How To Beat Congress's Ban Of Humans On Mars 447
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban humans on Mars at NASA: "Provided, That none of the funds under this heading shall be used for any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars." The bill is held up in Congress and the anti-Mars language may be taken out. But in case the Mars ban becomes law, the Space Review has a handy guide on how NASA can beat the ban and continue its research and development without breaking the law."
Has Washington Lost its mind? (Score:1, Interesting)
Why would they put language like that in place, why do they think they need too?
Country is going to hell in a hand basket.
No wonder we as a country are getting plowed under by the rest of the world on the innovation front. No wonder math and science grads are dropping, no wonder there are more foreign students than Americans in the College science programs, there is no place left to go to do interesting things in America. We are legislating them out of existence with stupid funding policies.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Congress? (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't think there is anything preventing NASA from getting private funding to do it themselves, but frankly, i can't see any private sources coming up with the billions required to research a manned mars mission.
Its Cheapest to simply let commercial interests develop a way. That IS the American way after all, Capitalism [wikipedia.org].
Also i can't honestly see the point on why we need men on mars. Emotional as it is, its just not practical.
There is only 1 thing that brining a human to mars achieves, and thats a story. Does America really want to spend billions for another "One small step"?
Re:Congress? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the kind of stuff that you need to figure out who did it. Then, you need to find out why. Most likely, the reason will be somewhat insane, but at least you know what you are dealing with. Then, after you know who and why, you work to make sure that it does not happen again. Ignorance is a powerful disadvantage.
From the reference, it seems that this is an attempt to keep NASA form being administratively destroyed by a Bushism. Remember the guy Bush put in place that started slashing everything else to make one thing happen. The NASA budget is so tiny compared to so many other budgets, the solution to achieve things is not to slash and burn, but to fund it. OMG! Look at everything we have gotten out of the space race so far. Microwaves (communications and ovens), new materials, better computing, better aircraft, and more!
So, the who is not so important, but the why is very important. To prevent another slash and burn like the last Bush appointee.
Maybe this language is needed. Remember how many things this administration has made happen for short sighted goals that have disastrous mid to long term impacts (yeah, nothing new, but they are very good at it). Would it actually be good to go for Mars at the expense of so many other things?
InnerWeb
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
If NASA was based in Ron Paul's home district, I'd bet my dollar to your donut he'd be extolling the virtues of pork--errr... I mean--Martian exploration.
You need to dial your Cynacism-O-Meter up a notch and realize Libertarians are not so far from Democrats/Republicans as you may think.
Re:Could the headline have been more misleading? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not for real. A real program would have a deadline within the career horizon of most members of Congress, and have a much larger budget tied to achieving substantial milestones every single year.
So, you take money away from real projects, like Earth climate measurement, and you give it to a show program that is not realistically connected to its ostensible ends. The current "Vision" is to establish a lunar base in 2020 -- so far so good, and to launch the manned mission in 2037.
It's just not worth sacrificing our other space exploration goals for a goal deliberately set so far in the future it is doubtful it will ever be attained.
Space Shuttle? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sending humans to Mars is stupid and pointless (Score:4, Interesting)
Sending humans to Mars is stupid and pointless. It's an idea trotted out by politicians every decade or so to distract voters, not something to really do. Congress is right to pull the plug.
Space travel on chemical fuels is just barely possible, and it's not getting any better. Chemical rockets work about as well as they did forty years ago. Chemical fuels haven't improved, and they're not going to. We've had liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen for forty years, and that's as good as it gets.
Hence the fundamental problem. All spacecraft have to be so weight-reduced that they're fragile and unreliable. If spacecraft could be built with the weight budget of a jetliner, with about 50% of the mass at takeoff being fuel, they'd work fine.
Without fission, fusion, or antimatter power, or new physics, this isn't going to improve. We're stuck without a better power source.
There hasn't been a new power source for half a century now. First time since the Industrial Revolution that's happened. Most of the major problems in the world today, from global warming to the Middle East, come from that fact.
That's the problem. Mars is a sideshow.
Re:Could the headline have been more misleading? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it reveals the great frustration of US lawmakers with NASA for screwing up and mismanaging project after expensive project, year after wearying year. Between the overhyped and overpriced Shuttle program (and two very visible accidents on top of other problems), Hubble, the ongoing disaster that is ISS, and whole string of less visible projects... Congress simply doesn't trust NASA.
Historically, post-Apollo, NASA has tried to spin every project it can into being a precursor for manned Mars missions... Which Congress has historically been uninterested in funding. (This 'ban' isn't the first such, nor even the second...) Worse yet, NASA has also (historically) tried every trick in the book in the book to get around the 'bans', further engendering mistrust of them in Congress.
NASA has been hobbled practically since it's birth by the Shuttle - Station - Mars!! vision laid out by Werner Von Braun and enthusiastically endorsed by early NASA administrators. Yes Virginia - the Shuttle program has been around that long, the earliest studies are contemporary with the Mercury project. Many in NASA (at the time) felt that Max Faget and the STG represented a shortcut to beating the Russians and a way of getting early engineering experience before getting to the real task at hand - developing a shuttle and all the rest of Von Braun's vision.
Except - in real life it didn't happen that way. The Apollo (Lunar) program was an accident of a) the Cold War, and b) the Kennedy assassination. Before he died, Jack Kennedy was already seeking to distance himself from, and minimize the program. When he was killed, Apollo was funded as his memorial. Even so, budget cutbacks started as soon as they could be managed - Apollo landing missions and post Apollo programs were being cancelled or cut back as early as 1966! By the time we actually reached the moon, the program was already running on vapors.
