71 Percent of U.S. See Humans On Mars By 2033 266
astroengine writes "In a recent poll funded by the non-profit Explore Mars, 71% of respondents agreed that the U.S. will send a human to Mars within the next two decades. Unfortunately, on average, the sample of 1,101 people surveyed thought the U.S. government allocated 2.4% of the federal budget to NASA — in reality it's only 0.5%. With this in mind, 75% of the respondents agreed/strongly agreed that NASA's budget should be increased to explore Mars through manned and robotic means."
In related news (Score:5, Funny)
99% Percent of U.S. See Flying Cars by 1985.
Re:In related news (Score:5, Funny)
99% Percent of U.S. See Flying Cars by 1985.
October 2015. And jaws 27 at the same time.
Re:In related news (Score:5, Informative)
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To be fair, we had the tech to put a base on the moon starting around 1979. The ISS (with landing gear) would do just fine on the surface of the moon (except, ya know, the whole 15 days in the shade part).
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...that, and the abrasive lunar regolith playing hell with the door seals.
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Yes that might be a problem indeed. We better go to Mars instead, there is hardly any wind nor dust there you know?
Re:In related news (Score:5, Interesting)
No he probably means the highly abrasive regolith dust that is kicked up and tracked in by every person using the airlocks.
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All the passwords on ISS computers are 123456? :-)
That's clearly insecure. They're 12345678.
Re:In related news (Score:5, Insightful)
We had the tech, but not the money. Are we going to have the money by 2033? I sure hope so, but it looks iffy. A Mars shot would probably take 20 years nowadays (the moon shot took 20 years too if you count the time that the Saturn V engines were in development when Kennedy announced it). That means it would have to survive 4 presidential elections and 8 congressional elections. Space is one of the easy budgets to raid money out of. In essence we'll need 20 years of sustained prosperity. It will probably be 2020 that a Mars shot will be announced. Probably around the time China announces a moon shot. Or maybe their own Mars shot. I hope they announce it. Maybe we need that to get up off our butts. There's no way in hell we're gonna watch someone else get there first.
Re:In related news (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't believe that a manned mission to mars could ever be achieved from international competition. It would require international cooperation on a massive scale.
Costly, expensive does not even begin to cover it. A program for a manned mission to Mars is at least a magnitude of order more difficult than the Apollo program. A starting guess would be 10x of the cost of the Apollo program in adjusted dollars for inflation. One figure I found was $135-billion in 2005 Dollars (cost of the Apollo program).
Now if it is 10x harder to do mars, are we talking about 1.3 Trillion?
Personally I would like to see this seriously pursued in my lifetime, however ..
We have gotten good at robotic missions and I would like to see more exploration and science missions. I know that a sample return mission would get some level of excitement, but it is likely that placing more science on the surface is of more benefit. Maybe rovers with an ability to find samples to be sent to a surface based robotic lab instead of / in addition to of self contained rovers.
We also must ask if Mars is to use so many resources would we be neglecting other robotic planetary missions?
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I don't believe that a manned mission to mars could ever be achieved from international competition. It would require international cooperation on a massive scale.
International cooperation hasn't proven that valuable.
Costly, expensive does not even begin to cover it. A program for a manned mission to Mars is at least a magnitude of order more difficult than the Apollo program. A starting guess would be 10x of the cost of the Apollo program in adjusted dollars for inflation. One figure I found was $135-billion in 2005 Dollars (cost of the Apollo program). Now if it is 10x harder to do mars, are we talking about 1.3 Trillion?
If we are talking over a trillion dollars, then it's not worth doing whether as a rich dude project or an international cooperation project. Fortunately, there's no reason it would have to cost that much. Cut two to three orders of magnitude off that price and you'll have a viable project which doesn't need the veneer of international cooperation in order to work.
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Sorry, I think Kartu and Guzzirider are correct, going to Mars is AT LEAST 10x harder than going to the Moon, and may well be 100x harder. Meanwhile our technological capabilities are only modestly improved over 1969. We have slightly better rocket technology (we were already bumping up against the practical limits of what is possible with Saturn V). Clearly we have improved our ability to conduct space operations, somewhat, but there's nothing we are doing now that was impossible back in the 70's and none
Re:In related news (Score:4)
A program for a manned mission to Mars is at least a magnitude of order more difficult than the Apollo program. A starting guess would be 10x of the cost of the Apollo program in adjusted dollars for inflation. One figure I found was $135-billion in 2005 Dollars (cost of the Apollo program). Now if it is 10x harder to do mars, are we talking about 1.3 Trillion?
