There are people out there that are against NASA
blowing money on space exploration and yet they are the ones who really want to
know if there is something really out there or not. I am for NASA launching a
deep space program because we, as an entire race, need to know what is out
there and if there are any more planets out there that we can live on after
Earth. The firs problem we encounter when it comes to having a mission of that
scale would be outstanding. We can do it not only as a nation but as an entire
world; we can help each other fund this mission. Just like Germany contributed
3.1 million dollars to get the rover Curiosity to Mars. The next thing we have
to do is total all of the costs of everything. The costs to send a team of 7
astronauts into deep space would be mind blowing, but before we get to the
prices, let me tell you about the prices send a machine like a rover to a place
as close as Mars. Recently, we launched a "mega" rover of sorts to
Mars. The entire MSL project cost 2.5 billion dollars. That includes the
building of the rover, the labor hours, and the construction and launch of the
vessel that carried the rover to Mars. Now that I covered the costs of sending
a machine into space to Mars, I can now discuss the potential costs of sending
Humans out into deep space.
Now these are just rounded numbers I have calculated
to myself; the space shuttle itself and the rocket fuel can cost up to $12.5
Billion. I couldn't find prices on the rocket fuel I am sorry about that. It
also takes around $20,000/pound to send cargo into outer space. In a perfect
world where everyone is 150 pounds, a team of 7 astronauts weighing 150 pounds
each would cost up to $21,000,000 dollars to send them off. I expect them to be
gone a very long time so it's basically impossible to figure in the amount of
cargo they would need in order to survive in outer space for years. But we can
just measure how much they would need to travel to Mars, which is where we want
to be anyway. A regular mission to Earth’s orbit or to the International Space
Station, ISS for short, can take up to
seven to eight days and sometimes even 14 days depending on the
objectives of the mission. With that information, for as long as 7 - 14 days
they would need about, according to NASA on their website, 882 pounds of food
and supplies to aid them in a mission. So for a mission to Mars which takes 7
months - 2 years or roughly 210 - 730 days, depending on when you launch, would
be roughly 45,864 pounds of food and supplies just to make it to Mars during
the longest period of time which is 2 years. If you figure having 882 pounds of
cargo is about the max the space shuttle can hold for that short of a mission,
in order to fit all the food, water, instruments, and other things needed for a
mission into a shuttle. You would need a space shuttle 52 times larger than a
regular shuttle. Or we develop a way to get where we want to go in a very fast
manor. Launching a space shuttle 52 times bigger than the smaller $12.5 billion
space shuttle, would be like multiplying $12.5 billion by 52. The money is just
the first problem of man when it comes to traveling to Mars and beyond. The
total costs for the mission that includes astronauts, cargo, a space shuttle,
and rocket fuel would be horrendously tremendous. But in order to figure out
what is out there we have to sacrifice something and the first sacrifice is
indeed money.
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Bibliography
Kauderer, Amiko. Science experiments and. 15th
October 2012. Article. 15th October 2012.
This source is about the cargo that goes onto the
space shuttle. The numbers that are in this article are about a standard
mission of about 14 days which helped me come up with the numbers and expenses
of a trip of a larger scale.
This source is Very credible because it comes from
the NASA organization itself. There are thousands of scientists working on
proving and providing the correct information for us to know what is going on
with outer space and how we will get here. NASA is our national space program,
I would use this in a paper because it is very credible and also has a lot of
information about space. Just about any question I would have on a paper about
space is indeed on this site.
Unknown. Mars Science Laboratory. 26th November
2011. Blog. 15th October 2012.
This source is about the rovers, the distance to
Mars, the distances from Earth to Mars, and much more. Check out this link if
you want to learn more about it.
This source is credible and at the same time, not so
credible only because it is Wikipedia. People can get on Wikipedia and add what
they want and it could very well be false or not credited to the right person.
When I see the references section I see 130 references and most of them are
from NASA. That is why I think it is credible to some extent. I would not use
this source in a paper because I can't rely on this source 100% for a structured
paper.
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