A manned flight to Mars  

Mahadev Pant

A small step of a man, a giant leap for mankind." Neil Armstrong said when he stepped down on the surface of the Moon for the first time. Really, this was a small step of Neil Armstrong, but was a victory of man over the Moon. It was since man had stepped down on the Moon, he conceived to conquer over Mars, the Red Planet, which lies just after earth in the solar system.

In November 1962, the first Soviet automatic probe started its journey to Mars, mere 18 months after Yuri Gagrin’s flight. Although the probe was launched on a fly-by trajectory, it was this flight that began the exploration of the Red Planet. The year 1971 should be regarded as the beginning of the direct exploration of Mars.

Homo Sapiens had already dreamt to reach Mars but it was not an easy task. Some argued that if man had already landed on the moon, the next step should be Mars. Of course, they say it will be a little more difficult. Unfortunately, it will be much more than "a little more difficult." Specialists studying Mars recommended that when comparing flights to the Moon and Mars, everything should be multiplied by ten- the technical difficulties, financial problems, and so on. The distance from the earth to Mars is from 55 to 380 million kilometres depending on the positions of the planets in respect to each other. The average distance is at least 200 times greater than that from earth to the moon.

The question of whether there is life on Mars was raised long ago. For centuries people beliened that Mars was inhabited, but US Viking automatic probes did not find any life on Mars. However, the flight of the Vikings showed that it is extremely difficult to find signs of life by automatic methods of analysis directly on space stations. So, it would be better to use vehicles of the moon rover type, which would take soil samples from large areas, and finally rockets sent to Mars which could return to earth and bring back such samples. The delivery of soil samples to earth would actually be a dress rehearsal for the manned flight from earth to Mars and back.

It is believed that for a manned flight to Mars a payload of several hundred tons would be needed. The flight would take from one and a half to three years and, in comparison to a flight to the moon, the supply of food, air, water etc. for the crew would have to be much more. To launch the bulky spaceship to Mars, it would be necessary to develop some new, super-powerful launch vehicle or to assemble the space ship by parts in near earth orbit, in all probability, both methods would have to be used.

These all are only minor parts of the difficulties. Even if we were to suppose that all of them have been overcome, it is still to early to send a manned spaceship to Mars for in many respects the planet remains a mystery and it is too risky to count on pure luck. For instance, scientists cannot yet say what the Martian climate used to be like. It is extremely cold there, with an average annual temperature of -50 degree centrigade. But, has it always been like this? Maybe the period of glaciation on Mars is not permanent and is replaced by a warming of the climate once every several hundred thousand or several million years?

Inspite of so many types of difficulties, NASA will send two spacecrafts named "Mars-Express" in June 2003 and three spacecrafts named "Mars recognisation orbiter" in 2005. Russia will send "Bigal-2" to Mars in collaboration with European Space Agency. All these flights are restricted to one-side journey only, that is, they will not return to Earth. But, above all, the wonderful thing is that Russia has proposed a plan to land the team of six crews on the surface of Mars by 2015.

The world has entered in the new era of space technology and many countries which have been doing tremendous endeavor in the field of space have gained much up to now. Unfortunately, Nepal is far behind in comparison to the countries like USA, Russia and even the neighboring country India in the case of this challenging field.. With the advances made in space technology system, the world has gained many clues about the creation of universe. There are not any space agencies, governmental or non-governmental in Nepal. So Nepalese student interested in space technology and willing to do something important in this field are rushing to developed countries there by causing brain-drain in Nepal. In this context, if government establishes a separate space agency, this really will be a ray of hope.

In Nepal there are no such institutions running space technology programmes. The Tribhuvan University is the premier institute for teaching, training , workshop and conducting research in the field of space technology. Up to now Aeronautics is a totally new branch for Nepal. In this time of man’s conquest over universe, the lack of human resourses and fund constraint is a misfortune for Nepal and Nepalese people. Institute of Engineering (which is under T.U.) must start this programme and Ministry of science and technology should provide necessary fund directly to IOE for proper teaching under department of Mechanical Engineering so that enthusiastic students could get opportunity to study Aeronautics and they can dedicate themselves for the development of nation as well as welfare of humanity..

(The writer is a BE mechanical engineer)

BitWare: Programme for the genius

Think of a program that does the job of a fax machine, email messaging, the answering machine and overall voice transmission. There is a program called BitWare 8 available that performs all these jobs. You will be surprised by knowing that many features are performed by this programme. Specifically, the programme will help low budgeted offices, which can not bear the cost of a fax machine and many other devices.

BitWare 8 is a 32-bit application that turns your desktop computer into a communication workhorse. This pre-release beta software is revolutionary with integrated fax, voice, paging, and data communication tools. BitWare also supports multiple devices in a single machine.

You can send your received faxes to an e-mail recipient over the Internet. When you select the e-mail integration options, you can send a fax to any phone number or e-mail address by simply filling in the address line with the number or address. You can even send a voice message to an e-mail address!

Using popular word processing programmes, such as Microsoft Word, that are capable of creating RTF (Rich Text Format files), you can create cover page templates for BitWare. But since the email programmes are not accepted as a legal document you still need a fax programme. Faxes are the "de-facto" standard for electronic transmission of documents. They are accepted as legal documents, and give you documented proof of delivery. BitWare creates a digital copy of the faxes you send or receive. This feature allows you to store fax messages in electronic folders on your PC. You can save valuable space and you can query the information for fast retrieval.

"Silent salesperson"

Features such as Broadcast Fax, Fax on Demand and Custom Cover Pages can all be used to distribute your marketing message and act as the "silent" salesperson.

