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Mars Space United States Science

Barack Obama: America Will Take the Giant Leap To Mars, To Send People There by the 2030s (cnn.com) 348

Posted by msmash from the giant-leap dept.
The United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth." This is all part of a longer-term goal of making it possible to "one day remain there for an extended time," he added in an op-ed published on CNN. The effort will require cooperation between public and private space interests in meeting that goal, the president added. As a sign of forward progress, private space companies will send astronauts to the International Space Station within the next two years. "Someday, I hope to hoist my own grandchildren onto my shoulders. We'll still look to the stars in wonder, as humans have since the beginning of time," Obama wrote. "But instead of eagerly awaiting the return of our intrepid explorers, we'll know that because of the choices we make now, they've gone to space not just to visit, but to stay -- and in doing so, to make our lives better here on Earth." The White House in a joint blog post with NASA said that seven companies have received awards to develop habitation systems. And this fall, NASA will provide companies with the opportunity to add modules and other capabilities to the International Space Station.
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Barack Obama: America Will Take the Giant Leap To Mars, To Send People There by the 2030s More

Barack Obama: America Will Take the Giant Leap To Mars, To Send People There by the 2030s

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  • ..which will be needed on Mars... but still just hot air. This is not Kennedy saying we will go to the moon. This is a president on his way out making a speech that will likely not be followed up on by any new administration.

    • He's trying to grab credit for a bunch of things that didn't get done over the past eight years so he can fly around making speeches about them at a million dollars a pop.

      If he listed only the good things that actually got accomplished by his administration it would be a very short speech.

  • BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Thud457 ( 234763 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @09:49AM (#53055063) Homepage Journal
    Every outgoing presimadent since the Reagan, blessings upon him, makes the same grandiose claims that we'll put a Man on Mars real soon now.

    Just like Lucy tricking Charlie Brown into thinking she's not going to yank the football away this time.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Salgak1 ( 20136 )

        In 1963, a guy named Vaungh Meader released a comedy album about the Kennedies, "The First Family [wnyc.org]".

        Among the skits,was a press conference, in which President Kennedy was asked, "When will we send a man to the Moon", and the answer was, "Whenever Senator Goldwater wants to go. . . "

        Just update it with Obama, Mars, and Donald Trump. . .

    • Kennedy's promise did go through but that was primarily due to his death. Subsequent Presidents and congresspeople felt too bad about changing things away from what he wanted. Somehow I don't think Obama wants to get assassinated just so we can go to Mars.
      • Honestly, being assassinated was the best thing that ever happened to Kennedy's legacy. He died before the sex scandals broke (which would have killed him early 60's) and everybody remembers that he stopped the Cuban Missile Crisis but not the Bay of Pigs invasion which he botched and caused the whole thing.

        • Like the sex scandals destroyed FDR?

          • Like the sex scandals destroyed Clinton?

            Meanwhile words will destroy Trump.

          • Re: BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Penguinisto ( 415985 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @11:58AM (#53056125) Journal

            Like the sex scandals destroyed FDR?

            Apples/Oranges comparison... here's why:

            * no social media, no Internet

            * the GOP at the time was about as popular as catching syphilis (Fairly or not, Herbert Hoover presided over what became The Great Depression, he and his party got the blame, so...)

            * media at the time was almost exclusively run by newspapers and radio, and news stories that made it to these media were controlled by a relative select cabal

            * much of the scandal (and pretty much all of the evidence) was quashed even before it could make its way to the media, and most of it wasn't really studied or verified until after his death.

            * most of the country was a bit preoccupied - either with the Great Depression, or WWII.

            * During WWII, any further mention of the scandal would be instantly dismissed as Nazi propaganda (whether it was true or not).

            * rumors like this about presidential candidates were as common as white on rice (and was pretty tame compared to the mud they used to sling at each other), so at the time most of it was almost instantly dismissed unless corroborating evidence was present, undeniable, and obvious.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by torkus ( 1133985 )

        Probably not, but plenty of other people would agree it's a good trade

    • Just like Lucy tricking Charlie Brown into thinking she's not going to yank the football away this time.

