USA To Return To Moon By 2015, Then Mars 1480
securitas writes "This afternoon George Bush announced space exploration plans for the USA to return to the Moon by 2015, the design and construction of a new space vehicle fleet by 2014 (called the Crew Exploration Vehicle) to replace the aging space shuttles which will be retired in 2010, and the construction of a permanent Moon base, followed by manned missions to Mars. The initiative begins with a $1 billion increase to NASA's budget and $12 billion in new space exploration money over next five years. However Congress is concerned about how to pay for the new space policy initiative in the face of a $500 billion national budget deficit. AP via Yahoo has a Moon/Mars/space policy FAQ, and there's more at NASA and the New York Times among others."
and bush says... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:and bush says... (Score:3, Funny)
On a serious note, I wonder if I'll live to see the first conception on the moon/in space.
(Yes, I meant both on CNN and in low quality bootleg form from BitTorrent)
Re:and bush says... (Score:5, Informative)
Uranus Experiment, Part 2.
Good ol' Space.com has an article on it [space.com] so you don't have to worry about the spouse looking up your recent visits...
Re:It's PORN allright - for the MILITARY... (Score:4, Insightful)
If he is an illeagal alien then he has a far easier time getting employment and citizenship.
His average household income has gone up dramatically in his life. (NOTE: the average american home now has less people than in 1960)
The court system in America if FAR FAR FAR more liberal than it was in 1960, and tends to find in favor of ridiculous lawsuits against major companies.
America the most feared country in the world.... Well I guess you and I saw something different on TV when the U.S. came in and freed Iraq.
They have increased terrorism.... Umm.... let's see , you can either attack terrorist or be attacked. You obviously believe in negotiating with terrorist, and the current administration doesn't. Let's see now... negotiations has worked sooo well for Israel in the last 40 years... Please understand that I am not saying negotiate with other countries, but terrorist. There is a differece.
The U.S. is cutting back on... WTF? What do you call a cut? When the program gets $1 Billion a year and they don't get $2 Billion the next. Name a MAJOR program other than the military and NASA that has actually been cut. What people like to do is ask for a 100% increase in spending for their program and then when they only get 10% they say the administration CUT the budget.
You are either with us or with the terrorist.... Yep that is correct. It seems fairly clear. How many first or second world countries do you know that openly support terrorism? Why would they want to? If they do then aren't they basically declaring war on the U.S.? Should the U.S. wait until they kill another 3,000+ citizens before doing something? So to the previous poster... you are actually safer now, because the U.S. is not sitting by waiting for some governement funded terrorist to slam a plain in to your building.
They personally profit from the war... The U.S. and every other country that helped should gain some money back if possible. I understand that this is different than what you would do, i.e. give the terrist money and hope (but not pray) that they don't hurt us.
I could go on also.
The posters previous comments were on the mark. He has been given an opportunity to improve his social status with little true intervention from the government, short of possibly being drafted (he is too young for this).
Other things I can think of.
He has not had to worry about being gased. (Iraq)
He has not had to worry about starving. (Africa)
He has had one of the worlds best medical care.
He lived in a society that works to achive equality among it citizens.
His economy isn't run by the mob. (Italy)
His water is clean. (Africa and most 3rd world)
His information isn't driven by the government. (Many) Heck in this case it is just the opposite.
He could choose what type of career he wanted, and even still at 40+ could change it completely. (Ton)
He could get in to politics and drive the future of his country.
He could openly say how bad the U.S. is and how he hates our president. (kind of like you).
He has the ability to worship God freely.
America is a government by the people for the people... If you don't like it run for freaking office. Change it.
Re:WMD (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WMD (Score:4, Insightful)
Weapons of Mass Distraction is more likely...
How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the thing, the federal budget [whitehouse.gov] is well over a trillion dollars. NASA's budget is around 17 billion. It's roughly 1 percent of the national budget. People get so scared about the word billion that they forget the scale of cash that the US has to allocate.
Does anyone honestly think that putting that bit of money elsewhere would solve whatever domestic problems you want fixed? Have we yet cured hunger, poverty, or undereducation? No? Well, we've been throwing billions at them so far. If you're looking for funds to cut and inefficiencies to uproot, look in defense and welfare. Diverting funds from NASA to domestic programs will not change anything except to kneecap our development as a multi-planet species.
Another misassumption is that if money is cut from one department, it automatically gets redistributed to others. That's not the way it works. And yes, I know we're running a deficit but a 1 billion increase over the next 5 years isn't going to contribute significantly to it. And IIRC, every administration except for 1 (maybe 2) has run a deficit and the country has not yet fallen.
But won't this cost a trillion dollars? No, not if done right. Father Bush's plan was scrapped because the estimate he was given was based on an outmoded model for Mars exploration. On top of that, it was subjected to a committee that took it as a chance to write themselves a blank check with their 90-day report [pescu.net]. Bust the first was ignorant to any alternatives so he abandoned it. Read up on Mars Direct [nw.net]. It's a plan to do Mars missions on the same budgetary scale as the Apollo missions. Those were done for about the same budget that NASA currently gets. NASA doesn't need more money, just proper direction and it looks like they're finally getting some of that.
See my other post [slashdot.org] for more on the case for Mars and space exploration.
Budget (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire budget, and debt and defecit mess is made up of nothing but "oh, it's only a few billion. It won't matter." That's what everyone says about their favorite pet spending program.
It does make a difference.
Re:Budget (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Budget (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad that some people really think like that and ironic how we take such things like this for granted. Some countries would kill for a 50 billion or even just a one billion dollar national budget, and in many countries (i.e. Japan, America, Germany, England...) your not even considered a major contender as a company unless your bringing in a billion a year. Just something worth thinking about that most people don't.
Regards,
Steve
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:4, Insightful)
$10.45 trillion (2002 est.)
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbo
The money Bush is proposing, even if the amount goes up is minute compared to the Federal Budget and the GDP of the US.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:4, Informative)
i feel like i'm trolling, but damn. get a f'n clue. to dismiss what nasa has done as "minor improvements on existing ideas" is ludicrous.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking money away from those programs to pay to go to space is dangerous. That's not to say we shouldn't pay to go to space - the question is which budget to cut, and my point is that cutting public service and public assistance budgets isn't likely to be cost effective.
