Send old Shuttles to Mars, says Scotty ashes prang man A former advertising copywriter and web-biz maven turned inventor and rocket entrepreneur has proposed a novel plan for disposing of NASA's soon-to-be-retired space shuttles. Eric Knight, perhaps most famous for temporarily mislaying the ashes of James "Scotty from Star Trek" Doohan, believes that a pair of shuttles should be …
Exactly what have we got out of space research that has advanced humanity?
Satellite technology was achieved in the 1950s Sputnik days. That's a useful thing but is hardly the result of inter planetary space research per se. It's just lobbing some stuff into orbit.
Sending people to the moon does nothing useful beyond giving the non-Russians one "we did it first" box to tick.
The most useful side effect of the space race was spurring the imagination and aspiration of a generation of kids to hand rocket models from their ceilings, dress up as astronauts for fancy dress parties and go on to become scientists and engineers. But, once done, nothing is achieved by doing it again. The moon was a great symbol: 99% of people (unless completely brain damaged or blind) can see the moon. Only 1% can point out Mars.
Except for a few white coated folks, space travel has zero interest and thus does nothing useful to spur on a generation. Space research too. So what if Mars has water or life? Is that going to change anything for us day to day?
Far more people are interested in "inner space". We know more about the surface of most of the planets than we do about the workings of our own planet. Our own planet, especially the oceans, are far more interesting and also far more important to us.
Retrofit the shuttles into unmanned probes. The cargo bay alone is larger than almost everything launched before. Stripping out the life-support systems, landing gear, and such would give even more space for equipment and fuel. Carrying a large amount of fuel, it could take more direct routes to destinations and also return to Earth orbit, where it could be refueled via cargo truck, possibly serviced and returning samples. Even if it doesn't return, it would collect a tremendous amount of data. Give it a nuclear power supply and a 12-foot antenna, and it will send plenty of information from outside the heliosphere.
You couldn't even make it to the moon like this. The apollo lander and service module were like 50,000kg the shuttle is like 2 million. That would be like strapping 2 old russian submarines together and draging them along with a torpedo....... no wait screw it.. a russian submarine would probably work better than this.
I say we build it, put that guy in it and give him a Darwin award and send him on his way.
Too heavy, leaky, slow to get even 30% there. And for landing it... so far we're a little over 50% on landing stuff on mars period. We can't even get the shuttle to land on or take off of earth all of the time.
Seriously, you would probably want to do it very similar to how we did the moon shot, but with a computer running the command module. (or the whole thing.) We could start by sending one of these and the same gear that would go up with a fleshy.
world.honda.com/ASIMO/
Great idea, but let's lash on a few Concordes to be pimp and that Vulcan so we're tooled up. All volunteers must be able to look good in a cowboy hat and enjoy Aerosmith. I guess Tommy Lee Jones, Clint and Bruce are at the front of the queue, and the Governator might be useful for his local knowledge. Those three-titted Martian ladies ain't gonna find themselves. One thing wrong with the plan is the parachutes. Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon is instrumental.
I have not got enought engerning to know weather the maths is doable but here are my thoughts on the rest
1. you need to have a "plan" for the return or suvivle of the pepol you send it dose not need to be a very good one but you need to have one to give pepol hope
2. yes we defently need ot be less worried about health and safty how meny pepol died on the first trips to the new world? how meny colinies where founded and never hearded for again? more to the point how meny die is stupid acdents atm? and how meny die is wars fought over recorces of the one planet we are stuck on? there needs to be less worrie about safty after all humans are a renewable recorce
Your idea is the best one so far....
As soon as I read that I thought it would be an ideal carrier platform for big optical, IR, UV, radio and X-Ray telescope array. But not in an earth orbit. Strip it like you suggested, give it a nuke power supply, fit it out w. an array of powerful telescopes, a high capacity telemetry link and send it on a useful trajectory through our solar system with a terminal destination somewhere interesting. On the way there we could use the kit to map some our local bodies in more detail - during the fly by's - and similar to what they did with Voyager, take a parting shot of our pale blue dot as it leaves our solar system. While on its way through all that emptiness we could then use it to gather TBs of data from our Universe, perhaps discovering things that the Hubble telescope never dreamed of.
Thinking this even further, consider what this would give us if the two shuttles were used as a pair of telescopes, VLB would be given a new definition, no longer restricted to the diameter of the earths orbit and 1/2 year waiting times to merge images.
Maybe we might even get a bit closer to the edge of the big bang and discover that there is no God, which would be the best thing that could happen to mankind and peace on earth.
I love reading comments from so many people (with one or two exceptions) who are totally unencumbered by any knowledge of the subject whatsoever :-)
There are so many "brilliant" concepts being proposed here I don’t know where to start. But will those advocating "nuclear propulsion" please explain how that will propel anything.
We could round up all the civil servants, hair dressers, politicians, chavs and other useless hamanoids* and load them into the shuttles. Tell them they have been chosen to expand the human race by being the first to colonise Mars. Remind them this is a glorious day in the human race and send them on their merry way.
We then spend the rest of our days here, free from the tards.
*chavs barely pass for human.
Mines the one with the Hitchhikers Guide in the pocket
If anybody wants to get an idea of just how crackpot this is, have a read of this excellent summary of some of the problems of landing on Mars:
http://www.universetoday.com/2007/07/17/the-mars-landing-approach-getting-large-payloads-to-the-surface-of-the-red-planet/
Short version: It's tough enough landing small robots down there, let alone a few dozen tons of spacecraft.
The problem with landing robots is that the software has to handle everything due to the time lag(last I checked, autopilots aren't to good at landing planes on runways). A human could handle the situation better. Equipment that required gentle touchdowns could be floated down with balloons on the top and pillows on the bottom(really thick and comfortable ones), if it comes to that.
I know it's stating the obvious, but at least people are discussing why this can't be done, and what CAN be done instead, the space probe idea was great. (For the HHG readers out there, there isn't enough room on the 2 shuttles for all the useless members of society, we should just ship them to the new artificial island in the mid Atlantic. Yes, I know. Shhhh)
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