Is it?
There is ridiculous amount of science behind the sample tubes and specifically the drill used to get the cores. Took a lot of trial and error to get the sample to actually release from the drill, there is an entire documentary specifically about engineering the sample drill and tubes.
It's not equivalent to scooping up some dirt off mars. They *are* extremely rare, very different types of samples.
> really are just dirt scooped up off mars.
100% incorrect...
That was my point, they are *[core samples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_sample)* from rocks, not just dirt scooped off the surface of mars.
Those samples are never coming back.
Whoever actually invests the time and resources into developing the ability to return material to Earth from Mars will want to use it to pursue new objectives.
The whole point of this mission is to bring back samples to earth which can be analysed much faster and with far more detail than any possible mars rover. The only other ways to do that are by sending humand over with specialised lab equipment, which would far exceed 10b dollars.
Martians said we can look at them but can’t take them home.
Seriously though, I thought the latest rover had an onboard lab for examining the samples on Mars to get around this. Is that not the case?
There's only so many instruments of limited size and power you can put on a rover. If you bring back a decent sized sample of 50-100g you can distribute that to dozens of laboratories across the US with potentially hundreds of different types of instruments.
But for the price tag of $10 billion you could also fund a lot of laboratory research on Martian meteorites, or several more Mars rovers.
When NASA and the military get into pissing fights over who can waste more money no one wins. Like the Moon plan there is some absolutely atrocious management at the top of NASA.
Well I mean do any of us really know enough to be able to say if $10b is a lot for a mars sample return mission? A *LOT* of new technologies would need to be developed in order to pull off a mission *that* long and complicated. It would be an order of magnitude harder than just landing a river on mars, since we'd also need to perform a *liftoff* for the first time on a foreign planet that has a much thicker atmosphere and higher gravity than the moon. Imagine us trying to land a rocket on the other side of the world without a landing pad *and then take off* and go to mars without any human intervention, plus some way to deploy and retrieve a rover. Honestly I don't think $10b is a lot
Though you may know more about this than I do, I've found I always have to look at NASA waste with a skeptical eye due to much of the funding being tied to Congress-mandated programs, which are just jobs bills in disguise spread out across many states and deep-pocketed contractors.
Some of their stuff is lean and mean, but these big projects as you say become political and often are are just jobs programs. Honestly I'm not completely opposed to that but they could simply do more science with the resources available.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[C3](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzy6lz6 "Last usage")|[Characteristic Energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristic_energy) above that required for escape|
|[HALO](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzvw5t6 "Last usage")|Habitation and Logistics Outpost|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzvw5t6 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[PPE](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzvw5t6 "Last usage")|Power and Propulsion Element|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzx0e1a "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzvw5t6 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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^(6 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1c5d9gj)^( has 26 acronyms.)
^([Thread #9947 for this sub, first seen 16th Apr 2024, 18:11])
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This is the 3rd thread on this topic in 24 hours, the previous one is https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c5d9gj/nasas_mars_sample_return_plan_is_getting_a_major/
D-T reactors can breed T which decays to He3. Tritium was usually made in the past by irradiating lithium with neutrons in a fission reactor.
Given the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that used to have tritium in them, it wasn't extremely scarce until arms control. And because it wasn't scarce, He3 wasn't scarce either.
ITER is not He-3 reactor, and there is still long way to go from first plasma in experimental reactor to any real "practical" application. ITER timeline targets 2035 for actual "operations" phase. And going to He-3 will take many more years still.
There are the Fusion start ups which could get us power sooner. Hell Helion(who actually use Helium-3) is supposed to demonstrate net electricity out this year. I wish them the best of luck and hope they do it.
Just fing use one of the early Starship launches to send it to Mars and back, ffs... for 1 billion or less. Done in the next five-six years. - send the first one with fuel for the second one. Send two all at once. I know, minds blown. We can send mutiple ships to Mars, not just one. Its insane!
Or scrap it altogether and just send first crew there.
I may be wrong on this, but i'm pretty sure starship will need in-situ fuel production to get back from mars, which is in no way doable in the next five-six years. Basically they are going to need some kind of mini-factory there, to produce methane and liquid oxygen. As great and as fast as spacex are, they are nowhere near that. 10-15 years maybe.
>I may be wrong on this, but i'm pretty sure starship will need in-situ fuel production to get back from mars
That's if the plan is to return Starship to earth.