The place to cut is in military spending. The war in Iraq would have paid for a lot of space travel, unfortunately it paid for blowing up buildings instead. We have lots of highly specialized weapons that are very expensive - millions of dollars per explosion. Military aircraft are not built using standard parts. Everything is custom. So everything is brutally expensive. Cut back on the custom nature of this hardware, and you'd save a lot of money. Cut back on unilateral foreign wars, and you'd save even more.
We could also eliminate a lot of special-interest tax loopholes that Bush introduced in his "tax cut." But for some reason, it's always public services and public aid that get cut, not corporate welfare, and not military spending.
Sigh.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:4, Insightful)
Like crack, the first hit is free.
Funding for welfare, etc, isn't designed to wipe out poverty or mitigate its effects. It's designed to perpetuate poverty, because a permanent underclass of non-producing food tubes dependent upon the government to steal wealth from the producing food-tubes can be relied upon to always support the government.
If you're at the top of the food chain, the more poor, and the worse off they are, and the faster they breed, the more power you have over producer and parasite alike.
Consider the relationship between shepherd, sheepdog, and sheep. Sure, the sheepdog gets to have lots of "fun" by running circles around the flock. The "fun" the sheepdog has is immaterial to the farmer's purpose for the sheepdog, namely to have a few animals running freely enough to keep the flock in a predictable state, grazing contentedly until harvest time.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:4, Insightful)
Welfare is a *SAFETY NET* for *REAL PEOPLE* It's not the stereotype of cadillac driving welfare queens or the projects that has been forced in to your skull. If you think the tax burden of social programs is too great, imagine the nation without them. Imagine soup kitchens and Hooverville shantytowns.
Non-producing food tubes my ass. Eat shit and die. Please. Now.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's designed to purchase some people's votes with other people's money. The art of governmet consists of taking money from those who aren't going to vote for you anyway, and using those fund to purchase votes.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean that's nothing compared to the billion or trillion dollars right? Its chump change.
Why do I suddenly feel like a beggar asking for pennies....
Those are state problems (Score:5, Informative)
Every town in every city has problems like yours that just take "a little bit."
It's your city/state's job to bring in enough money to fund local problems like yours. The Federal government can't. If they help one city in such a way they have to help every city.
You're barking up the wrong money tree.
"It's a new budget-saving pattern for the Bay Area's fourth-largest city. Starting this month, whenever three firefighters can't work because of illness, the city will close one of four fire stations to save $400,000 in overtime costs and prevent firefighter layoffs."
So by closing one firestation because the people who work there are wasting money they save $400,000 they can use to fix other problems.
There's your money for the library.
Fix your city's budget problems before you start pretending it's the federal government's job.
You think Uncle Sam is going to bail out CA? What makes your problems more serious?
You're in the Bay Area. I'll willing to bet there's another library that's open 7 days a week. If not, get your stuff done when it is open. What's more important to you? The money that can be put towards more important things or convienence?
It's certainly not worth $200,000 to staff a library an extra day if nobody is visiting. That's generally why they close one day. It also allows for fewer full time staff (which allows for higher wages) while still giving them a day off every week to keep them sane and happy.
Ben
Simply Put (Score:5, Insightful)
The program is the right thing to do.
It should have been started long ago, it's overdue.
Now is a bad time to do it, thanks to reckless spending and slashing revenue.
The motivation isn't purely political, it's because China and India are expressing interest and it 'looks bad' if the USA lets anyone get a leg up, in short it's for selfish pride.
This isn't the leader to kick it off, but he's the only one who has.
I feel the same frustration and exasperation, it comes with being educated.
Re:Simply Put (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the leader who kicked it off was JFK. The last White House resident who sort of made big mumbles about it was actually Poppy Bush--but most people don't even remember his Mars by 2035 mumble. Dubya is just trying to get it back on Daddy's schedule.
In terms of doing something useful in space, probably the strongest claim would be the international space station--but Dubya is destroying the international cooperation that depends on. Only natural, since Dubya's real motivation for supporting space flight is military dominance.
Actually, I'm a big supporter of real science, including the space program. However, you also have to deal with the economic realities, and if Dubya keeps losing 20% of the dollar's value every year, the US won't be able to afford anything remotely resembling a real space program.
Re:Simply Put (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does it always have to be "useful?"
No, I'm serious. I've been really disturbed by some of the things I've read from people who are against the idea and words cannot describe the pity I feel for those that are incapable of understanding the "Because it's there" argument.
Are we that incapable, as either a nation or a species, of having big dreams and pursuing them every once in a while? Do we always have to wait for something to be practical before we get around to doing it? Yes, we have war, famine and pestilence. Yes, this will probably take away some funds from fighting those scourges. Whether or not that loss of funds will be noticable is another issue but ultimately the whole thing is a red herring. We're trying to feed people and save lives for... what exactly? So that future generations can also try to eliminate them better than us, feeding the cycle? What's the point in saving and lengthening lives when nobody's actually living?
Sure, there's the "practical" argument that we could always wait until all these problems were solved and then we could follow our dreams of going out there. So we wait and wait and wait and before you know it we're all pensioners in retirement communities still waiting "just another ten years..." If waiting until everything is "just so" isn't a vague, amorphous, intangible and ultimately hollow goal to work towards, I don't know what is.
The moon. Mars. They're right there. We can go there. Now. That stirs up passions even in me, and I'm a jaded, cynical bastard.
If we as a culture and a species are that incapable of dreaming, even about something so utterly attainable as the moon, then maybe we shouldn't be going up there. We deserve to chase our tails over "standards of living" until the sun goes nova. Heck, maybe that's the solution to the Fermi Paradox; they're not here because they had more important things to do or they simply couldn't be bothered...
Prersonally, I'd rather live in a country that bankrupts itself trying to get to Mars than what I seem to be living among today. Hell, set up a "Mars or bust!" fund at NASA and I'll gladly start tithing to them. Anything but this malaise.
Re:Simply Put (Score:5, Insightful)
Now is always a bad time to do it.
Do it anyway.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
Creative Spending Plans (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Issue bonds with the return being first access to a space outpost at a later date or something like that. This would be like the Pan-Am sale of tickets to the moon, but these bonds have government backing as to avoid bankruptcy and gain interest when not used (2-3%?). If NASA gives up the initiative, the government bonds still have value. I'd buy quite a few and be happy to contribute to the program over the long term.