The ability to have multiple individual mailboxes on a single phone line can create an image of a larger company by routing calls to specific departments (such as sales, accounts payable, marketing, personnel, etc.). Tools such as Fax Broadcast, Fax on Demand, Remote Notification and Receipt of All Messages are included in the programme, and give your company the same advantages enjoyed by much larger organisations.

BitWare can act as an answering machine and can also easily replace your office’s answering machine. It is a computer-based software solution, so your messages are stored in electronic format for easier manageability and navigation. The power user can convert the answering machine through easy-to-use wizards to a sophisticated multi-user voice mail system.

You can use a single phone line to receive voice mail messages and faxes. Using your compatible modem and up-to-date modem drivers, BitWare will automatically distinguish between voice and fax calls. When a fax call is detected, the system automatically receives the fax without any user intervention. You can also broadcast your messages just like the fax messages. If you need to send a voice message to many people quickly, use BitWare. Just like broadcasting fax, you can take advantage of the same "easy to use interface" to send out a voice message. Select from pre-recorded .wav files or record your own in the programme’s "easy to use compose interface".

The operating systems:

The operating system that BitWare works with are Windows 95, 98, 98SE, NT, Windows ME, and Windows 2000. You might be thinking whether you need an email program to use BitWare. No, BitWare can work with your Windows Explorer, but you can integrate it with many popular e-mail programs such as Outlook 97, 98, 2000 and Outlook Express.

Wax powered rockets

Patrick L Barry

Waiting inside his Mercury capsule for the command that would start the countdown and make him the first American in space, Alan Shepard yelled impatiently, "Let’s light this candle!"

Those words may turn out to be more prophetic than Shepard intended.

Since 2001, NASA’s Ames Research Centre has been testing a new rocket fuel made from - believe it or not - candle wax. "We actually ordered the wax for our test firings through a commercial Web site that sells candle wax in bulk," says Arif Karabeyoglu, who developed the theory behind paraffin-based rocket fuels and is currently a research associate at Stanford University.

"We use the exact same wax found in ‘hurricane’ candles," he says. Safer to handle and better for the environment than today’s solid rocket fuels, this modern twist on an ancient fuel could someday propel sounding rockets and commercial-payload rockets into space. It could even form the heart of a new generation of shuttle solid rocket boosters (SRBs) that would have a key safety feature today’s SRBs lack: an "off" switch. This may seem a shockingly primitive fuel for 21st Century rocket technology. After all, humans have been burning candles (today often made of "paraffin" wax) for the last five millennia. Why didn’t someone think of using it for rockets before?

As anyone who’s lit a candle knows, paraffin normally burns quite calmly, and it’s difficult to make it burn at all without a wick. By all appearances, it just wasn’t the kind of high-powered, explosive fuel needed to blast a rocket off of the planet!

Working in collaboration with David Altman, currently president of Space Propulsion Group, and Brian Cantwell, a professor at Stanford, Karabeyoglu figured out a way to make paraffin burn three times faster than had ever been achieved before - fast enough to serve as rocket fuel.

More than 40 test firings by the Stanford-Ames collaborative project have shown that the idea works as advertised. That’s good news for the rocket industry, because this paraffin fuel would be much simpler and safer to work with than the toxic, explosive fuels used today.

Just think of a household candle. You can safely carve it, melt it, and mould it. If it’s free from artificial colours or perfumes, you could even lick it or chew on it. You could burn dozens of them in a room with no fear of toxic gases making you sick.

Don’t try any of these things with conventional solid rocket fuels!

One reason for the benign nature of candle wax is that the oxidizer needed for it to burn is separate from the wax itself: air in the case of candles, and pure oxygen for rockets. (Chemically speaking, combustion is the rapid "oxidation" of the fuel, usually by combining with the oxygen gas in the air. That’s why fires go out when deprived of air.) This kind of rocket with a solid fuel and a separate gaseous or liquid oxidizer is called a "hybrid" rocket.

In contrast, today’s solid-fuel rockets use solid materials such as perchlorate compounds as oxidizers, and the fuel and oxidizer are mixed together before being packed into the rocket. In other words, the fuel is "charged" and ready to explode ... not a friendly material to work with.

It’s not friendly for the environment either. When today’s solid fuels burn, they produce the acidic compound hydrogen chloride and other noxious chemicals. When it rains, these compounds find their way into lakes and soils, and the increased acidity can harm plant and animal life.

Paraffin, in contrast, burns cleanly. The only gases left behind are water vapour and carbon dioxide. Rocket launches are still so rare that the total pollution they emit is tiny compared to that from cars, airplanes, and coal-fired power plants. But in the future, as more countries and private companies begin launching people and payloads into space, clean-burning rocket fuels will become an increasingly important environmental issue.

Using hybrid rockets would make all these rocket launches a bit safer as well.

By controlling the flow of the oxidizing gas, "hybrid rockets ... can be throttled over a wide range, including shut-down and restart," Cantwell said in a prepared statement. "That’s one reason why they could be considered as possible replacements for the shuttle’s current solid rocket boosters that cannot be shut off after they are lit."

"A hybrid rocket equivalent to the space shuttle’s solid rockets would be about the same diameter, but would be somewhat longer," Cantwell continues. "One design concept being considered is a new hybrid booster rocket that is able to fly back to the launch site for recharging," he says, which would save considerable cost and time in preparing the boosters for the next launch.

However, we won’t be seeing paraffin-based shuttle SRBs for many years to come, if ever, Karabeyoglu says. The technology is still in the demonstration phase, and would likely be used for years on smaller rockets before being considered for NASA’s flagship launch vehicle.

But if the tests continue to go well, the launch director at Mission Control may one day mean it quite literally when she or he says, "All right, enough waiting around ... let’s light this candle!"

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