First Landing

Late yesterday, I downloaded a copy to my Kindle of First Landing by Robert Zubrin.  By the way, one thing about these Kindles, they are instant gratification for books.  If you feel you've got to have a book right now, by golly, you can have it right now with this gizmo.  I bought this one back in 2008 with the tax rebate as stimulus. Those stimulus checks were supposed to prevent a recession, but they failed, didn't they?  But I digress.
I managed to read about a third of this book and may finish it in the next few days.  Initial impressions are positive.  It is the first of his books that I have read and I like his writing.  It is a work of fiction.  Not everything he does is fiction, I understand.  Those familiar with his work don't need to be told that.  I will not try to belabor the obvious.

It got me to thinking a bit about Mars.  The idea occurred to me that with an atmosphere, you may be able to fly from one play to another like we do on Earth.  It would be a bit different, of course.  Flying craft on Mars will need to carry oxygen, which isn't necessary for flying craft on Earth.  But with all the carbon dioxide, there will be plenty of oxygen that can be separated from the carbon, and that can make both the fuel and the oxidizer.

You could move ice from the polar regions to the equatorial regions with aircraft.  You wouldn't have to consume the water, just the carbon dioxide.  The combustion would return it to the Martian atmosphere.  Net zero carbon footprint on Mars.  How 'bout that?

If people went to Mars, wouldn't it be a good idea to set up an airstrip?  That would depend upon the ability to make the aircraft that could fly on Mars.  Something to think about anyway.

For what it is worth, even though I don't believe in man made global warming, I could see something to agree with those who do.  For example, you could do something in space, such as make solar power and beam it back to Earth.  This shouldn't go into the grid, though.  It should go into making methanol.  I will explain this idea in a future post.

You have to have a way to get to Mars, or for that matter, to space.  But what else have I been writing about?


Update:

Sun. 12/26/10

Just finished the book.  Zubrin has a synopsis of Mars Direct, his vision of a manned exploration of Mars.  Evidently a trip to Mars was not as cheap nor easy as was envisioned.

Someone has to get the blame.  I'm no fan of Obama, but I think the Bush administration blew it.  The new Ares launcher system was encountering cost overruns.  This wasn't necessary.  The mission could have been accomplished with essentially the same hardware as the Shuttle program was using.  That approach, which is the one now being pursued, would have had the best chance of staying within budget.

Now Zubrin proposes in this book that "living off the land" and a big new launcher was needed, like the one in the same class as the Saturn rocket that went to the Moon.  Zubrin had it about half right.  Most likely, the new launchers is where it all went wrong, since the Constellation program required two of these.
   
Time has been lost, and yet more time can be lost if the dissatisfaction that exists with the new DIRECT shuttle derived launch system derails the new approach.  Will this indecision and confusion be resolved and a definite course be decided upon that will survive multiple administrations and budget crunches?  The space program seems to suffer with each new change of political control.  If that's where we are headed again, then more trouble may lie ahead.