2) Lots of space technologies are dual-use for civilian and military, so why not get the DOD to help fund it? Insight into orbital mechanics and practical space vehicles would allow us a decent chance (better than 40%) to shoot down ICBMs and other long-range missles before they reached the US. Also, there is territory on the South Pole of the Moon that gives great visibility to most of the planet, so it is in their best interest to participate and lend a few billion to the plan.
(On the other hand we could always falsify reports that oil or Osama could be found on Mars/the Moon and get up there much sooner without having to worry about how it gets paid for...)
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been saying this for years. The increasing expendature on domestic issues will increase exponentially untill there are no money and/or resources for any real space program. It's got to be done now. The 'public' might think that the money should be spent on domestic issues, but the 'public' is full of complete fucking morons.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, why spend money to determine if life can survive in a desert when we already know it can? I happen to live in a desert.. there's plenty of life here. There's life in the Sahara.. Antarctica, ocean vents.. The point is, getting life to survive on this planet is fuckin' easy.
Humans are an exloratory species.. always have been. We've spread across the entire planet, have we not? So to continue our exploration, we need to go into the Great Unknown.. space! And that starts with Mars.
Bzzzzzt, but thank you for playing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Build the biggest coolest shit you want, in the deserts or anywhere else, and one decent-sized asteroid will take it out at the same time it kills everything else above the level of the cockroach and creates long-term nuclear winter for the lucky roach..
If we don't get off this planet, then one simple day of cosmic bad luck is all it will take, and everything -- the $820 million dollars building cool desert shit, the wars fought, the ideas created, everything -- all of it will be for absolutely nothing. The only way we'll be able to leave then is if we start working on the problems now. The asteroid with your name on it does not give one single flying high-impact shit about your way of life, nor your fears of alien invasion, nor your "not giving a fuck".
Ever think of that? Apparently not.
Re:Bzzzzzt, but thank you for playing. (Score:4, Informative)
More like p squared, where p is the probability of a strike. You need both events to occur to exterminate humanity.
Also, both strikes must occur almost at the same time; if not, the damaged planet may be repopulated in a short period of time, asteroid-wise (100 years or so), further lowering the chance of total destruction.
Re: get life to survive in the harshest (Score:5, Insightful)
---------
That's complete crap. That's not how science works. Science is for the good of humanity, not one specific, transient country. Long after the US has gone the way of the Roman Republic (and it will, it is the nature of such things), its contribution to science and technology will endure.
Re: get life to survive in the harshest (Score:4, Funny)
Re: get life to survive in the harshest (Score:5, Insightful)
And before the Middle Ages, by the Arabs [wikipedia.org], used in a generic sense the way Europeans were classified as 'Latins' or 'Greeks' at that time.
The church had its history of book-burning [wikipedia.org] as well, and let's not forget Galileo [wikipedia.org].
The existence of multiple civilizations make it possible for knowledge to survive the destruction of Rome, and later, the stagnation of the Arabic world. Makes one shudder to contemplate the consequences of having One Global Culture.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and a place with really low gravity would make a great retirement community.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
And the dinosaurs couldn't handle one asteroid.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
is manned space exploration worth it? yes.....when we want to go to Jupitor, the weight costs of the food alone would be emence....now just think what figuring out how to feed the astronaughts on a Jupitor trip with out packing the ship full of food would mean to world hunger.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention the advances in science and technology that the program alone generates. One example of technology developed from the Apollo program is the circuit board which of course led to the personal computer.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Interesting)
But, to answer your question anyways, here is an article on Video Image Stabilization and 2D Barcodes [photonics.com]. This is another on Superstrong Plastic Films/Strings and Lightweight Composite Actuators [nasa.gov].
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:4, Interesting)
Fact is if you spend billions of dollars on any technological endevour you might get spin offs of substantial value, and you might not. I really doubt the spinoffs from space exploration are certain to justify the spending versus investing in fusion research, nanotechnology, biotech, defense or any other technological endeavour
I wager Apollo was something of a fluke simply because they hade to make huge leaps in things like electronics just to do it. I doubt you are going to see any similar leaps when we go back to the moon, the same place we went 35 years ago. In fact it sounds like NASA is planning to avoid high risk technology and may well just attempt to reinvent and refine a lot of the stuff they did 35 years ago and that is not something conducive to big advances in technology.
Having said all that, I could see trying to put a self sustaining colony on Mars as a potential source of big advances and spin offs since it would compell major advances in things like energy, food production and terraforming. Putting a knock off of the ISS on the moon, supplied from earth isn't likely to lead to many breakthroughs.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Informative)
The answer for that would take many hours to list. The ISS has generated a ton of new technology developments. I work for a NASA contractor with expertise in vision systems, from using 2D cameras for tracking and pose estimation for assembly to now 3D scanners for inspection, collision avoidance, and a variety of other tasks. We have just begun to spin this technology off into terrestrial applications and they are pouring in, from automated mining vehicles to geomaterial classification and automated plant growth monitoring, to name a few. And that's just one small company from one small component of the ISS. A study we'd previously done showed that every $1 invested in developing the technology has spun off into $40 for the economy.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
yes, 17 billion isn't a gigantic sum, and yes, nasa brings good to all people, but has anyone thought about comparing that measly sum to the proposed 15% increase in the defense budget, that will bring it up to an amazing 380 billion?
i don't think that those brand-new small-scale nuclear weapons bring good to people...
and remember the 'project for a new american century'-stuff, you know, the paper from the end of 2000 that, besides talking about the need to invade iraq, also talks about starting a new 'space' branch for the military. what could the plan be? turning the moon into some kind of death star?
h357
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Funny)
hopefully.
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:4, Insightful)
How about funding a plan in Colombia to use an untested pathogenic fungus -- fusarium oxysporum -- to wipe out coca. Critics say the plan proposes illegal acts of biological warfare, poses major ecological risks to Colombia -- one of the world's most bio-diverse countries -- and will increase suffering, by wreaking havoc with human health, water quality and food crops.
But hell, what is one out-of-control war-on-%something% from our well-meaning leaders like the Good-ol USA?
Re:How will we fund it? Spend it elsewhere! (Score:5, Insightful)
Extra money seems to go to football stadiums, and condoms, and milk programs and extras and not to actual education.
Mars (Score:3, Interesting)
I have seen price tags from NASA people and other space scientists for the whole expedition fluctating from $60-175 billion.
It's probably difficult or impossible to make an accurate estimate of total cost this early in the process but nevertheless the current estimates deviates much from each other.