Why exactly is a mission to Mars "at least an order of magnitude more difficult" and at 1969 prices to boot? Let's take a look at what it would cost to return to the moon, no we no longer have a Saturn V but since then we've perfected rendezvous operations in space both ship to ship and ship to station enabling us to put the ISS in orbit that is 4 times what Saturn V could lift to LEO. With about 2.3 launches with a SpaceX Falcon Heavy we can put the same weight in orbit for roughly $230 million. You know how much of those $135 billion the Saturn V was? About 47 of them. So already there you have a $46.77 billion savings. Russia has been making fairly serious moon program plans, they estimated the cost of putting humans on the moon starting now to about $15 billion USD.
Elon Musk of SpaceX has been pulling out some rather ambitious plans for a Mars colony for $36 billion, even if we include a certain level of exaggeration and optimism I feel quite confident that with another Apollo program in cost we'd already be on Mars and then some. It's certainly not "another order of magnitude" away. But the thing is, there's no interest in another Apollo program or even half of one, it's trouble enough finding a billion or two for rovers, probes and telescopes. And it's rather hard for anyone private to see the ROI in funding it themselves, and not for a lack of trying. SpaceX is doing great building rockets but there's a commercial market for that, Mars crew capsules/landers/habitats/launchers not so much.
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It will probably be 2020 that a Mars shot will be announced. Probably around the time China announces a moon shot. Or maybe their own Mars shot. I hope they announce it. Maybe we need that to get up off our butts. There's no way in hell we're gonna watch someone else get there first.
It worked in the 60s, and I see no reason it wouldn't work today.
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It worked in the 60s, and I see no reason it wouldn't work today.
The 60's had a Cold War space race and booming U.S. economy.
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People rarely think the economy is booming in the present tense. Even back then you'll find politicians and pundits bemoaning the "poor state of the economy".
Never underestimate the power of national pride (Score:2)
Money not the problem ... (Score:2)
The resource that is lacking is WILL.
Call it "political will" ... "moral fortitude" ... whatever. Once the tech is available, the only thing preventing any group from making a large project like this happen is the will to do it. Which is precisely why we probably WILL have a Mars mission (manned) by 2033 ... but it WILL NOT be the government doing it.
Private enterprise has the will, the stated goal, is gathering the money, and refining the tech. Elon Musk is not the only one, either.
People routinely OVERes
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We had the tech, but not the money. Are we going to have the money by 2033?
We have the money, it is just that we prefer to spend it on other things.
Seriously, what is a moon base good for? Low G golf?
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um...
Kennedy's speech: May 25, 1961
Appolo 11 Landing: July 20, 1969
Saturn design was begun in 1961.
The best you can do is claim the engine itself (F-1), because one of the ways the Apollo / Saturn projects were so successful so quickly was they used a lot of off the shelf or existing tech to cut time. The F-1 engine that was the core of the Saturn V (note: not the earlier Saturn rockets) rocket was one example, with individual components being tested in 1957, and the complete engine being fired in 1959 (tho
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I think you underestimate our apathy. We've been watching them do all kinds of things first for decades, from green energy investment to bullet trains. We just don't care anymore, our national pride is gone. It's been replaced with "Always low prices, always". That is most important to us now. And guess who that ends up helping most?
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My recommendation is for you to play the game Civilization. Then tell me how important exploration is compared to building more granaries and city walls. The answer is that they are both important and you need to do both to survive.
Life != Game
For one thing, you can't restart life when things go pear shaped.
And you don't have Leonard Nimoy narrating.
(And the key to winning in Civ IV (V doesn't exist) is to settle as much as you can early on, everything else be damned, and build the Great Wall of China as quickly as possible. Then you don't need city walls except later, to build castles. Exploring is only useful if you discover settlers or technologies - else it's a drain.)
