One Way Manned Mission to Mars?

Tim Sayell & Dan sent in an articles from Yahoo News & the BDN in which scientists have suggested that to save money and to spur exploration of the red planet, that a one way manned mission to Mars be mounted.

With a one way trip, a much smaller ship is needed as well as less fuel and supplies if the explorer was not expecting to return. More of a colonist than anything. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a Washington State University professor and co-author of the paper said that older people are a possibility as explorers. Schulze-Makuch said, "That's because the mission would undoubtedly reduce a person's lifespan, from a lack of medical care and exposure to radiation....."

Ed Mitchell of Apollo 14, president Obama and NASA spokesman Michael Braukus have all responded coolly to the idea however. Braukus was quoted saying "We want our people back"

Read the rest of this rather bizzare proposal here

NASA might explore Mars with robotic plane

The mainstay of Mars exploration, up to this point, has been rovers and satellites. NASA wants to change that paradigm with the addition of ultra hight speed robotic rocket planes. Where the rovers only explore a few miles the plane will cover 1,000 miles, in two hours of flight time. That's right, where the latest rover to Mars lasted years longer than anticipated, the rocket plane dubbed ARES (or the Aerial Regional-Scale Environmental Surveyor), total mission time will be 2 hours, at which time the fuel for the engine will run out. Stranger still is the fact that ARES will never "land" on Mars at all, during the mission. Dvice blog quotes the Popular Science article on the purposed mission:

Popular Science:

Enveloped in an aeroshell similar to the ones that deployed the rovers, ARES would detach from a carrier craft about 12 hours from the Martian surface. At about 20 miles up, the aeroshell would open, ARES would extend its folded wings and tail, and the rockets would fire.....

This maneuver simplifies launching the plane. Instead of landing on the surface and taking off again the plane will simply be deployed high in the Mars atmosphere.

But ARES?! why is NASA so stuck on this label?!

Wikipedia article

Life Elsewhere In Solar System Could Be Different From Life As We Know It

from the online science magazine ScienceDaily we have an article that at first glance we (and I mean the hard science fiction geeks amonst us) would say uhhhhDUH! but its clear that alternative chemistry lifeforms have got to be addressed....and so:

The search for life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond should include efforts to detect what scientists sometimes refer to as "weird" life -- that is, life with an alternative biochemistry to that of life on Earth -- says a new report from the National Research Council. The committee that wrote the report found that the fundamental requirements for life as we generally know it -- a liquid water biosolvent, carbon-based metabolism, molecular system capable of evolution, and the ability to exchange energy with the environment are not the only ways to support phenomena recognized as life. Presently there is the assumption that alien life would utilize the same biochemical architecture as life on Earth. This means that scientists have artificially limited the scope of their thinking as to where extraterrestrial life might be found.

US return to the Moon & Mars becoming highly unlikely

According to msnbc:

NASA's road back to the moon and onward to Mars, could fall short due to lack of needed funding. NASA's vision of extending the human touch beyond low Earth orbit is being subjected to lack of both White House and Congressional budget support. "The budgets are not there. We're seeing a business as usual approach that is not going to deliver the robust and broad-based exploration program laid out in the vision for space exploration," said Congressman Nick Lampson of Texas' 22^nd Congressional District that represents NASA's Johhnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Former shuttle astronaut, Michael Coats, now the 10^th director of the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas has said - "The President's fiscal year 2008 budget request is absolutely vital to NASA after the cut we took with the continuing resolution this year".