$60 billion is one thing, but $175 billion?
Yes I know going to Mars might create some jobs and promote technology and development but I would like to know the price tag anyway.
And with a $450 Billion budget deficit already I'm not so sure that this is a good idea.
Re:Mars (Score:4, Insightful)
4 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone else concerned about the 4 year break from the retirement of the shuttle to the *planned* launch of the new craft? The last time we'll have stayed out of space for so long is before the shuttle launch (assuming we get back there following Columbia anywhere near NASA's schedule). There are already problems with the ISS given the shuttle's current grounding...
Re:4 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
ISS is supposed to be done by 2010 and moon base in 2015.
The bummer part is redirecting 11 billion of the current budget todo this. That means about 6-10 other missions will be canceled. Maybe it will be the Hubble space telescope replacement JWST [nasa.gov].
Re:4 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's the key. NASA had a budget of about 70 billion dollars in the 60s IIRC. Now it's about 15. Bush wants to provide another $11 billion for the moon and mars programs. That's still well under half of the *yearly* budget of NASA when we made it to the moon.
Getting a base there in 4-6 years would probably require funding back on that level. I don't think even *I* could support that when we're already have a deficit the size of Jupiter.
Lunacy and how to fix it (Score:5, Interesting)
Second lunacy: only add $1B to NASA's budget. They will have to gut every other program to fund this return to the moon, and they appear to be eager to do so.
Third lunacy: nothing in this proposal has anything to do with making access to space cheaper.
What ought to happen is tell NASA to get out of the way of independent private companies who are trying to get into space for much less money than NASA spends just thinking about it. That's the key. Let NASA build satellites and telescopes and whatnot, but make it law that NASA has to go with the cheapest launcher of reasonable reliablity, and if that means going with some private company who can do it for 1/10th the cost of Lockheed or Boeing or Ariane, so be it.
Re:Lunacy and how to fix it (Score:5, Insightful)
NASA good programs (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, this seems to be what's happening.
My girlfriend works for the Space Telescope Science Institute [stsci.edu] (ie, the group that controls the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as planning for the James Webb Space Telescope, etc).
The 1 billion increase in NASA's overall budget is good thing. But this increase is totally dwarfed by 12 billion funding re-allocation that also accompanies the budget increase. And they're really worried that alot of that funding will be taken away from the hard science missions (Hubble, Chandra, etc).
This is what alot of people, even here on /., don't realize when they bash NASA. NASA doesn't only fund the space shuttle and ISS and Mars rovers. There's a whole slew of astrophysical observational experiments, both earthbound and in orbit, that are contributing hugely to scientific research.
This funding shift implies NASA will be shifting it's focus, away from science and towards engineering. While the budget increase is good for the space travel programs and probably ISS, it's not so good for the pure science and observational programs.
Just my two cents.
Was it just me... (Score:5, Funny)
I've been around Texas, and I tell you I've never heard a native Texan mispronounce a word like "exploration" so obviously, repeatedly, and to me, ominously.
Timeline hole (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Timeline hole (Score:4, Informative)
How to pay for it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong wrong wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, stop liberating people would be a good start.
There you go.
Bush's Space Smokescreen (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, Bush II does the same thing. First, he tried the immigration proposal, and that went over like a lead balloon. Now, he's throwing the next shiny toy in front of us, hoping that we'll forget the issues that his administration are glossing over.
This is not a Kennedy-type announcement. We are not going back to the Moon, we will not be going to Mars, and more than likely, we will not be replacing the space shuttles.
Headline from 2012: President Jeb Bush announces that we're going back to Moon, and then on to Mars...
Re:Bush's Space Smokescreen (Score:5, Insightful)
The other piece I don't understandf is, if we have been to the moon before, why will it take us 16 years to return? I'm sure by then the Chinese will have landed.
Re:Bush's Space Smokescreen (Score:4, Interesting)
That's probably because you have never been anywhere near a real space program. I'm an astrophysicist and I'm Norwegian, still I recognize their great contributions to advancements.
How do you expect private enterprises to do some serious science and exploration? Private enterprises wants to get paid you know! That's what companies are for. There's mining, of course, lots of enterprises could make use of that. But that would turn the other suitable planets and moons in the solar system into junkyards, and screw it up just like we did with our own planet. I for one, don't want to see that happening.
Perhaps you can find similar ways to fund a private space program, but they will just be small change compared to the enormous costs. It all boils down to that you have to get most of it tax-funded. Private companies can do parts of it, the parts they do best, but it is still tax money.
Astrophysicists world-wide strongly depend on the work NASA is doing, and contributing back to the community. Perhaps most americans don't realize it, and that's bad of course, but I really can't put the blame on anybody but yourself: NASA has a really good outreach-program, and they even feel compelled to design missions with outreach in mind (compare the design of ESA's XMM to NASA's Chandra, at least people in NASA blames the design of Chandra on the fact that NASA has to keep an eye on outreach in everything they do).
With private companies, do you really think that things like NASA Astrophysics Data System [harvard.edu] would be open? Nope, it would have been closed, complete with DRM and the like. What a wonderful world that would be!
I know a lot of people working in NASA, both fresh-outs and mission Science Operation Coordinators, and it's being done a lot of really good work in NASA, and I really doubt it could have been done any better.
Furthermore, NASA is not only into the "space exploration" that's about just popping in and out of our atmosphere, around our tiny planet. It is also into some really fundamental science, like cosmology. That's the kind of research that expands the forefronts of science, I can understand why people don't recognize it, because it is so very far ahead, but it is nevertheless the driving force for any subsequent technology: Without Bohr's speculations on the nature of atoms, you would have no semiconductors and no computer for you!
I've never seen NASA actually kill off any private ventures, but I have seen a few kill themselves due to incompetence and or a "1) blah 2) ??? 3) profit!" business plan. And it may well be that others will "kill" themselves in the true sense of the word...
That being said, I'm not impressed with Bush in this matter either. The US needs to fix the economy, stop wars, transfer the defense budget into space exploration, free NASA from the hands of the DoD, and then let scientists decide what to do and how.
Reflecting on the prior article (Score:5, Insightful)
So Bush gets to look good to everyone who like space exploration -- which is most people -- without having to necessarily live up to his promise. Given Bush's track record as president and as a human being, I'm inclined to believe that he doesn't personally give a rat's ass whether we get back to the moon or Mars -- he knows that this is a simple campaigning trick (make a fantastic promise that you can't be held accountable for).