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But what would be the benefit of "bases on the Moon"? That kind of effort has to be motivated by something greater than Cold War bragging. Unless natural resources can be pillaged and slave labor secured there is no real incentive for anyone who can to go to space., and as we know, there is sadly no evidence of slave labor, aka aliens, despite some claims. As for natural resources well Google seems to be on to something, minerals something..?
Anyway, Americans need to watch less bad television and put more f
Benefits are a given but which flag flies over it? (Score:2)
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Surely you mean 1999 [wikipedia.org]?
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27% think humans have already been to Mars
Re:In related news (Score:5, Insightful)
Half the population believes in creationism and alien abductions.
I'll pass on putting any stock in their predictions or beliefs.
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When I was a kid, we all thought that moonbases and Mars were just around the corner. And we thought that the Space Shuttle was going to live up to its initial promise of being a truly "Take off and land, then take off again" spaceship (not a super-expensive splashdown pod with a cargo bay and wheels). When I became an adult and really started to appreciate the politics and science, I realized that these were far from just around the corner, and how much of the initial incredible progress that NASA made was
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75% of the respondents agreed/strongly agreed that NASA's budget should be increased to explore Mars through manned and robotic means.
Unless they were also asked what programs to cut to pay for NASA's budget increase, this question is meaningless.
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Mad skillZ (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mad skillZ (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the trend is to overestimate the short-term changes, while underestimating long-term actually.
And long-term gets shorter all the time. We've made more technological progress in the last 50 years than we did in the 100 before that, or the 200 before those, or the 500 before. (i.e. 1963-2013 has seen more technological progress than 1163 - 1663 did.
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The computers are better and communications are more pervasive and ubiquitous.
It is laughable to dismiss the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration like that.
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And long-term gets shorter all the time. We've made more technological progress in the last 50 years than we did in the 100 before that, or the 200 before those, or the 500 before.
So logically, we're going to asymptote and know everything about everything and do anything we want to in 2063. Or so the singularity believers claim.
The trouble is, it's based on a phony idea. The last 50 years of technological progress are impressive, but so were the previous 50 years: Some of the major developments between 1913 and 1963:
- Mass produced cars
- Widespread use of AC electric power
- Widespread use of telephones
- plastics
- nuclear power
- radio
- television
- significant air travel
- vacuum tube c
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You sound like one of the people who told the Wright brothers they'll never fly. Or maybe you're that 1920s New York Times editor who said that rocketry is junk science and would never get us to space let alone the moon.
Re:Mad skillZ (Score:4, Insightful)
Getting someone to Mars (and presumably back again) is an engineering problem. We know how to do it in theory - we know multiple ways it could be done and all that remains is to decide the "best" way to do it and find the funds to achieve it.
But "the funds" will be eye watering sums to the average man in the street and the payback is hard to define, certainly in the short term.
We can't even find the funds to seriously research nuclear fusion. That is currently a physics problem rather than an engineering problem, we don't currently know how to build a working commercial fusion power plant but it seems likely that one should be possible and the payback is pretty obvious.
I don't foresee a man on Mars or a working commercial fusion power plant in my lifetime - I'm just old enough to have been alive when there were men on the moon but not old enough to remember it. I've some hope that China might spur on the US and EU eventually but I think there's another 15-20 years before Chinese accomplishments go beyond the "well we did it in the past and we could do it again now if we really wanted to but there's no point" attitude of the majority of the electorate in the West.
So I don't see a man on Mars in 20 years - just possibly I see the start of a race to put a man on Mars in the next 20 years.
Tim.
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I agree, it is too expensive, and not enough payback.
The only reason to send a human to Mars would be if he is going to stay there and found a colony. Anything else can be achieved in a way that is better and cheaper by robots. And we already know we can send (and recover alive) people to space, so no need to do it again unless it is for good reason.
