RE: Mars up close!
Yes, let's, Leo!
RE: Mars up close!
"America's been good to us all in Great Britain, Nic. Not only do we have a shared ancestry, we also have a shared culture. All Saxon cultures follow the same patterns." - Songstress
Indeed it has. I don't know whether you know it or not, but I am actually an American myself. I live in Missouri.
"Thanks for that info... as it's slightly off topic (I see you've read the Rules, a rare breed indeed ), I'll reply to you re. your web sites etc by PM. " - Leo
Yes, I know how frustrating it is when people dont read rules and I have to punish them for breaking something they didn't even know..
I found a few things I am sure all of you will find interesting...
http://www.russianspaceweb.com/chronology_XXI.html
This is a chronology of what has happened in NASA since 2001, and what is planned clear up until 2029.
"With the announced, hopefully temporary, shut down of the Shuttle program, to have another go at solving the thermal tile problem, it does highlight the huge difference at the needed approach to sending people into space from sending just hardware. It does make sense that, however much it dismays Joe-Public, saturated with images of Star Ship Captains wizzing about the Universe, space exploration, for the forseable future must be with robots." - Leo
I believe NASA is also developing a new space capsule. The past few years has been exciting and they've shown lots of test models, including one I really liked, The Orbital Space Plane. I'm sure you've heard of it, since it's an idea you could already consider 'old' (been around since 2k3) but for those of you who dont want to be left out of our conversation, here are some links to information about it...
-Bush's plan to send Humans back to Moon and to Mars (Includes OSP [Orbital Space Plane])-
[DLMURL] http://www.space.com/news/bush_update_040109.html [/DLMURL]
-Details-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Space_Plane
Any comments or other is appreciated!
-Nic
RE: Mars up close!
Hi Nic,
very very interesting stuff, and appart from the sad personal fact that I'll probably be dead and dust before anything interesting happens, the main trend I see in US proposals is for a return to tried and tested methods of manned propulsion/transport, ie updated Apollo's together with a lot of Nationalistic prestige stuff from China, Japan, Brazil etc. In the middle is ESA and Russia, plugging along, doing usefull if not headline gathering stuff.
The one venture I am hoping to see is:
2008
May 18: NASA's Phoenix probe to land in polar regions of Mars.
That should produce some almost definitive answers to the life/water question on Mars..
How sad that all the SciFi films all showed mankind as making much more advanced strides. They did not take account of national budgets or human accidents.
Leo