      Except the lame duck President is the Lucy holding the ball and Congress is the Lucy that pulls it away.

    • Every outgoing presimadent since the Reagan, blessings upon him, makes the same grandiose claims that we'll put a Man on Mars real soon now.

      Except that, with his wording, Obama is making a much heavier-handed attempt at tying his legacy back to Kennedy and his “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” declaration.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Well, there is one good reason to say the "2030s" though: the energy requirement for a Mars mission is at its minimum in 2035. If the schedule slips to 2042, the energy requirements just to get the payload there will double, and your next "sweet spot" will be 2050.

      For a lot of us there's a big difference between 19 years away and 34 years away. I'm 55, and in my prime tax paying years. If I'm funding a mission for 2050, there's a 50% chance as a male in my cohort I'll be dead by 2043. So for me (and Pr

  • Colonizing Venus with floating cities is a far more sexier venture.

    http://www.universetoday.com/15570/colonizing-venus-with-floating-cities/ [universetoday.com]

    • Re:Forget Mars... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by invid ( 163714 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:49AM (#53055581)

      Colonizing Venus with floating cities is a far more sexier venture.

      ...or at least send a solar powered robotic drone into the atmosphere. The winds can get a little rough (over 200 kph) but we would have a freakin' plane flying around through the clouds of another world.

      Before sending people to Mars we should send a practice mission to the moon for 2 years. If you can't send people to the moon and have them survive on their own for 2 years, you certainly can't send them to Mars.

      • Re:Forget Mars... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:58AM (#53055647)

        Before sending people to Mars we should send a practice mission to the moon for 2 years.

        From what I read elsewhere, one of the Martian moons would become a way station for the initial flyby and landing missions.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by invid ( 163714 )

          From what I read elsewhere, one of the Martian moons would become a way station for the initial flyby and landing missions.

          The thing about a mission to Earth's moon is that if there is a major failure it would only take a few days to return to Earth. It would still take months to get back from Phobos or Demos.

      • Why should surviving be a priority? All of us are mortal and will die sooner or later, so just send people wherever - moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, anywhere....
    • It's certainly more doable. Don't have to worry about low gravity screwing with your health, there's plenty of oxygen and water that can be extracted from the CO2 and H2SO4 atmosphere, and the temperature in parts of the clouds is just right. It even has an induced magnetosphere [astrobio.net].

    • Colonizing Venus with floating cities is a far more sexier venture.

      How exactly do you propose to float something the size of a city on Venus. Furthermore how do you propose to get it there and how do you propose to build it? Bear in mind that you don't get to invoke magical levels of sci-fi technology just because the idea is cool. Seriously - what is your credible plan to make such a fantastical thing happen within the next 1000 years?

      • Seriously - what is your credible plan to make such a fantastical thing happen within the next 1000 years?

        We got the technology to launch a blimp on Venus. Large scale construction wouldn't be that far behind.

        https://thespacereporter.com/2014/12/a-floating-city-above-venus-nasa-has-begun-work-on-the-extraordinary-concept/ [thespacereporter.com]

        • We got the technology to launch a blimp on Venus.

          No we most certainly do not have that technology today. Not on anything remotely resembling the scale you are talking about. We certainly have no experience doing large scale airborne construction starting solely with an airborne blimp. We haven't even tried this on Earth much less on another planet several light minutes away.

          Large scale construction wouldn't be that far behind.

          Really? How do you propose to get the materials there? How are you going to get them in place? How are you going to create enough buoyancy to actually float an honest to goodness

          • No we most certainly do not have that technology today.

            Why do people blow a head gasket when considering missions to Venus? Manned flybys have been on drawing boards for decades.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby [wikipedia.org]

            Your link talks about a PRELIMINARY feasibility study at NASA that provides essentially zero specifics.

            Baby steps. The first manned landing on the Moon didn't take place until Apollo 11. Before then it was the Mercury and Gemini programs.

  • Yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @09:59AM (#53055167) Journal

    What is it about presidents at the end of their second terms that they love to float space goals?

    Bush, near the end of his 2nd term:
    ""Our third goal," Bush said, "is to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond." He proposed sending robotic probes to the lunar surface by 2008, with a human mission as early as 2015, "with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods of time." "

    While I'd love it ever to be true, I can't imagine any post Obama congress will fund it at all.

    • I had this discussion with a friend who works with NASA. Space is a presidential legacy issue. When you get into your last couple of years of your second term as president then you can stop campaigning and think about how you will be remembered by history.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If it happens they get to claim credit for starting it. If it doesn't happen they can just blame their successor. They have nothing to lose.

    • Bush said that in January 2004 [nasa.gov], towards the end of his first term. Despite all the flak he gets from the left, he is responsible for the biggest increase in science R&D [aaas.org] in the last half-century.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      What is it about presidents at the end of their second terms that they love to float space goals?

      Because it's a bonus shot for their legacy. If it doesn't happen, nobody will remember. If it does happen, they'll get their place in America's return to space. Part of being a politician is pretending to be a leader, even when you're just pointing out a path you didn't take yourself but hope that your successors will follow so you get some credit for setting the path.

    • While I'd love it ever to be true, I can't imagine any post Obama congress will fund it at all.

      No Congress has ever been willing to fund it or even a Moon mission since Nixon stopped the Moon missions. In the past the main argument was that there were too many other problems that needed to be solved or paid to fix first. Of course what happens is that you never run out of problems you say need to be fixed first, so you never get back to going. Now Congress won't fund it because each major party is only willing to pay for it by ways that are completely unacceptable to the other party. This allows

  • Really... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by John Smith ( 4340437 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:05AM (#53055217)
    Mars is a dull spot to colonize- wouldn't get much. The moon is really only useful for rocket launches and observatories. The best spots in the solar system to colonize are Mercury (heavy metals), the Jovian satellites (liquid water, loads of raw material) and the Saturnian moons (same story). These are also the ones being ignored.

    • But... Mars is bigger! 8-)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by torkus ( 1133985 )

      Mars is much, much closer than Jovian moons and cold poses less of a challenge than heat.

      I wouldn't say they're being ignored, but they're significantly further outside of our abilities today.

    • Re:Really... (Score:5, Informative)

      by joh ( 27088 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:27AM (#53055391)

      Mercury lacks water, which is the foremost thing you need, just for oxygen and propellants. Some of the Jovian and Saturnian moons are great, but they are so far away that getting there takes years, also solar power out there is sparse and radiation thick enough to kill you within hours. They are ignored for now with good reason.

      Mars has loads of water, an atmosphere of CO2 (so you have oxygen, hydrogen and carbon) and is not too far away. The atmosphere also makes landing much easier, since you can use it to brake. Dragging enough fuel with you to slow down several km/s just by propulsion makes things much harder. If you have to also take the fuel with you (and brake and land it) to launch back again as with Mercury this gets just impossible.

      • Mercury, we think, has some water. But you don't need lots of water. It also has a lot of energy. The most effective way to get stuff off Mercury could just be rail gunning packages of it into a Earth transit orbit, then just firing retrorockets and splashing down in the ocean. Just a thought.

    • * The usable Jovian/Saturnian moons are too close to their respective planets, which pump out more radiation than current or near-future technology could handle.

      * Dumping excess heat (and, well solar radiation of all kinds) on Mercury is also a bit too prohibitive for current/near-future technology. Sure you could park on the terminus (or even the dark side), but, well that tends to move in a 176-day cycle. [windows2universe.org]

      * The Moon is a nice idea (extremely small gravity well, conveniently located, etc), but it has pretty

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      Yes, but if you talk about the Moon then that means you got to get funding and start building a transfer vehicle, lander, EVA suits, etc. now. Mars is set as a goal because you can defer having to do that stuff into the far future (same old story of we will have humans on Mars in 20 years, controlled fusion in 10 years, flying cars, etc.). A recent discussion at http://www.spudislunarresource... [spudislunarresources.com] has some interesting insights. While everyone likes to discuss the BFR (SLS vs. Falcon Heavy), "Joe" wrote in the
    • It's not the kind of place to raise your kids.
      In fact, it's cold as hell.