So far as public interest goes - just look at the TV numbers of the various landing missions. The great public interest, much ballyhooed by space fanboys, simply never existed.
Re:Congress? (Score:2, Interesting)
The future use of such knowledge is going to be valuable I'm sure, but thats the distant future, best left solved with future technology, with future goals in mind.
Its like learning how much paper money needs to be burnt per second, to lift a hot-air balloon. There might be *some* value in knowing, but none of it is helpful in the slightest in everyday life, yet its an extremely expensive research to perform.
IE: Its not practical.
Re:When they return.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know of any fuel on this planet that will take a large enough payload of fuel to Mars for the return trip. Who said they would ever return? At current tech, it's a one way ticket.
You haven't seen any probes sent with enough fuel to return. You won't see it anytime soon. Fuel that is light enough to take, but has enough mass to provide thrust to escape Mars orbital velocity doesn't exist. Nuke has a limitation, as you use the fuel, it drops below critical mass. Shielding the travelers is a problem. Getting enough initial thrust to launch off Mars, then reaching escape velocity without overheating is a problem.
Got any working ideas. Before you post, check the physics involved. A quick crash course in the basics is here.
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978373 [berkeley.edu] Watch or listen to Gravity and Satellites 1 & 2. When you understand the amount of energy required to take enough energy and mass to Mars for the return trip with passengers, then feel free to post. Don't forget you need more than just enough fuel to escape Mars, but also enough to slow down to reach Earth. Earth is in a lower orbit. To reach this orbit, you need to slow down.
Deceleration to orbital speeds is required for survivable re-entry. Leaving Mars to return to Earth does include going from an higher solar orbit to a lower orbit and the requirement to reduce kinetic energy to reach the lower orbit. In other words, you will expend fuel just to slow down.
The Moon mission had the advantage of the Moon and Earth are in the same Solar Orbit and return from the moon required only a little energy because of the low lunar gravity. To get to the Moon, there was not the requirement to leave Earths orbit. Going to Mars has none of these advantages. Mars does have lower gravity than Earth, but the requirement to leave Earth Orbit, increase kinetic energy to reach the outer orbit of Mars, land, and relaunch (with atmospheric resistance), reduce kinetic energy, to reach Earth orbit, and reduce kinetic energy for re-entry is simply a physics problem for energy of magnitudes greater proportion than visiting the Moon and returning. The Mars mission can not be done like the Moon mission. They carry way too little fuel.
http://www.muller.lbl.gov/teaching/Physics10/PffP.html [lbl.gov]
You might make it to Mars, but I doubt you will be returning in my lifetime.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Congress? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Congress? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Hippocratic oath doesn't come into play; the procedure has typically already been done, and even if the claim is denied, it doesn't mean you're not allowed to have the surgery, just that you may have to find alternate funding. Of course the flip side of this is hospitals / offices performing random tests just to be able to bill for something as well. So I wouldn't put blame soley on the insurance companies.
At any rate, all of this is moot, since Congress doesn't have any advisors to tell them other research would be more benefical than a trip to Mars.
Re:Congress? (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone is up in arms about how there's a lot of programs (like the Hubble and the spacestation) that we are abandoning. The reason we are abandoning them is because of a lack of funding. Why is there a lack of funding? One big reason is because we are spending money on human space-travel projects because of this goal to reach Mars. No, instead, let's keep funding the projects that are actually providing us with all sorts of valuable research.
Re:Could the headline have been more misleading? (Score:2, Interesting)
Frankly, no, it wouldn't be. I feel part of the problem with any sort of interest in the space program right now, is we're not *going* anywhere. Back when NASA was getting men into space, and heading for the moon, large numbers of kids wanted to be astronauts, and go into space. Now, NASA is spinning their wheels, sending robots everywhere, and kids all want to be sports stars or music stars.
If / when the space program (private or NASA) starts going *somewhere,* people will start to become interested again. I would expect that watching a robot plant a flag on Mars would attract a lot fewer viewers than seeing a person (male or female) stepping foot on Mars, and the heck with the flag planting. Seeing people do such a thing is *far* more awe-inspiring simply *because* it is people. Robots can get sent anywhere, but you can't look at a robot and think "that could be me!" when you're a kid. Seeing a person step foot on another planet (even our Moon again), you can see yourself doing the same thing.
For myself, I really want to see mankind get back on the move. Get a moon base started, get men to Mars, start *going somewhere.*
When I was a kid, the shuttle was going to get us out into space, and make space travel possible for the every-man. Then, the "1 month" turn-around became "12+ months," and then we had Challenger. Now, we've got private industry looking at getting into space without waiting for NASA, we've got Virgin Galactic, we've got Hyatt (I think?) looking at putting up somewhere for Virgin Galactic to *go*
Let's get this candle re-lit, and get *going*
Re:Congress? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's making the assumption that the condition isn't life-threatening. Ask how long the appeals process *can* take..
...Which does nothing to bring back a dead patient...
And praytell, where does one go to ask to borrow 10k-100k that [because of the potential of death on the table] may never be paid back, other than a loan shark?
Considering the staffing situation at most hospitals, the number of "random" tests performed isn't as big as the insurance companies would like you to believe. Many times what they call "unnecessary diagnostics" was a doctor trying to make sure they had the right answer.
I'm not saying the scammers aren't out there at work... they're just not at the levels that'd kill the insurance industry.
Mainly because there's no way to prove that a Mars trip might not be as beneficial.