An Irish Mars Mission?

GuanYin

Not really!

I got this today and although probably best suited for humour, I thought its food for thought on exactly what the cost of a space mission is.

Anyone know if the numbers are accurate?

Earth to Mars
Distance: Approx. 77 Million kms
NASA Spirit Cost: Approx. 321 Million
Launched: 10-06-2003
Landed: Jan 2004
Status: Working

Luas:
Length of first two lines: Approx. 25kms
Luas cost so far: Approx. 675 million
Construction of Line A, commenced in September 1999.
Status: Not working

Just to give some idea of scale, if there were to be an Irish mission
launched in the morning, at this rate it would take 13 million years to
get to Mars, without actually working, in spite of costing EUR208 trillion.

Sparks

And here was me thinking this would be about the guy running Mars Express (who was born in Belfast), or the Maynooth space research crowd (who've contributed to, amongst other things, the SOHO solar observatory probe)....

mike65

Shall I move this, shall I not....hmmmmm.

Mike.

Sparks

I'd say leave it. The question of what contributions could come from Ireland towards this proposed NASA/ESA return to the moon is an interesting one, even if it's not quite what the initial post was saying

albertw

Well the government has yet to put up the money to join the ESO, so further contributions to the ESA are unlikley. But if they have a change of heart on all this they can invest in the now shelved radiotelescope also.

Cheers,
~Al

Agent Smith

the chance's of an irish astronaught could have been a reality if they allowed that launch base to be built on the blasket island's 30 year's ago (goverment 30 year rule on documents)




could have been a nice little earner for us.....











bloody fools

Sparks

Originally posted by agent smith
the chance's of an irish astronaught could have been a reality if they allowed that launch base to be built on the blasket island's 30 year's ago (goverment 30 year rule on documents)

*falls off seat laughing*
Yes, that one was a corker allright
The only thing missing from the proposal was the idea of launching during a full moon to increase the chances of hitting the target

GuanYin

Originally posted by mike65
Shall I move this, shall I not....hmmmmm.

Mike.

Excuse me?

The question I ask is quite valid. (I asked if the figures were accurate)

I'm interested in the quoted Spirit figures.
If it really is at a cost affordable by the Irish Govenrment for something that hasn't worked and we didn't particularly need in the first place, it casts some poor light on the ESA and raises some questions about EU funding allocations for the ESA.

Should the EU be spending money on the sciences and be helping such agencies as ESA compete with NASA.

There may be a time in the near future where space exploration is quite important from an industry and economics point of view.

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by syke
If it really is at a cost affordable by the Irish Govenrment for something that hasn't worked and we didn't particularly need in the first place, it casts some poor light on the ESA and raises some questions about EU funding allocations for the ESA.

Not sure what you mean - all hope has not been given up on Beagle yet (not a full EU project?)- they are ignoring it and hope it will stop sulking - and the orbiter is orbiting (unlike the japanese one) - we had some involvement in an expirement on of the russian probes that didn't make it to phobos (sled-og) IIRC

Also the success rate of all missions to mars is still only about 50%

==================

Different debate on timing

:The reason so many probes are arriving at mars now is because in fuel and cost terms its the cheapest (closest approach for 60,000 years and all that.)

The time to build roads and infracture is during an economic downturn - the construction firms and the labourers need the money and will have to do a good job or they'll go under. The time not to spend on infrastutucure is during a housing boom where builders don't need the work and are used to getting away with half arsed jobs. (of course since they tried to save money when it was scarce they now have to pay many multiples of it to get the same work now it's plentiful. - and CPO's and bold planning moves are easier to get done when people need money - cf. the port tunnel was to have a lot more cut n' cover, during a recession you could have easily bought the objectors out.)

mike65

..I'd like to appologise to Skye for suggesting this was a thread that should be moved. I had a hard day and was tired....:ninja:

Mike.

mike65

Check this out - someone at Astronomy Ireland sent Mariane Finucanes prog the story above. (maybe you Skye?)

The link is below. Its the first thing on the show. Unfortunatly some rte muppet managed to miss
Mariane reading out the source-

http://www.rte.ie/rams/radio/latest/Thu/rte-marianfinucane.smil

Mike.

Civilian_Target

Don't more this trip to humour. It was posted there about a week ago.

GuanYin

Nah, I'm not a member of Astronomy Ireland (shock)!

Was posted here a week ago too!

eco

Ireland launching a mission to mars would be something that i'd love but I don't think its going to happen in the near future. We haven't got the infrastructure to endeavour on such a precarious mission. Fair point about laus. Everything always ends up being expensive in this country and that to, would go against us planning an assault on the space-race.