Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 71 total)
  • Manned Mars Mission – it begins… :-)
  • twang
    Free Member

    Big test tomorrow Orion blog, hopefully all goes to plan…
    Anyone else getting excited already? Only 15 or so years to wait…I’ll be old and probably incontinent, I’ll never contain myself!
    Bring on the pissing! 🙂

    kimbers
    Full Member

    China gonna get there 1st

    Its goonq get all Kim Stanley Robinson up there (tho hopefully a bit more than exciting)

    piemonster
    Full Member

    Well, I had Curry for lunch. And something for tea that was super hot.

    Don’t think ive got 15 years to wait before toilet trouble arrives.

    Not sure I’ve got 15 minutes tbh.

    ohnohesback
    Free Member

    Sadly it will remain an ‘aspiration’ as much as the planned manned return to the Moon. Eventually there will be humans back on the Moon and landing on Mars, but NASA won’t be leading the mission.

    kimbers
    Full Member

    Items including Ernie’s rubber ducky, Oscar’s pet worm, Slimey, and the Cookie Monster’s cookie are being taken into space by Orion and will later be displayed on the children’s television show in the hope that they could inspire the next generation of astronauts. Nasa predicts that the first astronauts on Mars will be today’s pre-schoolers.

    . 😆

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    I’m not sure given the current capabilities of robot landers that manned space flight has much to offer at the moment.

    Whathaveisaidnow
    Free Member

    FYI

    Northwind
    Full Member

    kimbers – Member

    Its goonq get all Kim Stanley Robinson up there

    Only quicker

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    It’s a shame it’s a 15 year wait, I have some fine candidates to sign up for the trip. It will need a snappy name though how about the Beta Ark.

    Tom_W1987
    Free Member

    I’m not sure given the current capabilities of robot landers that manned space flight has much to offer at the moment.

    It depends what kind of work is being done on the mission. Robots haven’t managed to replace scientists yet.

    And when they do, we are all well and truly ****.

    Cougar
    Full Member

    It will need a snappy name though how about the Beta Ark.

    “B” Ark. Brilliant. Them Golgafrinchams were on to something.

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    Live broadcast under way on Nasa TV and http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/12/02/orion-eft1-mission-status-center/ Fuelling currently ongoing.

    MostlyBalanced
    Free Member

    Coincidentally I’m now about half way through reading ‘The Martian’ by Andy Weir, about a member of one of the first manned missions who gets stranded alone on the planet. Very good read so far.

    PJM1974
    Free Member

    Robot probes are ace, but it’a absolutely not the same as seeing a human set foot on Mars for the first time.

    The technical challenges are enormous – how do you shield the crew from radiation for example? But we absolutely have to explore and eventually colonise other planets.

    MrSmith
    Free Member

    Would rather see the money time and effort go towards keeping this planet habitable TBH.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    @MrSmith… I get that too… But they don’t have to be mutually exclusive, frankly the place to start there is stopping spending money on things that trash the world.

    Thing is, space travel helps us to look up, which is exactly the sort of thing that encourages people to think bigger- whether that means mars, or this world, it’s easy to ignore global issues when you don’t think outside of your own local world. There’s also likely to be applicable tech, both predictable and unpredictable- the obvious stuff is in biosphere management, and really efficient resource use and reuse. None of that’s really stuff we couldn’t possibly do here, but there we couldn’t possibly not do it, motivation’s important.

    I can’t remember who said it… Humans work best at the 11th hour, which is just as well because even when we see a crisis coming we tend not to deal with it til we absolutely have to. In space travel, you start on the 11th hour- you never have the choice of putting it off for generations like you can do in a big blue world, that’s always going to force results. Ironically living on a benevolent planet is what gives us the option of wrecking it.

    PJM1974 – Member

    The technical challenges are enormous – how do you shield the crew from radiation for example?

    Why would you want to do that? Cosmic rays are awesome!