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Remember it's not if, but when... (Score:2)
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Sending and recovering people between the Earth and the Moon isn't the same as another planet - it's a good start, but the logistics are different. It's a bit silly to think we're going to go from sending a few robots here and there to building a colony in one fell swoop. In theory, it could be done - but the thing about a Mars colony is that it will absolutely require long term funding. If all nations abruptly decided to stop funding the ISS today, the astronauts on board could come back down to Earth u
Mars support (Score:2)
Another big difference though is that, precisely because of the greater transportation times, a Mars base would be designed to be far more self-sufficient than the ISS. Consider that the ISS is a sealed can that must get all it's replacement supplies from Earth, while a Mars base will have ready access to essentially unlimited quantities of water (assuming it's built near the icecap or other source), carbon dioxide, and sand. Assuming the sand is non-toxic all you need is some big, tough, transparent bags a
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You sound like one of the people who told the Wright brothers they'll never fly. Or maybe you're that 1920s New York Times editor who said that rocketry is junk science and would never get us to space let alone the moon.
The NASA timeline for a manned mission to mars is 2037 if is very possible that the time line will slip and miss the next two decades mark. It's not that we can't do it it's just that many things must go right for us to achieve this goal by 2040.
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Two things man is exceptionally good at with great consistency; overestimating his progress in the future and underestimating the resilience of nature.
Hey, the survey only talked about "sending" a human to Mars.
"Sending" is the easy part. It's the actual travel, landing, and staying alive that is going to be difficult. May be we should just let Russia, China, or India, figure it all out for us. The US has become too risk adverse these days.
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Indeed. And consistently ignoring that all these predictions from the past have not materialized...
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Besides, lack of options. No CowboyNeil option, which should not be optional.
And... (Score:2, Insightful)
76% of the U.S. population believes an invisible guy in the sky watching them all the time too.
Unlikely doesn't get more likely just because you got the majority to believe it...
It's worse than that (Score:4, Funny)
98.6% believe in an invisible force that causes objects to fall to earth when released.
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Re:And... (Score:5, Funny)
That would be the drones flying overhead, and they are in fact real...
Meanwhile in the UK ... (Score:3)
"Construction along the line is due to start in 2017 and be completed by 2025. The first train services will run between London and Birmingham from 2026." https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/developing-a-new-high-speed-rail-network [www.gov.uk]
Add in the delays and 2033 looks possible! - Would you believe England used to rule 3/4 of the planet?
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By the time it is running Japan will have a super-super-high-speed maglev service going. Even when we try to build something like this we have no ambition.
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I hear there are still 22 countries on Earth that have never been invaded by the British...
Or vice versa.
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Add in the delays and 2033 looks possible! - Would you believe England used to rule 3/4 of the planet?
I hear there are still 22 countries on Earth that have never been invaded by the British...
As a country, we do pine somewhat about the loss of the Empire... maybe it's time to rebuild it.
j/k :)
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Do it in space. There's no one to stop you. It'll be like the old days but even greater. A couple of planets, some moons, hell colonize a few big meteors too!
If it was my country I'd build some robot slave labor to do all the dirty work, at least until population pressure kicks in on the home world (no we're not there yet, give it another hundred years).
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Unsurprising (Score:3, Funny)
Gravity! (Score:2, Troll)
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71 Percent of U.S. See Humans On Mars By 2033 (Score:5, Funny)
We can't organize that well (Score:4, Insightful)
What those 77% of people fail to realize is that we can no longer organize ourselves well enough to accomplish this sort of task. NASA, as an institution, long ago stopped being about technical successes and exploration. During my years working with NASA, I discovered that a NASA manager's career success is measured solely by the number of people they manage and the size of the budget they control. Not by how many successful missions they achieved, not by the technology breakthroughs they fostered, and not by any other rational measure beyond their org chart success.
So we have no government agency capable of focusing on such a complicated goal as landing humans on Mars. They immediately get distracted with project management issues and politics. If private industry were to try and undertake this effort, there would have to be some financial incentive for our largest private spacefaring corporations to try and cooperate, since none have the resources alone to achieve the goal within 20 years. And the only model they have for organizing themselves is NASA today. No one still working in the industry knows how NASA of the 1960's worked, and society has changed to the point that the technical people required for such an effort are no longer motivated to make the selfless sacrifices needed to achieve such a goal. All the good engineers left aerospace for the Dot.Com world in the '90s. Those remaining few are motivated by commercial and personal financial success, and that requires a much shorter planning and gratification cycle than 20 years.
