Mariner 4 Alternate Universe, What if...? |
Mariner 4 Alternate Universe, What if...? |
Sep 29 2006, 11:01 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
What if Mariner 4's flyby had occurred right across Tharsis & Coprates Chasma, showing volcanoes & canyons instead of heavily cratered terrain? (I understand that trajectory determinants prevented this from happening, of course, but still...). Do you suppose that Mars exploration would have been thrown into hyperdrive during the heady '60s, perhaps enough to sustain manned efforts beyond Apollo?
Doug, my apologies if this is OT for this section...there seem to be some interesting implications here for the imaginative, though. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Guest_Myran_* |
Sep 30 2006, 09:06 AM
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Guests |
Even worse, if von Brauns vision actually had been realized. Its likely that one attempt to land humans on Mars would have become a catastrophic failure. There's several reasons for that, breakdown of machinery are one, but the most important are the severe medical problems related to long time exposure to weightlessness are that of long-term radiation exposure, neither well known back then but that have been indentified since. Yes identified only, no true counter are found for either.
Some of those have been mentioned here in the manned spaceflight subforum to mention one thread. So if one attempt have been made, even without a truly catastrophic end, it might have have far reaching consequences with a situation where astronauts reached the orbit of Mars but unable to land, or even worse, actually reach the surface but unable to perform any meaningful exploration. The result could have been a blow to space exploration as a whole, that I feel secure in saying it is best that it never was attempted. So overall I do think it was for the best to go with this unmanned strategy as we have done in the real world. |
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