    Malvern Rider
    Free Member

    I can’t remember who said it… Humans work best at the 11th hour

    Great, but try and get even ten humans to agree as to when that hour tolls.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    Malvern Rider – Member

    Great, but try and get even ten humans to agree as to when that hour tolls.

    if you’ve just arrived on Mars in a lander the size of a static caravan, it is right now, and then all the time, or you just die 😆

    twang
    Free Member

    Half hour to go – lets have a bit of Carl Sagan to remind us why exploring cool..
    Embed this somebody please 🙂

    twang
    Free Member

    Unconfirmed no go 🙁

    Edit; some plonker in a boat trying to get a better look delaying things while swat team takes um out 🙂

    ahwiles
    Free Member

    oh FFS! – we’ll never get to mars if we have to ‘hold’ whenever:

    a) there’s a bit of wind
    b) a boat floats onto the range – the range covers Xbillion square miles, there will always be a boat ‘down-range’
    c) ooh! a squirrel!
    d) etc.

    twang
    Free Member

    😀
    What feed you watching on ahwiles? NASA tv keeps freezing

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    …and suddenly it’s too windy!

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    twang, I’m watching PBS America – pbs.org

    ahwiles
    Free Member

    i WAS watching on spaceflightnow.com.

    but it’s bit like reading catch22; teasing with promise of a cool story, without ever actually getting to the cool story.

    so now i’m off-aht, to buy a pie for my lunch.

    kimbers
    Full Member
    slowoldman
    Full Member

    Countdown restarted. 3:05 mins to go – hold!

    twang
    Free Member

    Cheers, NASAs seems to have sorted itself out a bit, I’ll stick with it.
    T minus, abort, GAAHHH!

    I’ll never get my painting done

    cheekyboy
    Free Member

    It depends what kind of work is being done on the mission. Robots haven’t managed to replace scientists yet.

    They’ve nailed them on the personality score though 😆

    TheDoctor
    Free Member

    oh FFS! – we’ll never get to mars if we have to ‘hold’ whenever:

    a) there’s a bit of wind
    b) a boat floats onto the range – the range covers Xbillion square miles, there will always be a boat ‘down-range’
    c) ooh! a squirrel!
    d) etc.

    This +1000

    Just shows how rubbish the current technology is ! We should have been on Mars decades ago.

    m0rk
    Free Member

    I’m in Florida at the moment, and was at KSC on Tuesday… It’s an amazing piece of engineering they’re trying to get up there this morning.

    I was going out to Cocoa Beach this morning to watch, but decided at 3am it was probably going to be cancelled with the weather, and went back to bed.

    So I’m hoping I can catch the smoke trail if it does launch in the next hour (or so) from the side of my pool. Live Stream isn’t much better over here, that much closer it would seem

    cheekymonkey888
    Free Member

    just a side note.. didnt the mission to the moon already sorted out the radiation and heat shield problem? You’d think a mission to the moon would be a good test. The we’re not sure how the radiation will effect chips seems a bit strange as i’m sure there has been other satellites and probes sent to mars already that are still functioning.

    All a bit strange.. makes me think they never landed on the moon 🙂

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    Much more exposure to radiation on a Mars mission. More shielding required.

    Meanwhile countdown resumes again.

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    countdown now at 3:30 if you want to watch http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv

    [edit] aborted at 3:09.

    sharkbait
    Free Member

    jeebus….How the hell did they ever get to the moon?

    cheekymonkey888
    Free Member

    dont think they ever did reach the moon.. the first people will be the chinese

    Northwind
    Full Member

    Right, I’m off for lunch so it’s guaranteed to launch in the next 30 mins. It’ll probably explode in a really cool way too.

    slowoldman
    Full Member

    The President said it would happen. So it did.

    kimbers
    Full Member

    engine problems

    I suppose this is what happens when you leave it 40+ years between programmes

    WackoAK
    Free Member

    “A fill and drain valve on the rocket did not function correctly. Standing by as rocket and spacecraft are safed.”

    Cancelled or just resetting something?

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 71 total)

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