Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Six men in a can
Read about it here: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/10/11/mars.mission/index.html
Five hundred days, and the worst of it is: not even any nice scenery of Mars or the stars. I suppose on the plus side, no solar storms to send subatomic particles ripping through your bodily tissues.
When I was in Junior High, I read about kids who did simulated space flights. They built their own ships out of boxes, loaded up with a few jars of peanut butter, and off to explore the cosmos from the convenience of their backyard. I talked two buddies of mine into this. Since the moon had already been conquered, I thought we could build two ships in my friend Keenan's attic, put them on wheels to have docking maneuvers. I could just imagine his parents talking, "Honey, I don't know if I can sleep with all the racket up there."
"It's just your son and his friends docking in low earth orbit. Be a good earthling and go to sleep."
As it turned out, we never got past the frame of the first spacecraft, though Keenan had designed and had begun building a nifty control panel. My job was mission design: two launches, rendezvous, docking, exchange of crews, then a return to earth. Six days, no sweat. But no way would my friend's mom have put up with 500 days in her attic. Especially considering this was the same crew that wanted to use swimming pool electrolysis to inflate a weather balloon into the jet stream.
"You're going to bounce a sixteen-foot hydrogen balloon around my backyard?!? In your dreams, guys."