Sorry, we won't be going to Mars. We're a bunch of greedy, self-absorbed, small-minded apes that have reached the pinnacle of our organizational skills at the bottom of our gravity well.
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We're a bunch of greedy, self-absorbed, small-minded apes...
...with a bad habit of glorifying the past and forgetting that there's never been a time where this was even one iota less true than it is today. "The pathetic culture we've devolved into today could never even accomplish today the great things our ancestors did, much less progress even further." This has been the common wisdom since... at least since we've been capable of writing it down. It was certainly the common sentiment among the Greeks (well before they actually accomplished the things we know th
Re:We can't organize that well (Score:5, Insightful)
The latest Mars rover benefited from a lot of hype. Unwarranted hype at that. It's just a rover, it's not doing anything new, only something old and a little extra.
I don't think I'm supposed to respond to AC's but...what we got with the MSL is a small car sized (car analogy eh?) robot that can largely think for itself placed on another planet by the world's largest supersonic parachute, a set of rocket engines used to hover for several seconds, and a crane capable of gently lowering this giant robot from said rocket hover ship without damaging what is by far the most sensitive equipment ever to leave orbit. Oh yeah, all of that was operated by 70+ explosions that all worked exactly as intended. Streamed live for the whole world to see. The fact that jerks in basements can bemoan that as hype shows how many great engineers there are working today. If you spout out "it's not doing anything new, something old and a little extra"* to a feat of that magnitude, it means that there are so many engineers cranking out awesome shit everywhere that you're numb to the amazingness of human achievement. If you think that was easy, but a microcontroller dev kit, switches and motors for under $20 (a miracle in itself) and try and do a simple project like a garage door opener or anything interacting with the physical world and see how long it takes you. Is there a problem with bureaucracy? Sure but don't use that as excuse to spit on all of the greatness that is still currently being accomplished. You guys are as bad as hollywood when they brush off all of human invention as being given to us by aliens in whatever stupid scifi movie because thats easier to comprehend than "smart people exist".
*This deserves its own rant because its 100% bullshit. MSL is doing plenty of new things and the "a little extra" approach is ALL OF SCIENCE...see the development process from mecury to gemini to apollo. Cause really that was nothing new either. I mean the Chinese had "rockets" ~800 years ago.
I'd just prefer the Moon (Score:3)
You may as well be on the Moon for all the good it does. Mars may be a great goal on some scientific agenda however we have the Moon and it's much closer. The only thing however that comes to mind in both cases for colonies or even some manned outpost is what would you do with it? Yes, there's the scientific exploration aspects of it but as World History would point out, Explorers were in search of riches, trade routes or room to expand. The technical hurdles would certainly mean more expansion in terms of possibly new technologies that we can use here on Earth, new material science, new electronics or new discoveries on Physics. Other than that, I would submit that the Moon or Mars don't really represent much other than commercial mining opportunities. In order to have the remotest chance of being economically feasible, this would mean that there would have to be some new or unknown mineral lurking out there, or something so rare here on Earth that the astronomical (pun intended) costs to retrieve and process would make sense. Now, if it were purely for expansion would could always find a planet like Pandora and just send in the Military to fight blue giant cat people or if you're of the Star Trek genre, then you could find Orion Slave Girls [youtube.com] and bring them back for fun and profit!
How are we getting there? (Score:2)
71% of respondents agreed that the US will send a human to Mars within the next two decades.
The other 29 percent know we don't have a launch platform capable of getting us there.
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Number of humans that have been to the moon : 12
Number of humans that have been as far as the moon 24 (Including the 12 above)
Number that have been out of near earth orbit in the last 40 years : 0
In 1970 we were landing on the moon, could travel as a regular commercial passenger at Mach 2, had a plane that cruised for long distances at Mach 3+ (Although we did not know it at the time), and now we don't ....
Forget Mars we can't even get to the moon anymore ...
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We landed a one ton robot on the moon with a fucking sky crane, and will be flying by Pluto in two years. The moon is easy, nobody is going because there's no longer a stupid flag-planting pissing contest to motivate it.
humans on mars (Score:2, Insightful)
if any humans get to mars by 2033 they wont be american, theyll be chinese.
