Krom, I hate to say it but (actually, I love saying it!) you don't have a single clue what you are talking about. The only correct thing you say is that it is freaking hard to land on Mars.
The Beagle2 is a
British effort. Nothing to do with NASA. The ENTIRE budget for designing, building, testing, launch and all mission costs is less than 35 Million Pounds Sterling. Around USD 65 Million. (This excludes the co-extant Mars orbiter)
That's less than the Price of a new F-14 Tomcat. For this amount of money you expect successful (soft!) landings on Mars. WTF?
NASA's budget is currently set at around 16 Billion US dollars annually. That's $16,000,000,000.00.
The budget for each NASA (Spirit and Opportunity) rover mission is around USD 600,000,000. That's six - hundred - million - dollars. For this kind of money you *DO* expect to make successful landings on Mars - especially when your last Martian Lander (The MPL) shuit down its engine when still a bit short of the actual ground.
Is it worth mentioning that typically, Martian probes will be
9 light minutes of lag away from Earth when they attempt a landing? I guess you already figured that if 300ms lag is tough, then a ping time of 540,000ms is the kiss of death for a remote controlled landing.
This means landings must be made by autonomous mechanisms, without help from human minds. Not just the landing, but the entry and deceleration phase also.
In 50 years time, we'll (Humans) be sending manned mission to the Icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn without difficulty. As to NASA doing it - well, that is up for debate.
As to sending men to Mars (The women will have to wait until we go to Venus
) inside 50 years? Dear God, if it takes that long it won't EVER happen, because we'll all be riding bicycles everywhere and burning cow dung on our fires to keep warm in the winter time.
A manned Mars mission is actually a piece of cake as far as landing is concerned. Sheeit, we got airless luna landings down pat in the 1960s - and that was using a computer with 8KB of memory running at 1MHz.
With a pilot on hand, landing on Mars is simple. It's getting OFF Mars which is the big issue for manned missions. The big issues I list below (in no order) and please note, landing is NOT one of them:
1) Exposure to radiation both in transit and while on the surface
2) Feeding the crew for 2 years
3) Maintaining the atmosphere
4) Dealing with waste
5) In-Situ Resource Utilisation - making enough fuel to get off Mars using the atmosphere as a resource
6) Providing enough drinking water for the crew. Can we use Martian water? Is it really there?
7) How to prevent humans from "contaminating" Mars.
How to prevent Mars contaminating the humans (??????)
9) Maintaining equipment, particularly space suits, and vehicles during the 9 month long stay on the surface.
10) Emergency evacuation of the surface - can it be done?
So, those are the tough nuts to crack. And let's make NO MISTAKE, they are dire problems indeed. But the solutions are "more of the same" rather than new problems. Existing engineering can handle it - the only question is cost.
What cost is the planet prepared to pay to put men on Mars? Current estimates range from 100 Billion for a "flags and footprints" type mission, all the way up to 200 Billion for a prolonged and continuous occupation of Mars - using Buzz Aldrin's "Castle" idea which provides non-stop service to Mars every 18 months - forever.
Personally, I feel that NASA *IS* incapable of sending men to Mars within 15 years, and I hope a mission is mounted by 2020. Why? Because there is not enough off-the-shelf technology to permit a manned Mars mission yet.
NASA needs to develop an extremely robust set of technologies and vehicles/expertise in order to qualify as an institution which should be allowed to make an attempt as a Mars mission.
The way for them to do this is to get back to the Moon and stay there. What is needed is:
1) Heavy Lift Launch technology - providing at least 50 metric tons of payload to Low Earth Orbit. It needs to be largely re-usable, or cheap enough to throw away each time.
2) Safe transfer craft: A permanently orbiting set of craft which cycle between the Moon and Earth on a permanent basis, perfecting the long-service mission which Mars requires.
3) A robust atmospheric re-entry and landing craft. This craft must land vertically, and will be derived from a similar vehicle designed to travel only from the lunar surface to Luna orbit and back again - repeatedly, with low maintenance, which can be serviced by people on the Luna surface.
4) Nuclear Prpulsion - to get our astronauts to and from Mars more quickly, reducing the payload of fuel and food.
5) Reliable methods of recycling waste completely, and growing a percentage of food in zero and low gravity environments.
6) Develop a system which is guaranteed to protect Mars from earth bacteria, and vice versa. This may in actual fact, be by far the hardest thing to achieve, and may prove impossible.
(My personal feeling is that we *will* discover life on Mars, but when we find it, it will be disappointingly similar to Earth-based life. I also think if earth bacteria *CAN* survive on Mars, then this is a GOOD thing, and will allow us to eventually terra-form the planet. Eventually means 1000+ years)
So Krom, stop being such a downer dude - we'll get there. And sooner than you think.