Yeah, I hope it does happen -- but I'm still not voting for the guy.
Re:Reflecting on the prior article (Score:5, Insightful)
That's it. That's just about all there is, and yet millions of Americans are going to run around cheering at what a great idea it is. It doesn't matter how realistic a project it is, or whether there is any point in doing it. Nor does it matter that it will take money away from successful and cost-effective unmanned projects, let alone that we're already hundreds of billions of dollars in the red every year.
There is one more key reason for this proposal, aside from it being an electoral politics trick: it will pump hundreds of billions of dollars towards the same "defense" and aerospace companies that are currently being subsidized with the conquest of Iraq, itself a gift to energy trading companies looking to control the world petroleum market.
The American public, in the eyes of our heavy-hitting political elite, resembles the Roman public in the film Gladiator. Just provide enough circus, and the public will approve or believe anything, and apparently that means anything. For example, the alleged economic recovery we've been going through. Yup, nothing like prosperity. Pretty soon we'll all be rolling in the dough. Any minute now, yessir, the big economic indicators prove it! Don't pay any attention to the whiners and unemployed losers, they don't know what they're talking about. If there was no recovery, "they" wouldn't "let" the government say there was, right? Right?
Re:Reflecting on the prior article (Score:5, Interesting)
I definitely support the idea of a permanent moonbase and a manned mission to Mars -- and any politician who supports those programs will have that support factored into my decision to support them. It'd be treated as just one of many factors when deciding whether I would vote for that politician.
In Bush's case, I dislike him so much due to his past actions that I have trouble even thinking of any action he could perform that would convince me to vote for him. Even if I were convinced that his reasons for this announcement were utterly selfless, that would not come close to convincing me to vote for him.
But I'm not going to look at a politician, ignore everything else, and say, "Because he supports the moonbase, I'll vote for him."
A Second Golden Age for NASA (Score:3, Interesting)
How many technologies we are using toady are based (somewhere in their roots) on the Apollo missions or shuttle missions? What a great advancement for mankind!
Re:A Second Golden Age for NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't mankind's idea, this is the idea of a United States president searching for ways to get himself re-elected without actually having to do anything, by setting crowd pleasing goals decades in advance that he will ultimately have no responsibility for.
How many technologies we are using toady are based (somewhere in their roots) on the Apollo missions or shuttle missions? What a great advancement for mankind!
The problem is that there is still no person or organization that is qualified to speak for mankind, nor does mankind have an unified message it wishes to convey to the universe. Mankind's current technological maturity is already thousands of years more advanced than its social maturity, causing all sorts of problems from the vast inequities in use of the earth's resources, to the constant threat of planetwide annihilation. Unless we spend the next few hundred years building a more mature society that is capable of handling the technological advances it has brought upon itself, mankind is going to burn out (figuratively and literally) much sooner than you expect. You might even live to see the end yourself...
Long Shot.... (Score:3, Funny)
Preying on Emotions (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say its pretty damn obvious he has no interest in the space program itself. Besides, it seems like a really bad time considering the economy + iraq + afghanistan. Then again, since most of the Iraq/Afghanistan money was conveniently left out of the budget, I could see how Bush plans to pay for this.
What saddens me is that, even though the majority of informed individuals can see right through this, there's not a damn thing we can do. There's no powerful candidate to oppose him. Odds are that he will win, and that'll serve as a pat on the back for all the stuff he's done since he entered office (in his mind and that of his administration).
Anyway, I would welcome a space program if it was sincerely intended. But I don't think this particular thing will amount to much - its very easy to plan something that'll cost hundreds of billions of dollars in the future, because you're not the one who's gonna be in office when the time comes to commit resources!
12B is chicken scratch (Score:4, Insightful)
How's Bush going to pay for it? (Score:5, Funny)
The way he pays for everything else ... by cutting taxes, of course!
NAHHH! Re:How's Bush going to pay for it? (Score:5, Funny)
The Mars ship may not be made in America, and the crew will be Dynagen contractors, but we can take pride in the fact that exclusive broadcast rights of the landings will belong to American big media companies.
Re:How's Bush going to pay for it? (Score:5, Insightful)
His MO is to announce big, impressive new government efforts, get them passed - and then block their funding.
If his history is any guide, here's what he'd planning: He will get bills passed declaring missions to the moon, Mars, whatever. He'll get lots of publicity from this. Hidden in the bills will be the elimination of existing NASA programs. Then, when the funding bills come up, he and his cohort will work hard to make sure that the funding isn't passed.
The end result will be to terminate most existing NASA programs, and fund no new programs. But he'll talk loudly and often about the great space programs that he has established.
For further details, google for the phrase "starve the beast".
(But the US military will get funding for an expanded space effort. That should reassure everyone in the world.)
Re:How's Bush going to pay for it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tax cuts have reduced government revenue -- they haven't paid for jack. And the "stimulus" they've provided (much like the stimulus your lifestyle gets if you max out your credit card debt in a month) has not grown enough to cover the cuts themselves, let alone the drastic increase in spending Bush has overseen.
See this article [washingtonpost.com] for starters.
Progress (Score:3, Funny)
Now we can do it in 11!
NASA Lottery (Score:3, Interesting)
It sucks. (Score:5, Funny)
In this day and age, when there's metric shitloads of technology all over the place and the internet makes valuable porn as free as air, President Bush gives it twelve years. What a tool.
Now I am reading more, and the deadline is actually 2020. That's seventeen years.
See, Kennedy had the balls to lay a firm deadline down. "You bitches will put a man on the moon before January 1, 1970 or I will come back from the grave and kick your ass," he said. He knew he was going to get shot. That's how hardcore he was. He also got crazy laid by Marilyn Monroe.
President Bush says, "You ought to think about just possibly putting a man on the moon sometime during this five year period."
President Kennedy showed us that you have to slap NASA around a little bit to get them to do anything worthwhile with manned space exploration. You can't be all lovey-dovey and set long gradual timetables.
And Bush mentions "the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods." So we'll have another Skylab ISS, but on the moon. The only differences will be that it won't crash into Australia like Skylab (it will crash into the Moon instead - that might sound hard to acheive since it would already be on the surface of the moon, but they will find a way to do that), it will leak more than ISS, and since it won't even be international we won't be able to bum rides from the Russians.