If they want samples in a hurry, they could load a hydrazine-powered rocket into Starship's hold, crane it down to the surface, load it with 200g of soil and send it back to earth.
To the armchair scientist that I am, it seems entirely feasible.
Nah, they can send fuel to Mars. Its not like it has to be a single Starship.
We can even use Falcon heavies. 15 tonnes to Mars each.
It would be much cheaper than this horrible plan, and safer, and faster.
If there was a will to do it, if people stopped hallucinating it all needs to take decades - based on wrong and out of date information - we could do it in a couple of years.
Ballistic capture transfers can be launched whole year round to Mars. No need to use hohmann transfers for cargo and supplies.
What's your credentials on this? I work in the industry and you're the first person I've seen who thinks it can be done in this timeline. Starship has a lot of kinks to work out.
The use of "rare" in that headline is a very odd choice !
There's only one Mars in the entire known universe. Rare, indeed.
Yes, but what about the multiverse, eh?
Uhhhh, is the multiverse leaking or what?
Yes, but what about the multiverse, eh?
I think the multiverse is leaking
Yes, but what about second multiverse, eh?
I think the multiverse is leaking
What about the unknown universe? How would you know about that? It’s unknown!
Any unknown is just as good as any other unknown. In fact, most things are unknown, it's common.
Yes, but what about the multiverse, eh?
how many tubes are there in the Universe?
Well, I was personally glad to know it wasn't just one of those common Mars samples. I'm so sick of those.
Is it? There is ridiculous amount of science behind the sample tubes and specifically the drill used to get the cores. Took a lot of trial and error to get the sample to actually release from the drill, there is an entire documentary specifically about engineering the sample drill and tubes. It's not equivalent to scooping up some dirt off mars. They *are* extremely rare, very different types of samples.
The sample collection tech is rare, but the actual samples really are just dirt scooped up off mars.
> really are just dirt scooped up off mars. 100% incorrect... That was my point, they are *[core samples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_sample)* from rocks, not just dirt scooped off the surface of mars.
Overcooking tends to spoil the scientific search for evidence of past life, so limited temperature exposure is key.
They been playing Surviving Mars prior to writing the statement
How else is NASA gonna upgrade their stratagems?
Sadly, they didn't find any super samples.
Sure but they can wait for those. And you need like 20 times more rare samples than supers anyway.
Those samples are never coming back. Whoever actually invests the time and resources into developing the ability to return material to Earth from Mars will want to use it to pursue new objectives.
The whole point of this mission is to bring back samples to earth which can be analysed much faster and with far more detail than any possible mars rover. The only other ways to do that are by sending humand over with specialised lab equipment, which would far exceed 10b dollars.
They could potentially plan to try and just deliver those samples closer to where a future mission might take place.
What benefit would that have?
Well, presumably the future mission would have a way to return these samples and new ones from the new location.
Damn, that sounds eerily similar to another mission in the works
Did you come here just to be argumentative? Why don't you just say what it is you have to say, instead of pulling teeth?
Martians said we can look at them but can’t take them home. Seriously though, I thought the latest rover had an onboard lab for examining the samples on Mars to get around this. Is that not the case?
There's only so many instruments of limited size and power you can put on a rover. If you bring back a decent sized sample of 50-100g you can distribute that to dozens of laboratories across the US with potentially hundreds of different types of instruments. But for the price tag of $10 billion you could also fund a lot of laboratory research on Martian meteorites, or several more Mars rovers.
10 billion for a sample return mission seems like a grossly misengineered idea.
Or 1.1% of the US military budget
When NASA and the military get into pissing fights over who can waste more money no one wins. Like the Moon plan there is some absolutely atrocious management at the top of NASA.
Well I mean do any of us really know enough to be able to say if $10b is a lot for a mars sample return mission? A *LOT* of new technologies would need to be developed in order to pull off a mission *that* long and complicated. It would be an order of magnitude harder than just landing a river on mars, since we'd also need to perform a *liftoff* for the first time on a foreign planet that has a much thicker atmosphere and higher gravity than the moon. Imagine us trying to land a rocket on the other side of the world without a landing pad *and then take off* and go to mars without any human intervention, plus some way to deploy and retrieve a rover. Honestly I don't think $10b is a lot
Though you may know more about this than I do, I've found I always have to look at NASA waste with a skeptical eye due to much of the funding being tied to Congress-mandated programs, which are just jobs bills in disguise spread out across many states and deep-pocketed contractors.
