(What's more, Grunsfeld's presumed mission would line up with the plans of SpaceX and its founder, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who is hellbent on colonizing Mars — and sooner rather than later.
Musk has said he'll initially land Red Dragon space capsules on the Martian surface. Although those spacecraft are being designed for people, Musk noted there's plenty of room for a rover and other science experiments.
That's probably why Grunsfeld envisions contracting the company to send a small rover and sample-returning rocket. His rover would grab Mars 2020's samples, put them onto a small rocket, launch them up to his satellite's SEP-powered module in Martian orbit, and bring the rocks and dirt home for analysis by 2025.)
Me, My main concern is the slow movement out of humans into space. Either to the Moon, Mars, and other space places. We have all this technology and what do we use it for?
If you consider that a pocket calculator has more processor speed then the U.S. Lunar Module's onboard computer system, you can see my frustration. With all our faster computing power technology we should have had a colonized Moon and Mars by now.
So, this idea, put up by former astronaut John Grunsfeld, of using an unmanned Red Dragon space capsule, which is already being planned by SpaceX to go to Mars, as a contracted mission to recover Mars soil is very important.
It would be a great service for Trump to commit to because, one, the capsule is going their one way or another. So it isn't something that has just been thought up and needs a lot of government money to commence with. (The Rocket launch, and Red Dragon are free bees.) The only thing needed would be a rover that can collect soil samples and a mini-rocket that can blast them back into space for the ride home.) Two, if it succeeds we will finally know exactly what the soil of Mars consists of and can then better plan ways of converting it for future astronaut farm use.
So it benefits Trump with low cost, mostly planned out, and it also benefits Elon Musk because he too needs to know about the soil if he is to get his astronauts to live off the land.
Both parties win with this mission.
No comments:
Post a Comment