"a nationwide survey of US citizens" (Score:2)
Just like that 2012 Gallup survey of US citizens, the one that found 46% of American respondents believe an invisible superhero who lives in the sky created humans in their present form.
Forgive me if I consider US citizens something of an unreliable group when it comes to science.
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Budgeting (Score:2)
I am a big proponent of NASA. I would like to see the budget increased. I would do it with cuts in the military and corporate subsidies (particular to oil companies).
Then next time a stupid survey asks "would you like to increase spending" I really wish there were a follow-up question "what would you give up to see this happen."
Heck, I give 110% at my job and SO SHOULD THE BUDGET!
The US is outsourcing our Mars landing (Score:2)
Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps (Score:3, Interesting)
Jumping the gun is not necessarily the best way to get things done.
The most oft-discussed and visible triumphs of manned space have been by necessity "get there, plant the flag and get out."
But the ultimate goal should be not just to visit space or establish some dangerous and isolated outposts there (though there is no shortage of volunteers!)...it should be to move into space in a series of self-sustaining stages.
This means we first need to build a space colony here on Earth, and decide on some practical steps to take that will achieve the ultimate goal. And each step should be of immediate practical and commercial value.
I would like to call attention to Marshall Savage's amazing project and book, The Millennial Project. [wikipedia.org] another synopsis [asi.org] and at Amazon [amazon.com]. Some have picked fun at Savage's priorities, but frankly until this book/project arrived on the scene there had been nothing like it.
In that plan, terraforming Mars is step 6 of 8. In this scenario we are not just landing on Mars to establish an outpost... at that stage we have already perfected the technology for habitats in space. If our focus is on 'the next logical (small) step' instead of some ultimate goal and devote our complete effort to these steps, by 2033 we could be moving outward in all directions... instead of just one.
Predictions (Score:2)
Clearly this doesn't hold a lot of valor.
Manned spaceflight: over in 10 years (Score:2)
In ten years manned spaceflight with be over. Quite likely for more than an hundred years if not more.
It's a lovely idea, sure (Score:2)
....as long as we're allowed to continue to spend money we don't have, why not?
Of course, I suspect that when you ask the question differently, you're going to get a very different response:
"Assuming that whatever % of budget goes to NASA comes directly out of services you receive, what % of budget should NASA get?"
The remaining 29% might agree (Score:2)
but just don't see them on planet Earth anymore by that time.
71% of Americans pig-ignorant, innumerate morons (Score:2)
But I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
eyesight THAT good? (Score:2)
Taxes (Score:2)
I'm sure most of them certainly would allocate more money to NASA. Ask them though if they're support a tax increase in order to bolster NASA's budget. Almost all would drop their support in a heartbeat.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not anti-tax and I PERSONALLY would have no issue with paying a little more if I knew it'd go to NASA. I'm just saying that most people probably wouldn't. Most operate under the impression that the government just has all this free money to send where it wants with no clue that t
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Don't get me wrong - I'm not anti-tax and I PERSONALLY would have no issue with paying a little more if I knew it'd go to NASA. I'm just saying that most people probably wouldn't. Most operate under the impression that the government just has all this free money to send where it wants with no clue that those resources and funds have to actually come from somewhere.
Yeah, just think if NASA had been allowed to keep the patents and royalties from teflon, velcro and any number of products developed through the early space program. They could probably be fully self-funded by now, but instead, taxpayers payed for the research and private companies got to profit from it.
We could get there (Score:4, Insightful)
Mars Direct Program (Score:2)
poll says americans like services, dislike taxes (Score:2)
If you ask people 'do you like generally non-controversial policy X', they will support it in droves. The public's ability to understand how much things cost, how much they are willing to pay, and how they should prioritize their concerns is a completely different matter. I couldn't find it in three minutes of searching, but Pew had a poll a couple of years back where the only category the US respondants could agree on is cutting foreign aid to cut the defecit, which is only because the budget doesn't have
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You might be able to build a space elevator on mars, gravity is lower there, that should make it a lot easier to send stuff home.
We're not that far from having the tech to be able to colonize Mars f'real. But we're not there yet, and I doubt we'll be there in 20 years either. I think we could be, but only if we put aside childish things, and BWAHAHAHAHA
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Exactly. What is the actual cost/benefits ratio here?
