Streaking to Mars by 2020 or 2030 with several human beings aboard from low Earth orbit ang get there and back in a life sustainable period of time is one of the more challenging factors facing engineers and scientists this decade.
In more Earthly-terms, one can easily envision a race between a 3-cylinder subcompact car and a ‘muscle-car’ equipped with a super turbo-charged hemi across the United States. Assuming no operational failures, one might easily guess which vehicle would make the distance most rapidly.
March 29th, 2004
‘Gotta Hemi?’ High Speed Needed for Human Space Travel to Mars My Wise County
June 30th, 2003
Students Learn About Virginia Designed Mars Airplane My Wise County
A small airplane is being designed to fly in the alien atmosphere over the mountainous terrain of Mars in a project known as the Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey (ARES) at the NASA Langley Research Center. The ARES aircraft would be the first plane to fly in the atmosphere of another planet if it is successful in both its August selection by NASA Headquarters and its 2007 launch, 7-month, 250-million mile journey, and 2008 entry into the Martian atmosphere.
May 12th, 2003
Space Exploration Extravaganza Begins in 2003 and 2004 My Wise County
Unmanned space probes are being launched to the moon, a comet, an asteroid, the planets Mars, and Mercury and probes will orbit and land on Saturn — all within the next 18-months as an solar system exploration extravaganza unfolds. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japanese space agency have a fleet of space probes either set to be launched or now in route to explore the frontier of solar system space. The fleet may prove to be the most exciting time in space exploration since the “Grand Tour of the Planets” by the Voyager space probes flew past Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in the late 20th Century.
March 3rd, 2003
U.S. Project Prometheus to Gain Russian Nuclear Rocket Fuels My Wise County
The United States and Russian space flight nuclear engineers will witness greater cooperation throughout the balance of the decade to ensure the plutonium-238 for five years as the necessary fuel for the nuclear rocket program named “Project Prometheus. The Russian Atomic Energy Ministry has announced a $32-million dollar deal with the U.S. Department of Energy that sends nuclear fuel to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through 2009, according to Russian scientist Nikolai Ponomaryov-Stepnoi. Nuclear plutonium-238 is needed by NASA after President George W. Bush announced a radically new program to push faster and further unmanned probes into the solar system and setting-up the initial needed technologies to put humans on Mars in the next decade or so.
January 28th, 2003
Will Bush Deliver Atomic Rocket for a Mars Program Tuesday Night? My Wise County
While most Americans will be listening to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address to a joint session of the United States Congress Tuesday at 9 PM for hints of war or peace with the likes of Iraq and North Korea, others will be listening for a major new space policy initiative that may set the course for a human on Mars within the decade.
January 20th, 2003
Bush to Put NASA into Warp-Drive With Project Prometheus My Wise County
Moving from chemical impulse powered rockets of the last half-century of space flight to new nuclear reactor powered space vehicles may be the new daring mission for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in this decade. A new multi-billion dollar program known as Project Prometheus is in the policy works within NASA and the White House. It is designed to kick the space program in to a proverbial “warp-drive” and put humans on the face of Mars by 2011