If Kennedy was alive in this day and age he would have said, "Fucking NASA, I am still alive in this day and age so you assholes better have a self-sufficient Mars base by the year 2013. Also make me a space elevator. And resurrect Marilyn Monroe." Then NASA would complain that it is not their job to resurrect people and Kennedy would punch NASA in the eye.
I bet the "Crew Exploration Vehicle" is going to blow the fuck up about twenty times too. You can probably trace the suckiness of manned space exploration to the decision to switch from cool names like "Mercury" and "Apollo" to crappy names like "Skylab" and "STS." When the Apollo blew up they fucking fixed it and came home, but when the Space Shuttle gets fucked up they make Powerpoints about it and ignore the problem.
Tim
Cost issues et. al. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the scariest part of Bush's speech: "NASA's current five-year budget is $86 billion. Most of the funding we need for the new endeavors will come from re-allocating $11 billion from within that budget." Hey other NASA folks out there, you know what this means: The return of the "ISS Tax".
Developing a new vehicle, returning to the Moon, going to Mars... This is all going to cost a lot of money, will it be fully funded? Part of the reason that the Space Shuttle is such a failure is the fact that it was not adequately funded*. One of the contributing factors to our ability to go to the moon the first time was that NASA had a blank check.
* This is addressed in the CAIB report, if you haven't read the section on the history of the politics of the STS, it's worth a glance.
A Cynic might suggest (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you say "Election Year", boys and girls? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is something that looks good in a 30 second spot, but falls apart when you look at it. How is Bush going to pay for it? Answer: He's not. The 5% increase is a joke - it's not going to get a man on the red planet. But we can pretend for the cameras.
See, he doesn't want to get caught like poppy lacking the "vision thing". So he comes up with this vision of a moon base that seemed cool when he was a kid and tells everyone we're going to do it.
Kind of like No Child Left Behind. All those reforms sounded pretty good too. Who knows, they might have been, but Bush didn't fund it. Still, it made him look good, just like this NASA announcement does.
I applaud the Bush for being the first President in a long time to get us excited about space exploration again. I just wish he really meant it.
Ah, diminished expectations. (Score:5, Funny)
2004: President (George W.) Bush announces that we're going to the Moon by 2020. Then to Mars.
2013: President (Jeb) Bush announces that the Chinese have agreed to allow us to send an American astronaut to their new moonbase, but only if we abandon all remaining manufacturing efforts.
2022: President (Jenna) Bush sadly informs the country that the Moon has come to us - the Chinese are dropping asteroid sized chunks of lunar debris on us, a new weapon that even our not-yet-deployed Star Wars program can defend against.
2034: An American finally lands on Mars, although only symbolically. A statue of the last President of the United States, Jenna Bush, is erected in the new Martian People's Republic History Museum.
Re:Ah, diminished expectations. (Score:4, Funny)
Lends a whole new meaning to the term, "red planet".
Operation Martian Freedom (Score:5, Funny)
Beagle Discovers Life On Mars
Beagle Discovers Oil On Mars
Bush anounces "Operation Martian Freedom"
Martians wellcome troops but "alien terrorists" from Neptune skirmish with coalition troops.
President Yaxcbat ( Neptune ) announces "Operation Freedom Earth"
Neptunians arrive at Earth and kick some Dubya butt
Neptunians introduce foolproof ballot punching machines using superior alien technology
Republicans thrown out of the Green House ( As the aliens renamed it )
Earth is happy.
China, Russia and Europe (Score:5, Insightful)
To save costs, China, Russia and the ESA should also be involved in the missions. China has announced its own plans to go to the moon in a similar time frame. Russia has some lunar experience, especially with their robotic craft in the early 1970s and their sample return missions at about the same time.
Joint missions to the moon are not a new idea. The Soviet Premier Khrushchev proposed a joint effort to go to the moon with the Americans in 1961 and 1963. It was rejected by JFK in 1961, but JFK was more willing to consider the idea when it was proposed again in 1963. Had JFK not been assassinated a few weeks later, a Russian might have walked on the moon in 1969 with an American.
If Bush is talking about "humanity", he needs to involve more of humanity in this new space exploration initiative than just Americans.
Re:China, Russia and Europe (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are serious about this set up a lean, mean organization like the old Lockheed skunkworks and tell them to go out and hire the best engineers they can find wherever they can find them, and put them all in one place (unlike NASA with a center everyplace a powerful politician managed to put one). I'm certain a whole lot of Russians, Indians and Chinese will flock to US payscales, except where their government stops them( and I imagine only China would successfully stop them). They would also be diverted from making ballistic missiles.
Mars & Moon about Science, Not about Squatting (Score:5, Insightful)
If we spend $1 billion this year on this goal, then I want SOMETHING that we can show for it. Either a fleet of moon landers that do real science, or a working, low-cost rocket system that can carry nice sized payloads outside of earth orbit, etc.
I just don't want to spend $1 billion for a bunch of soon-to-be-obsolete technical drawings of a prototype lander that'll bring 2 guys to poke around the moon for a few days and then call it quits.
In other words, this should be about the science of it FIRST. We need practical deliverables OTHER THAN just being able to watch TV on Mars or the Moon.
What a shitty name! (Score:5, Funny)
Then you had the Apollo landers. The name of a *god* who rode through the heavens in a flaming chariot. Now *there*'s an appropriate name. Or the "Saturn V". Named after another god (or a planet, but whatever). Still better than C.E.V.
Has anyone tried to *say* CEV? Chev? Chevy? How are we supposed to pronounce it? I swear, it sounds like a suppository.
This is a sign of bad leadership somewhere. It has to be. No one but a comittee would call a Mars craft the "Crew Exploration Vehicle". I don't want to explore the crew! Eck!
Oh well, I guess some old-timer there has some strange fetish... it is the end of all hope.
Re:What a shitty name! (Score:4, Interesting)
What the hell kind of name is the "Crew Exploration Vehicle"? At least the shuttle didn't have some crazy name; it was the shuttle. And it is a shuttle, so that was an OK name.
The official name of the Shuttle is "Space Transportation System."
We have to go to Mars! (Score:5, Insightful)
We've got to figure out a way to get people off of Earth and Mars is pretty good way to start. I mean just think of what a great accomplishment it would be for humanity. No human has ever set foot on another planet before and after hundreds of thousands of years humanity is finally very near the point where we are finally ready to do so. What an absolutely amazing accomplishment considering that a few hundred years ago the vast majority of us still though the Earth was flat.