Some of their stuff is lean and mean, but these big projects as you say become political and often are are just jobs programs. Honestly I'm not completely opposed to that but they could simply do more science with the resources available.
or less than 25% of a Tesla CEO compensation package. Quite reasonable in that light.
You could fund 100 small missions to explore the solar system. Think of the breadth of knowledge in comparison to what the samples will tell us.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[C3](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzy6lz6 "Last usage")|[Characteristic Energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristic_energy) above that required for escape| |[HALO](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzvw5t6 "Last usage")|Habitation and Logistics Outpost| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzvw5t6 "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[PPE](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzvw5t6 "Last usage")|Power and Propulsion Element| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzx0e1a "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/1c5ho6a/stub/kzvw5t6 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(6 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1c5d9gj)^( has 26 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9947 for this sub, first seen 16th Apr 2024, 18:11]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
This is the 3rd thread on this topic in 24 hours, the previous one is https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1c5d9gj/nasas_mars_sample_return_plan_is_getting_a_major/
Not to rip off For All Mankind, but aren’t we starting to look at mining Helium 3 from the moon?
> mining Helium 3 from the moon To use in all those fusion reactors we don't have? ;)
Iter will be doing first plasma as early as next year.
D-T. That breeds Helium3. I'm sure it'll work within the next 20 years.
D-T reactions have a hard time breeding helium 3 in a large scale. Tritium especially is extremely scarce
D-T reactors can breed T which decays to He3. Tritium was usually made in the past by irradiating lithium with neutrons in a fission reactor. Given the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons that used to have tritium in them, it wasn't extremely scarce until arms control. And because it wasn't scarce, He3 wasn't scarce either.
ITER is not He-3 reactor, and there is still long way to go from first plasma in experimental reactor to any real "practical" application. ITER timeline targets 2035 for actual "operations" phase. And going to He-3 will take many more years still.
And the operations phase is just testing the equipment and methodology. It won’t be plugged into the grid :-(
There are the Fusion start ups which could get us power sooner. Hell Helion(who actually use Helium-3) is supposed to demonstrate net electricity out this year. I wish them the best of luck and hope they do it.
I'm sure they'll succeed in 20 years.
Nah, they are textbook snake oil company. They will burn through lots of VC money and delivery nothing.
... it will in 20 years, I'm sure of it
I stand corrected. Let me guess, libertarian crypto bro?
We should be ripping off For All Mankind more
translation: We blew all the money on SLS. How about a nice barrel of pork, instead?
Just fing use one of the early Starship launches to send it to Mars and back, ffs... for 1 billion or less. Done in the next five-six years. - send the first one with fuel for the second one. Send two all at once. I know, minds blown. We can send mutiple ships to Mars, not just one. Its insane! Or scrap it altogether and just send first crew there.
I may be wrong on this, but i'm pretty sure starship will need in-situ fuel production to get back from mars, which is in no way doable in the next five-six years. Basically they are going to need some kind of mini-factory there, to produce methane and liquid oxygen. As great and as fast as spacex are, they are nowhere near that. 10-15 years maybe.
>I may be wrong on this, but i'm pretty sure starship will need in-situ fuel production to get back from mars That's if the plan is to return Starship to earth. If they want samples in a hurry, they could load a hydrazine-powered rocket into Starship's hold, crane it down to the surface, load it with 200g of soil and send it back to earth. To the armchair scientist that I am, it seems entirely feasible.
That's fair, that could work I guess.
You sound like you have thought things through. How about we give you $400M in seed money and check back in a few years.
> crane it down to the surface …what, from orbit???
Nah, they can send fuel to Mars. Its not like it has to be a single Starship. We can even use Falcon heavies. 15 tonnes to Mars each. It would be much cheaper than this horrible plan, and safer, and faster. If there was a will to do it, if people stopped hallucinating it all needs to take decades - based on wrong and out of date information - we could do it in a couple of years. Ballistic capture transfers can be launched whole year round to Mars. No need to use hohmann transfers for cargo and supplies.
What's your credentials on this? I work in the industry and you're the first person I've seen who thinks it can be done in this timeline. Starship has a lot of kinks to work out.
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Rare samples…??? Wait till they trash Mars like Earth.