  • ... of people who should definitely be sent to Mars - especially if there is no chance of their ever coming back again.

  • The United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday the country will send Americans to Mars

    First I'm hearing of this country called Tuesday. They must be pretty advanced! The people of Monday, on the other hand, are presumably in a constant state of depression and tiredness.

  • "We choose to go to the moon.. in the few decades or thereabouts."

  • The United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth."

    And once they return, they will be eminently suitable to hold public office [slashdot.org]. Like a fostering program for future presidents, senators, congresspeople and so on and so forth, if you like.

  • Is there nothing this man will not touch to secure his own tenable legacy? Please. I'm really starting to believe this life we think we have is just a simulation. Nothing makes sense anymore.
  • We haven't seen a meaningful increase in the NASA budget in how long? It certainly isn't going to happen any time soon, either. Even after Drumpf takes a beating next month in the general election we still won't see congress pass a budget for expansion of space exploration.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      I didn't rtfa but why does it have to be NASA? Seems we have a few private companies that are working towards that goal independent of NASA.

      • I didn't rtfa but why does it have to be NASA? Seems we have a few private companies that are working towards that goal independent of NASA.

        The headline tells us this voyage to Mars is something that the POTUS just told us will happen. If the government is involved why would it be anything other than NASA?

        Beyond that, the supposed new goal of NASA - since cancelling the space shuttle - is to develop the technology to get us to places further than the moon. If SpaceX and the rest want to get money from the government for their work they need to therefore focus on getting stuff up to the space station at a price below what we pay Moscow fo

  • No, we won't, because we'll be flat broke. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DirkDaring ( 91233 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:53AM (#53055607)

    Mars in 2030s? Dream on! We'll have defaulted by then. NASA won't have funds to even stare at Mars.

  • We should have a Moon colony first (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Tuesday October 11, 2016 @10:57AM (#53055643) Journal
    We should establish a permanent presense on the Moon first. Maybe even build industrial infrastructure there, use it as a staging area for a future manned Mars mission. Honestly, how much easier would it be to launch from the Moon? Also, if we can't work out the kinks of living on the Moon, then how can we reasonably expect to live on Mars for extended periods of time? The Moon is the perfect Proving Grounds for this sort of endeavor, and it's literally right in our backyard. Seems like a no-brainer to me to take advantage of it. Also, in future decades, why couldn't any number of industries or research facilities build their facilities and do their work there? There's no environment to pollute, no ecosystem to destroy, you could do any number of things that are expensive or even prohibited on Earth without harming anything.

    • Mars has more resources readily available for supporting some kind of habitation. There's a CO2 atmosphere and plentiful water, both of which could be used to produce oxygen. Nitrogen might be a bit of a problem, but I have been reading there's probably enough trace nitrogen in the atmosphere for a habitat's purposes.

      • Okay.. it's not a matter of resources, it's a matter of being close enough to deal with problems, instead of watching people die and not being able to do anything about it. We're going to make many mistakes with our first off-world colony, why should those mistakes be fatal if we have a way to do a 'dry run' closer to Earth? Additionally having facilities on the Moon can't be a bad thing.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      Yep, here's more reasons why. http://www.spudislunarresource... [spudislunarresources.com]

  • Bringing People Back makes the whole task more than twice as difficult. We should be aiming to make it a one way trip. At least a semi-permanent one-way trip. I'm not volunteering for such a trip but I'm sure plenty will.

  • I'm sure we can find good enough astronauts who would be perfectly fine to not come back. That should reduce the cost of the project significantly. At least these guys can consciously decide that they're fine with the outcome, unlike Laika.

  • ... the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth."

    I'd like to go, but only if I can stay on Mars. Actually, can I go now?

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