I haven’t felt much like writing, so some catching-up to do.
“Sexual Discrimination in Space”, Roskosmos/Russia Today, 25/7. An interview with Svetlana Savitskaya, the second Russian woman in space and the first to do an EVA. Unfortunately there have been only 3 Russian women to fly in space to date (none currently in orbit), and there is still discrimination.
“Russia Reveals Vision for Manned Spaceflight”, IEEE Spectrum, August 2009. Russia revealed yet another future vision at this year’s MAKS Airshow. The ultimate goal is to get to Mars first (hooray!). Of course they don’t have the budget, so they aim for international co-operation to share the load.
“I believe that we should move [straight] to Mars…as the moon cannot be a goal by itself,” says Vitaly Lopota, the head of RKK Energia. “Nevertheless, all the infrastructure that we are proposing for the Interplanetary Expeditionary Complex could be used for operations in Earth orbit, but also for the lunar exploration, if such goals emerge,” Lopota told IEEE Spectrum.
Anatoly Zak, the article’s author, will be following developments on his website.
“NASA suggests teaming up with Russia for Mars flight”, RIAN, 25/8. Don’t know how serious this is! It generated the usual cynicism and paranoid patriotism on this thread at NASASpaceflight.com forum.
Some differing opinions via NK №803 on how far in the future a Mars mission might be – hopefully sooner than later! Nice to see that some in the industry want to go to Mars first. (NSF.com thread)
25/08/2009 / 20:07 – Manned expedition to Mars will not take place in less than a hundred years
In today’s economic and scientific situation, the prospect of sending a manned expedition to Mars is unprofitable, Boris Chertok – Chief Scientific Adviser, Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences – said today at the Sixth International Aerospace Congress.
“Until now, a manned mission not made the fundamental discoveries of such a level as unmanned,” he said. “It is therefore wiser to spend money on exploration of Mars machine than an expensive place to send an expedition, which will bring no more, and perhaps even less information.”
According to the academician, “the time for human flight to the Red Planet will come in a hundred years, at least fifty, while the same slogan of modern space must be “Forward to Mars!” And “Onward to the moon!” NASA is planning an expedition to Mars after 2020.
According to the scientist, “people must return to the moon not to promote the national image, but as a researcher, and must return there for a long time.” And Chertok sees a man not so much space explorers as “assembler, builder, and in the future – space tourist.”
28/08/2009 / 00:05 – A full-scale manned expedition to Mars could be realized in the years 2029-2031 – Academician at the RAS
A full-scale manned expedition to Mars could be realized in 2029-2031, respectively. This opinion was expressed in Moscow, at the Sixth International Aerospace Congress by Lev Zelenyi, Academician at the Russia Academy of Sciences, director of the RAS Space Research Institute.
He said the manned mission will be preceded by several preparatory steps. In the first stage, in the period from 2012 to 2020 an engineering model of the physical conditions in the flight path, around and on the surface of Mars will be created through a special program of automated scientific satellites, including meteorological conditions in the atmosphere. The rationale for the choice of a landing site will be made as well.
In the second stage, from 2018 to 2025, it is expected to work out the infrastructure elements of the Martian expedition.
For the third – from 2025 to 2028 – there will be implemented a piloted flight expedition to the placing of an inhabited spacecraft into orbit around Mars, with the possibility of controlling automatic moving vehicles on the Martian surface from orbit.
“A full-scale manned expedition to landing on the Martian surface can be realized in 2029-2031 years,” says Zelenyi. The Academician himself has no doubt that if you choose between a flight to the Moon and Mars, it is better to make a choice in favor of the red planet. “I belong to the ‘left’ faction, which believes that the study of Mars is more interesting than the Moon” – an insider joke, he said. “At Mars, we can expect great discoveries,” he suggests.
