Has the human race hit the wall in manned missions in the exploration of space?

Question

If this is so, then what could revive it?

Answer 1

I'm not sure what sort of wall you are speaking of, but as more of technical sort of fellow, I'll address the possibility of a technical wall:

There isn't one. There are plenty of space propulsion and power generation concepts in existence, which are feasible, but have not flown. Propulsion-wise, we are still somewhat limited with what I call "interface propulsion" that is landing and taking off, but the problems are seriously mitigated by two factors:

- Earth is the hardest planet we're contemplating take-off from.
- Once on the surface of a planet, we can make our own fuel.

On Mars, some plans contemplate finding local water and making 100% of the propellants needed on the surface. With local carbon dioxide and imported hydrogen, up to 97.5% can be achieved (using oxybenzene and turbopump engines.) For the moon, between 70% and 85% of the propellant can be made on the surface, depending on the propellant combination (i.e.: most schemes for the Moon produce only liquid oxygen.) The Moon and Mars are also easier to take off from because of reduced gravity.

The major bottleneck to landing humans on Mars is landing anything on Mars (this is the closest thing to a "wall", but it isn't stopping us from going to places other than Mars.) Mars has just enough atmosphere that it can help you, but also blow you off course during terminal approach, leaving you with a terrific ground speed (The Exploration Rovers had a system to compensate, and very likely Spirit would have bit the dust on impact if she hadn't used it!) Unfortunately, Mars doesn't have enough of an atmosphere to use only the atmosphere to land. If you were to jump out of a plane over Mars (forget about the details of the plane for a moment), with a parachute sized for use in Earth's atmosphere, you'd hit the ground going faster than you would by jumping out of a plane over Earth without a parachute! There are two extremes to solve this problem, with a spectrum to fill the middle:

1. Learn how to land big payloads. The biggest payloads contemplated for the Martian surface in Human mission designs are about 60 tonnes.

2. Learn how to land a human mission in tiny payloads. The most we can land on Mars right now is about 600-800kg, about a hundredth of scenario 1.

The vast majority of human mission designs land huge payloads, largely in ignorance of how difficult and expensive it will be to do so. A few amateurs are getting into the game of figuring out if payloads in the 4000-6000kg range can be put together on the surface to make a human mission. This of course includes crews landing in rovers, much the same way as the Science Laboratory plans to land.

As for other types of walls, there are other answers which are better than what I can add.

Answer 2

What wall would that be?

I hope you do realize that the US spends $450 billion in a good year on weapons systems and $15 billion on manned spaceflight (and little over $1 billion on real space science)?

That is a ratio of 30:1. Everything else being equal, if we had spent $450 billion on spaceflight and $15 billion on weapons and the people polishing them, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

The only "wall" here is our own decision to make war, not peace.

And I have to agree that even than there would be nowhere to go. Sometimes I wish someone would build a Moon/Mars simulator and let people try for themselves what the limits of technology could do for space flight.

If you have ever seen how small the Apollo capsule was on the inside or how little space there will be in the next lunar module (think high tech phone booth), you would think VERY differently about space exploration. It is one thing to watch Star Trek and another to actually leave Earth.

Answer 3

Yes. Human exploration is seriously expensive when compared to expendable robots. There is nothing in the solar system that really merits sending humans to explore. Its all ice and rock and radiation. People got bored with the lunar missions very quickly. So they got dropped. While NASA is planning a mars mission, I doubt it will ever get off the ground. Maybe the Chinese will pull it off, but I cannot imagine the American congress actually forking out the hundreds of billions of bucks to go collect some rocks. The time for that is past. We are broke and deeply in debt. And we don't have a good enemy anymore to "race". Until we can construct a space elevator and achieve practical nuclear fusion, the cost of manned exploration will remain totally prohibitive.

Answer 4

The problem is, the human race is not in agreement with itself. Some want to explore & expand, no matter the cost and disregard for safety. Some don't think we should explore at all, focusing on making our lives as comfortable as possible here - and dooming mankind in the process. While exploration is good, comfort is better - or so people's experience seems to be so far. But there's a middle ground... if we can get away from the crappy political rivalries, the dependence on oil (that will be huge, then the middle east can go broke & stop funding terrorists around the world), then we'd have time & money to focus on GOING places. Earth isn't going to last forever - and, at the rate we're going, it won't last very much longer, either.... we should be ensuring our future as a species by developing the technology we need to get off this rock.

Answer 5

the answer to that's a significant confident. regardless of if, i'm afraid that the final public of Canadians does no longer settle for such use of public money and that's a shame. human beings will see such spending as ineffective and frivolous. yet contained in the subsequent 10 years, many countries will enter a clean area race wherein the US, Russia and China could be the main significant gamers. Why no longer comprise Canada as a larger half to the US in this race? Why shouldn't we've our area heroes as those different international locations would have (or have already got)? Our astronauts are nicely knowledgeable and are as powerfuble as their American companions. can we % the easy way and say no or settle for the venture and deliver a Canadian to the Moon and perchance Mars at last? Why shouldn't we be allowed to have such desires like those different international locations? Are we that undesirable and unimaginative? i'm hoping no longer.

Answer 6

The only wall that exists is the funding wall.

Manned missions will continue after the moonbases are constructed. As most of the planets in our System are uninhabitable, I don't really know where you plan on travelling to. More probes are required to explore the outer planet moons before any human exploration of these can be considered.

Answer 7

The way I see it, the wall has been there for decades now. They keep trying to go further into space with machines but nothing more. Ever since man walked on the moon nothing more has been done. I say the answer is in sci fi. Find a way to send a body to the far end of the galaxy (Criogenics) or maybe other galaxies (sorry trekie alert: we might need warped speed though) and then we'll now. Can't we all just get along?? Russia, India, China and the US just get together put a couple of billions into a station on mars and we'll move forward from there. It's not that complicated! :S

Answer 8

I think we need new developments in spacecraft propulsion.

We can use chemical rockets to get to Mars in about 9 months, but it still takes years to get to Jupiter or Saturn, and we just don't have the life support capability for that. Even 0.1 g constant boost would drastically change these numbers, but we don't have the technology to do it. Yet.

Answer 9

There is currently plans for a manned mission to Mars.

Answer 10

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