphere is about as dense as well.... its not particurlarly dense... a 500mph wind on mars would be something the equivalent of a 10mph wind on earth (rough estimate, don't kill me) in terms of force exerted on an object with arbitrary surface area.

For instance you couldn't use a sail on mars (IF there was a sea, good heavens i'm being hypothetical here OK??!!!!) it just woudn't provide you with enough force.

Also i don't really see what the hell they could do with the water on mars... So no point gettin excited about that. Seriously, if you tried to melt the ice on mars... it would probably sublimate because the atmosphere is almost nonexistent. In order for water to exist on mars the way it does here, there would first have to be an atmosphere of the same density as we have on Earth.

So whats the deal? The ice on mars can't be used for anything "out of doors", or out of the spacecraft rather (not nearly enough pressure for a human being to live outside of a pressurized environment).

So am i excited about going to mars? Yeah, why the hell not.
Is everyone else excited about it? Seems so.
Will it bring about anything spectaucrlarly new? I'm a sceptic who chooses not to believe so.
Will there be a space race? Yeah, between who and who? Forgive me for being sceptical, but with the current state of affairs i doubt that it can be accomplished.... of course things could "change" by the projected date of 2015.
What about this international collaboration thing? Yeah, i'm all for that... seems much better than some of the other ways my tax dollars are being spent.

Lol... </rant>

kinetic

I don't know how long they plan to stay on the surface but I don't think we are going to learn anything new unless they can spend a couple of weeks there. Maybe if they have the ability to travel around a bit and physically explore then they may find something new.
I think the main reason to go is to prove that it can be done because, one things for sure, some time in the distant future we'll have to get off this rock!

Yeti

Oh, i forgot this when i was writing last night...

The UM has been doing research and developing a light helicopter-like aircraft for a research mission to mars... if i find it i'll post it.

war59312

I'm going to mars!!

At least my name is.

http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2003/

Irish

Yes the Russians want to go to Mars but with America's cash.....they say they will contribute 30% - where exactly will they get that kind of money? They'll have to send a lot more stars and/or celebrities into space to accomplish that!

Yeti

LOL, and where is America gonna get the money?

As a Russian expatriot living in America (I am truly a nationless cosmopolitan ) i can tell you that the situation in the two countries is not very different.

After a decade of political turmoil... the ruble is now stable in comparison to the US dollar. People are living and working as normal. Organized crime is up, but random acts of violence are down. People in Russia are generally very understanding and a lot of them are trying to make some cash, just the same as here in America.

Yeah Russia's budget is strapped kinda tight right now. But quite frankly the American economy ain't holding it together right now. Between this nations multi Trillion dollar national debt, failing stock market and corporate corruption, its very hard to see there being any free cash. Also it is interesting to note that recently the dollar has been saved from a drastic fall by Japanese industry who has been frantically exchanging the Yen and Dollar in order to maintain the dollars value so as to protect their American investments.

Read the news... don't laugh at Russia, and don't laugh at America, everyone is in the same boat and no one is going anywhere for quite a while.

- i'm usually an optimist