Lockheed Martin Wins Contract to Build Mars Lander

Lord_Slepnir writes "Lockheed Martin has won a contract to build the Orion crew exploration vehicle that will eventually take humans to the moon and then on to Mars. This vehicle will hopefully also replace the aging space shuttle fleet. According to NASA the vehicle will have manned missions by 2014 and moon missions by no later by 2020."

Didn't (rot13 spoiler)

[WilliamSChips]

gur Jenvgu qrfgebl gur Bevba?

great

[User 956]

Lockheed Martin has won a contract to build the Orion crew exploration vehicle that will eventually take humans to the moon

Great, the US will finally make it to the moon.

In other news...

[SonicSpike]

...those firms that lost the bid were awarded the Uranus probe contract.

Re:Technology Love you long time

[Anonymous Coward]

Well the first time it took only 10 years to make the FX good enough to be believed by the commies and the public at large. This time around they have Industrial Light and Magic the compete with.

Outside the box creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

"NASA told the contractors to build a capsule that looks just like Apollo"

Extra points were awarded to Lockheed for their proposal to use vacuum tubes.

Re:Technology Love you long time

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone notice that with less technology, it takes 10 years to get to the moon. But with more technology, it takes 2 decades. Hmm...

I wonder if it's probably because the Lockeed folks haven't kept up with technological advances in this area. The moon shot back in the sixties was much easier in many ways. I mean, sure they didn't have advanced ray tracing algorithms or proper texture mapping back in the sixties, but level of detail expectations weren't very high either. That said, I bet Pixar would do a much better job ... but were probably too pricey*.

^*Cant tell a joke around here?

Dante would do it.

[User 956]

Technology is certainly not where the old predictions had anticipated. Where is my flying car!

Well, you're going to have to let a German scientist hack your foot off. Then, while you're unconscious, he and his friends can have their way with you. All for the flying car.

Lesson in bad design

[amightywind]

How will we explain to our children that back in the day we had this sweet airplane shaped orbiter to take us into space, and now all they have is this cone-shaped hunk of a "spaceship".

Perhaps the spectacular carnage of Challenger and Columbia will help them understand the danger of bad design.

Hyperdrive: Space Colonization Requires Human Time

[reporter]

In order to colonize space, we must be able to travel on a human-time scale. Otherwise, we are trapped in our solar system. In fact, we are effectively confined to the region between Venus and Mars: traveling from Earth to Mars takes about 6 months. Forget about going to the next galaxy.

The only way out of this dilemma is to look for phenomenon that goes beyond our current understanding of physics. One possibility [newscientistspace.com] is the new model (of physics) developed by Burkhard Heim. He postulated additional dimensions beyond the 4 known ones: 3 spatial dimensions plus time. Using these additional dimensions, he rewrote general relativity in a quantum framework.

From this model, Heim developed a theory that enabled physicists to accurately calculate the masses of the fundamental particles. Unfortunately, this theory is the only part (of his work) that has been peer-reviewed in a journal.

Is the rest of his theory true? If it is true, it would have incredible ramifications. It means that we can build a hyperdrive to power a spacecraft to mars in about 3 hours. The hyperdrive would shove the spacecraft into a strange place which is outside of our standard universe of 4 dimensions; in that strange place, the speed of light is much faster than that in our universe. The hyperdrive would then push the spacecraft along one of those additional dimensions (beyond the basic 4 dimensions), powering the spacecraft towards Mars along that other worldly dimension.

The American military thinks that Heim's model is valid and is actually attempting to build a prototype of the hyperdrive.

Re:We do NOT need to send 300 tons to Mars!

[stunt_penguin]

0.001 grams

It..... it... it's a start ;)