NASA Is Launching a Spacecraft That Will Take Humans to Mars

[MrMastodonFarm]

NASA is launching its boldest test flight in decades this week. An unmanned capsule will head off on Thursday to reach a distance of 3,600 miles from Earth—the farthest space mission with a craft designed to accommodate humans since the final Apollo 17 trip to the moon in 1972.

Called Orion, the program will mark a key initial step toward a human mission to Mars. Orion is also designed to excite the public’s imagination for deep-space exploration, much as the Apollo moon missions sparked an interest in space and produced civilian engineering triumphs. With the first test flight on Thursday, NASA wants to make it abundantly clear that much of the hardware that can get humans to Mars already exists and is ready to fly.

“My hope is that when we fly the capsule on Thursday, it will energize the public and energize that middle schooler [who] isn’t quite sure what he wants to do, but he likes math and science,” says Richard Boitnott, an engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles...closer-to-mars

[AC]

Yessssssssss.

[transplant99]

Truly awesome.

[Dion]

Marvelous!

[MrMastodonFarm]

We really need to be explorers again. Putin should ramp up the evil so we can have another space race.

[Cheese]

^^^nah...we need all countries to be nice to each other and pool all of their money together on one unified mission.

"Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

[troutman]

I think a manned Mars mission is generations away.

So many challenges to answer first, like radiation:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scie...n-to-Mars.html

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by troutman

I think a manned Mars mission is generations away.

So many challenges to answer first, like radiation:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scie...n-to-Mars.html

Pffff, a British team?

NASA has solved radiation, it's called Freedom.

USA USA USA

[troutman]

Health risks of Mars mission would exceed NASA limits

http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Hea...imits_999.html

[Nehkara]

She's rarin' to go:

[Nyah]

It's been delayed a few times now due to wind. They only have about another hour & a bit of a window for today. Fingers crossed!

[Nyah]

For anyone who's actually up, you can watch live here: http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv

They're having issues now with the fill & drain valves (?). They're looking into it, and they're waiting to hear whether or not it's working now.

Update: some of them are working, they're just testing the left & center valves. Just under 44 minutes to go in their launch window for the day.

Update: they're still trying to troubleshoot the issue with the valves. ~11 minutes left in the launch window. Not looking good for today.

[Bigtime]

Scrubbed for today, they will try again tomorrow.

[DownInFlames]

I got up at five to watch the launch, and now I gotta do it again tomorrow. It sucks, but I'm not going to miss this.

[CaptainCrunch]

I would hope that the capsule that takes man to mars will be bigger then a phone booth on the inside. I can't think of anything more embarrassing then showing up on mars and having the martians laugh as the humans get out of the capsule like a bunch of clowns out of a clown car, and instead of saying "This is a small step for man and a giant leap for mankind" they say "Arrrgh my bank, my suit smells like farts"

Personally I think that we should take our time going to Mars, take some time and a bit of extra money and show up in something like this, well rested, well fed and lookin forward to conquering mars. Plus think of the tourist industry.

[dissentowner]

The over/under on it exploding during launch or shortly after?

[photon]

It'd be the first Delta IV to do so, only one launch of a Delta IV would be considered a failure when one of the payloads didn't reach orbit and the other went into the wrong orbit. So probably pretty low chance.

[terminator]

Murica'

[jeffman]

But how will it get people back from Mars?

[troutman]

Some Mars Mission plans are one-way trips.