We finally have a president that is going to set out a proposal for getting us to Mars and half of you poo poo it because you don't like the guy. While I'm no huge fan of Bush, I don't really care who the heck proposes the trip to Mars. At least it's out there now; at least it will be talked about. At least there is a possibility that it will happen. 10 years is a realistic goal considering how much it will cost. Even if it ultimately takes 15 - 20 years, so what? If NASA starts now and plans correctly, there will be plenty of money available. It just won't be there all at once. It will require careful planning and probably scaling back and eventually ditching the aging shuttle fleet, but again, so what? The current shuttle fleet has nearly outlived it's usefulness.
Perhaps many of you don't like the idea because we've already been to the moon. Well I was born in 1981 and there hasn't been anyone on the Moon in my lifetime, nor in the lifetimes of subsequent generations. I, for the life of me, cannot figure out why, after so many successful missions, we would stop sending people into space with the hopes of going father and farther and exploring more and more. Heck, I would be happy just to see us send someone back to the moon so I could witness it with my own eyes (via TV that is). Think of all the good things that could happen if we do send someone to Mars. Think of all the technological advances that are sure to arise as a result. Think of all of the children that might be inspired to become engineers and scientists.
American scientists and engineers are a dieing breed. There were very few from my graduating class in high school that planned on studying science or engineering when they went to college. A manned mission to Mars could provide an inspiration to all of the young kids out there to become interested in science and engineering. Hey, it happened during the space race in the 50's and 60's and it could certainly happen again.
In short, don't shoot down the idea because it comes from Bush. A manned mission to Mars wouldn't require a huge increase in funding if it is something that NASA starts planning for and funding now with the goal of getting someone there in say 10 - 20 years. We have absolutely nothing to lose by trying to go and we have quite a lot to gain. With all of the things that presently divide this great nation, a manned mission to Mars is something that almost every single American man, woman and child could get behind and be excited about regardless of who the president happens to be and regardless of what other circumstances we may find ourselves in. In my humble opinion, something like that is definitely worth pursuing, no matter the cost or the time it actually takes to get it done.
Don't worry, (Score:5, Funny)
Bush v. Kennedy (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to lift a 2-paragraph or so quote from the CNN article [cnn.com] on JFK somebody linked to earlier:
"Some derided the dream as lunacy. Others viewed it as just another strategic move in the Cold War chess match between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Kennedy had just been humiliated in the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, a communist ally of Moscow. In his speech, he called for many measures to combat communism, requesting billions, for example, to stop red insurgencies in Southeast Asia."
Now granted, in this day and age it's going to be pretty damned easy to beat the terrorists (in place of Communists) to the moon if the terrorists have no intention of going there in the first place. But still, both administrations had a chosen enemy: Kennedy the Communists and Bush Muslim extremists. One could argue that Bush also has an enemy in red China (and that they are the space program's intended target), but that seems less likely considering our trade volume.
Also, both presidents were coming off a controversial military action. America had the need for the containment of Communism drilled into its collective skull ever since Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech (if not before), and America has had the "War on Terrorism" drilled into its collective head ever since late 2001. Both presidents were realizing that military action was losing popularity, and both needed something to invigorate the national imagination (to paraphrase the CNN article's title). Now, I'm too lazy and this forum is too casual for me to research specifics of federal budgets and electoral politics during the Kennedy administration, but there may well be some similarities there, too.
In summation, my basic point is that it's possible Bush's intentions may be no less pure than Kennedy's were. Bush is certainly a popular target now, but he's still a part of current events and we don't have 20/20 hindsight through which to evaluate his actions. Current politics taint (or add flavor) to any discussion of this space plan, but only time will tell how it will be remembered.
Sometimes this place just cracks me up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfrickin' believable. You want Star Trek to happen for real? It has to start somewhere, and here comes the best thing to help that along, and all you can do is bitch
Re:Sometimes this place just cracks me up. (Score:4, Insightful)
You want Star Trek to happen for real? It has to start somewhere, and here comes the best thing to help that along
No, Bush's proposal will not help you get Star Trek technology faster.
Star Trek occurs several centuries into the future. In the meantime, we will deal with ordinary issues like rising retirement and health care costs. We need a balanced budget, a sustainable environment, and peace. Otherwise, you may end up with NO space program.
The key word here is "sustainable". NASA may get an extra billion $$$ now, but what will happen to that Star Trek future when the deficit gets out of control?
One glaring problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I found an interesting link while looking for temperatures of the moon and mars called The Artemis Project [asi.org]. I didn't look at it much, but they seem to indicate we'd have to build an underground habitat in order to endure those cold temps for long perids. Another good point they bring up is how the cold temps will simply cause tools to break down with use more easily.
Fallacy of the moon as a steping stone. (Score:5, Interesting)
Moon has almost no gravity, Mars is 1/3 earth normal which is a serious problem for long duration habitation. Moon has 28 day cycle of day/night, mars has almost a 24 hour day. Moon has no atmosphere to provide UV filtering Mars has a substantial atmosphere by comparison which significantly (along with greater distance from the sun ) reduces cosmic radiation exposure. Also mars atmosphere means suit designs for Lunar surface exploration and Martian surface exploration are very different. One similarity however may be longevity regarding dust wear and tear on the suit joints/seals.
One of the biggest fallacies is that the Moon is easier to reach. It is in some ways more difficult due to its lack of gravity/atmosphere. The moon offers little to help you slow down. The delta V needed from your engines to reach the lunar surface is actually more than that needed to reach the surface of mars thanks to gravity capture and aero breaking avaialble at mars. Thus total delta V to the surface is in the 6k/s. Hohman transfer delta V to mars is 4.5km/s and Mars slows you down, thus you actually have greater delta V on the mars mission but less of it is supplied by rockets which require fuel which is heavy.
In otherwords the reality of orbital mechanics and checmical rocket technology means it takes more gas to go from the earth to the moon than it does from the earth to mars. In simpler terms refuling on the moon is like driving from Atlanta to new york to get gas for a trip to D.C. Duration is longer, but energy expended is greater.