Saying we made it there? So what? What's the point if there's nothing there of use of value that we can bring or make use of back here on Earth?
Are we out of human suffering and everyone has enough food, water, shelter, medical care, and jobs that we can piss away money into space?
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How well did that turn out for Rome? ;)
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Ironically, as gravity reduces and the ease of building a space elevator increases, the costs of the regular alternatives to an elevator decrease.
It doesn't change the fact that if you bring down as much as you send up it's basically free to operate, which distinguishes it significantly from pretty much everything else.
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"What if a supernova goes off some hundred light years away,"
If that happens the people on mars will have even less of a chance than everyone on earth because of the thin atmosphere.
"If we make it our long-term goal to establish a permanent colony on Mars, at least we'll have a backup of humanity in case disaster should strike."
How will a colony that depends on earth for survival be any sort of backup? You talk about terraforming but that will literally take thousands of years if it can be made to work at a
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Re:Physics for Future Presidents (Score:5, Funny)
And 57% of respondents agree by 2053 we will be flying around the galaxy in faster-than-light spaceships. You know, like the Millennium Falcon. They saw it in a movie. And most of those believe Obama is a Secret Muslim Nigerian. What are we trying to prove here?
(emboldening, mine)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like we're simply trying to prove the validity of a certain method of business...
Hello, I am the Nigerian President of the USA,
As you know, my countries are in turmoil, so I need your help to smuggle my Secrit Muslim inheritance of pressious diamounds from Nigeria into the USA to solve this dire $16.5 trillien nashonal debt problem.
Unfortunately, only the Millennium Falcon is capable of transporting these valuables through the Evil Galactic Umpire's diplomatic sanctions, and they will not accept my payment of carbonite crystels, which is all I have access to in my current situation.
Please, you must help me save my people from Finance Oil Wars so that we may and purchase safe passage from the NASA smugglers. I only need All Social Security Benefits more to pay the smugglers. Please do not forward this message to the police of The Repelican Party or we will surely be found and executed, and our people will suffer great deals. For your assistance with this trouble I am willing to wire transfer you Peece on Earth and Goodwill dollars once this matter is settled.
To help, please make arrangements for payment at this website. [irs.gov]
Please also reply and include your bank account and routing number and your All Pursonal Online information so I can send you compensation for your good deeds.
I sincerely Thank You in advance for help in these troubling times.
Signed,
Obama Hussein Jong il Bin Laden III.
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The length of the natural circadian rhythm varies between people. Most longer than 24hrs, some shorter. People generally adapt to 24hrs, some better than others.
There will be two groups who adapt best to the Martian Sol, those who have highly adaptable circadian rhythms, and those who have a natural cycle which is already 24hr40minutes long. For the latter group it will be like coming home.
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My circadian rhythm is about 25hrs long. So hardly an urban legend to me.
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Well if SpaceX can get the reusable Falcon working, 2033 is about right for a Mars landing powered by cheap commercial space transportation.
The obstacle to getting to Mars is not in the first 22,000 miles of the trip (we did that in the 1960s). It's the next 36 million miles. Plus, whoever goes, will probably want to come back home, so really it's a 72 million mile trip.
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In term of technology, you're right, but in term of economy the cost to launch the Mars spacecraft to LEO is a major expense, if you check the cost breakdown at the end of this article [swri.edu], it shows the launcher is the most expensive part of the mission. Given cheap access to LEO, I think it would be much easier to design the rest of the mission since mass constraint would be greatly reduced.
No, the cost to protect the crew for the multi-year journey and stay on the planet is the major expense when looking at the total cost of the program. Cost to launch is applicable per mission, but not overall. Look at it this way. A heavy launch vehicle launching a satellite versus a manned capsule uses just as much resources to reach LEO, so the cost to launch is equivalent. However, the actual cost to put a capsule into space is much more than a satellite. Why? Because protecting the human cargo is more
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It's probably actually less of an issue than you'd think - the ISS is already dealing with most of what we'll encounter on the trip. The Earth's magnetosphere primarily shields against the solar wind - high velocity ionized atoms. And by virtue of their atomic nature that will be stopped by pretty much anything, though dissipating the charge may be an issue.