http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/special/02/wsc/1616029
A far-reaching space exploration initiative, previewed on Sunday by an international aerospace organization, would launch humans to Mars by 2050. Still in development, the proposal from the Paris-based International Academy of Astronautics seeks to rekindle the legacy of NASA's Apollo lunar missions by initiating the migration of human explorers throughout the solar system. "We lost it after we went to the moon; we didn't go to Mars. We recalled the fleet and huddled close to the Earth," said Wesley Huntress, a planetary geologist from the Carnegie Institution of Washington who outlined the strategy to the World Space Congress. "But the dream of going with astronauts is still alive. Mars is the ultimate destination for human exploration in this study." The journey to Mars, however, would follow a return to the moon, trips to asteroids and other human and robotic expeditions to new deep-space telescopes. Such exploration strategies are the focus of the space congress in Houston, which is expected to draw 13,000 experts in space policy, aerospace engineering and the science disciplines. More than 300 gathered on Sunday to hear a preview of an exploratory road map being developed by the International Academy of Astronautics, an organization of 1,100 experts from 60 countries. The academy hopes the organization's global membership will give the proposal enough currency to serve as the nucleus for more formal exploratory initiatives beyond the NASA-led international space station. "This is a vision for the future of space exploration," said Huntress, former NASA chief of planetary science. "It's not a description of what will be done, but hopefully what we will do is quite close to this." A dozen NASA Apollo astronauts walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972 as part of America's dramatic response to a Cold War space challenge from the former Soviet Union. But once it achieved a victory in the moon race, the United States retreated to deal with the cost of the Vietnam War and domestic problems. The international academy's road map, which incorporates some of NASA's advanced planning, begins with new missions for launching powerful successors to the Hubble Space Telescope. These observatories, placed in orbits around the Earth or around the Sun, might be designed to search for signs of life on Earth-like planets circling nearby stars. As they do with the 12-year-old Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits 360 miles above the Earth, astronauts would travel periodically to service the new observatories or equip them with new instruments. In some of the scenarios, robotic spacecraft would retrieve and transport more distant telescopes to a lunar orbit about 187,000 miles from the Earth where they would be met by astronauts. Gradually, those excursions would set the stage for a new wave of human lunar explorations, the first since Apollo 17 returned to Earth nearly 30 years ago. New missions to the moon and nearby asteroids would serve both to train explorers for missions to Mars as well as to conduct scientific investigations. Planetary geologists believe both the moon and the asteroids, ancient rocky fragments that failed to assemble into planets, hold clues to the evolution of the 4.5 billion-year-old solar system. Mars would hold a similar lure for future explorers as they embark on missions to the Red Planet -- lasting two to three years -- to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. A new push into deep space with human explorers will be enormously expensive, politically challenging and risky for the astronauts, said NASA's John Mankins. The space agency's chief technologist for the human exploration and development of space, Mankins sketched out several broad global scenarios that could influence the pace of future exploration or conversely derail them. They include a widening economic gap between the wealthier and poorer nations of the world, an environmental crisis, even the prospect of alien contact or a devastating blow from an asteroid. Requirements for nuclear propulsion and reactors to accelerate the journeys and generate electrical power could prove so politically charged that new missions could be stalled for years. Robert Zubrin, engineer, writer and founder of the Mars Society, a pro-exploration group, warned colleagues that they may be overlooking problems posed by the physical rigors of long space flight. Even on missions of several months to the space station, astronauts quickly loose muscle and skeletal strength in the absence of gravity. Without some way of preserving their physical condition, explorers could reach Mars physically unable to hike and climb across the planet's rugged terrain, he warned. Zubrin urged them to investigate the prospective benefits of spinning interplanetary spacecraft to create an artificial gravity for astronauts. The other great threat to human health would come from long-term exposure to deep-space radiation. Belts of this radiation in the solar system, as well as surges in the solar wind, can expose humans to doses hundreds of times greater than on Earth. Such radiation, still not well understood, may kill cells, damage tissues, cause mutations and have other effects that lead to cancer, cataracts, central nervous system injury or other disorders. It would also weaken immune systems, say scientists. NASA's National Space Biomedical Research Institute, a harnessing of some of the nation's best brain power based at Baylor College of Medicine, is working to develop countermeasures to 55 space-based health risks. Bobby Alford, its chief executive officer, told the conference that the answer to the question of whether explorers can go into deep space is "a conditional yes." "The caveat is that the technical issues relating to managing the environmental, chemical and biological risks must be understood and overcome," said Alford. "The space biomedical community must do more to accelerate and enhance the life science and health care needed to fulfill our objectives." xponent Space, The Primary Frontier Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