The other problem is the lunar refuling proposition still has not acounted for both elements of the rocket fuel. Oxygen is bound up in the regolith in large quantities.. 50% or more by mass in many cases. But you need something to burn with it and that is not as easily found. The best hope for this is finding ICE gathered in the craters. Otherwise you have to process regolith for elements found in the parts per million range rathere than signifigant portions. That takes some serious equipment, all of which takes more energy to land on the moon than it takes to land it on Mars directly from earth. Or of course you could lift it from earth. Thus if your reason for a lunar base is a staging point for Mars it dosn't make a whole hell of alot of sense. You could have put all that mass on Mars to begin with if you had enough energy to land it on the moon. Not to mention making rocket fuel on Mars is a hell of alot easier than making it on the Moon.
Don't get me wrong. The moon is a good destination for exploration in and of itself. I just want to point out the 'common sense' idea of using the Moon to get to mars is flawed.
Lets go to the moon to go to the moon and go to mars to go to mars. One does not require the other. I for one would love to see the plan of establishing an observatory ( a telescope or series of scopes ) on the moon. In such a mission there are some mission elements that would be germain to both ventures ( habitats, shielding, some elements of long duration mission suit design ). SO going to the moon could provide some insight for a mars mission but its not a pre-requisit by any stretch of the imagination.
Moon as stepping stone - not a fallacy (Score:4, Interesting)
If we want to get humanity permanently into space, we need to stop thinking in purely engineering and short term economic terms.
One of the reasons North America got settled relatively quickly, IMO, was that kings passed out huge chunks of land to cronies so they could set up colonies to profit by shipping goods home.
With space it's harder. Information is the main thing valuable enough to ship to earth - and the value of scientific information will decline rapidly after the first few missions to any place. (He3 may be worth shipping from the moon to earth - we'll see.) So we need to quickly bootstrap space settlement off of the value of scientific exploration, but rapidly reduce the costs of getting there and staying there.
Zubrin's plan is elegant and far cheaper up front - and does establish some infrastructure on Mars. But the cycle time of growth is very slow, not concentrated in any one location, and doesn't do much to reduce the cost of subsequent Mars missions. Maybe we'd keep that up for 10 years before deciding we weren't learning enough to bother maintaining the program. On to Titan, abandon Mars!
But if we build up a base on Luna - whatever the up front cost - it will make economic sense to maintain and expand it - initially as a much cheaper source of LOX for rockets, later for other exports supporting space exploration and settlement.
So - call it a con job if you wish (well, please don't tell the politicians), but taking the slower, more costly Moon-first approach seems more likely to get us permanently into space. I prefer to think of it as an investment in humanity's future.
Just to get my licks in before the thread archives (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the wrong way to go to space again. The nadir, the opposite, the way it shouldn't be.
I've been a space fanatic for 35 years. And emulating the Apollo model of spectaular and ultimately useless manned shots was proved a dead end thirty years ago. It is a dead end now.
We should go to the moon, but to establish mining and material processing plants. We should use mass drivers on the moon, rather than rockets, to move material into L2, L5, or earth orbit for contruction purposes. Using the moon for a launching platform for Mars is a terrible idea -- if you are in orbit, in zero G, you can use an ion engine to get to mars in weeks. But to launch from the moon, you have to use a high energy rocket, which actually gets you to Mars more slowly than the high-efficiency and always-on ion engine.
Build in space, not on the moon. Move lunar materials to Earth-moon space using an electric mass-driver on the surface, and make aluminum, steel, and titanium by the thousands of tons in lunar orbit or L5.
If you want to go to space as a nation, you go BIG, which means you proceed deliberately. No spectacular space shots of interest to geologists only. You build up industrial capacity in orbit and on the moon, and after that you can go anywhere at a much cheaper cost than lifting tons of miniaturized and fragile components from Earth, because you simply make what you need at the launching complex from raw materials. It's more expensive in the short term, but it the long term it pays for itself in materials and energy (powersats), AND you get the solar system as a bonus for cheap.
Additionally, if you industrialize near Earth, it means normal people could go and live off planet, because there would be enough resources to actually build habitats, regular shuttle services, make powersats for selling juice back home. Launching it all from Earth guarantees that although the "mission" of landing some miltary pilots on Mars would be accomplished, that no one else could go, and ultimately the whole program would be shut down because,and it pains me to say this, all we would have for our money would be some rocks, some video, and a small cadre of semi-military men who actually got to go to another world. It didn't work for Apollo, and it won't work here. This idea is pure Old NASA, and should be stopped immediately. Space should not be the province of ultrahealthy supermen who go up and come down. It should be about resources, economically sound exploitation, and the ability of a normal human to participate someday.
And finally, Bush's (Old NASA's) dream is a crock. The money will not be there after Supply Side 2, the Looting. The old dream will die again as the neocon party ball goes dim in the next ten years and all the bills come due.
Re:Wow Li'l George... (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead you chose to spend $100B on bombing Iraq, to be reviled forever.
You know, I wonder if that had some kind of factor to this decision. That GWB took a look at how he would be remembered by future generations, especially if he lost this election, and realized he didn't like what he saw - First attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor, erosion of constitutionally granted rights, 2 wars, an ugly occupation, an economy that just will not recover, and critics that grow louder as election time grows nearer. Maybe he saw a gambit like this as his only means of redeaming himself in the court of public opinion. That if he sets us out on a long term project, like going to Mars, then perhaps he will be remembered more favorably in the long term - even if he doesn't look so good in the short term.
Shuttle did NOT survive unmodified (Score:5, Insightful)
Has almost ANY NASA project survived intact 12 years?
The answer is that not even shuttle survived intact. Go back and look at the initial plans. It was for a flexible launch system that was fully reusable with a wide range of achievable orbits. What we got was a crippled alternative, with very high cost of turnaround, SRBs that must be almost completely rebuilt before reuse, and a maximum of Low Earth Orbit. Not much return on the dollar if you ask me.
I am also concerned that this announcement will drain all remaining funding from the current unmanned exploration programs. These are the programs that have been the greatest successes of NASA... and they are the ones learning to go with reusable designs, small and light, lots of flexibility. If we're being asked to drop those and pursue a single exploration strategy of manned missions, first to build a permanent presence on the moon and then a trip to Mars, it seems wrong. Let's not put all our eggs in this one basket.
Re:Shuttle replacements (Score:5, Insightful)
They do, in fact, build them just as good, if not better, than they did in the 1960s. The shuttle's problems are design and engineering issues, not anything to do with what generation of technology they are.
In fact, overall, the whole "they don't build them like they used to" is just a case of survivor bias. Everything from the 1940s that still works is on the mutant end of the MTBF curve and everything that didn't has been junked.