Barack Obama: America Will Take the Giant Leap To Mars, To Send People There by the 2030s (cnn.com) 348
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.
Hot air... (Score:2)
Obama's legacy (Score:2)
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.
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I'm sure they won't have any trouble selling tickets for a flight to Mars if either Trump or Hillary wins the election. The Republican party has only 3 weeks left to finish disintegrating, get a new candidate out there and piece itself back together behind new leadership, which appears to be the only option left for an America that a majority of the population wants to actually live in.
Seriously, don't count Trump as done yet.... If the primaries where any indication, he's far from done. Yes, he's down a couple of runs, but it's the bottom of the 8th so the game isn't over and the surest way to lose is to under estimate your opponent.
Hillary is no sure thing either... She's got a 747 full of baggage along with likability and trust issues to rival Trumps... Where she's less likely to make a stupid unforced error (being disciplined and experienced at this political thing) AND she's ahead
BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like Lucy tricking Charlie Brown into thinking she's not going to yank the football away this time.
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Bush unveils vision for moon and beyond - Jan 15 2004. [cnn.com]
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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. . .
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Re: BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (Score:2)
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Like the sex scandals destroyed FDR?
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Like the sex scandals destroyed Clinton?
Meanwhile words will destroy Trump.
Re: BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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But the point remains, he was responsible for the Bay of Pigs... That he didn't choose to say "no" makes him responsible.
However, I'm not so sure I'd be too hard on him for this. He lacked a lot of the information we expect our leaders to have access too now, he was just learning the ropes, and I'm sure the threat of communism was looming large being that close to our shores. I think I'd be harder on him for not demanding an overwhelming overt force instead of the "let's keep this quite" Bay of Pigs app
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Probably not, but plenty of other people would agree it's a good trade
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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.
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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.
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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
Re:BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN (Score:4, Interesting)
Earth and Mars make their closest approaches every 2.16 years roughly, but note that each time we get a launch window it's not equally favorable. That's because the orbits of Earth and Mars are elliptical, not circular. That means each time we get a launch window it's at a slightly more favorable or less favorable distance than the previous one because of the *absolute* positions of the planets in their elongated orbits.
This variation in the closeness of the closest approach follows a fifteen year cycle.
Note that a mission to Mars is still physically possible even if you launch in a year where the closest approach isn't very close (e.g. 2041). It just means that your mission takes longer, costs more, and requires vastly more energy. Since Mars is at the extreme of what we can probably do, your chances of success are much greater if you choose the closest possible approach for your mission.
Forget Mars... (Score:2)
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)
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)
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.
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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.
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Floating cities? (Score:2)
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?
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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]
Science fiction (Score:2)
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
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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)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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But... Mars is bigger! 8-)
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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)
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.
Re: Really... (Score:2)
Re: Really... (Score:2)
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* 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
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In fact, it's cold as hell.
I can offer a list... (Score:2, Funny)
... of people who should definitely be sent to Mars - especially if there is no chance of their ever coming back again.
Oh sure, *now* he says it (Score:2)
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.
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That's a dumb name for a spaceship to Mars. Lame
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Tuesday is rich, what with all the Rubys of Tuesday. They have the financing to send people to space.
Totally quotable! (Score:2)
What, earth cant produce enough idiots on its own? (Score:2)
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.
Really? (Score:2)
To Mars with what money? (Score:2)
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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)
Mars in 2030s? Dream on! We'll have defaulted by then. NASA won't have funds to even stare at Mars.
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We should have a Moon colony first (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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Bringing People Back (Score:2)
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.
Save $ and don't try to bring them back (Score:2)
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.
Looking at how things are going now ... (Score:2)
... 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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Re:Lame duck making lame promises (Score:5, Insightful)
The Apollo program was not entirely symbolic, it was in large part an effort to develop rockets powerful enough to plant a nuclear weapon anywhere on Earth. This is also why budgets fell out after ICBMs were complete.
Well, that was pretty much accomplished in 1957 by Sergei Korolev with the R-7 rocket that put Sputnik in orbit, and von Braun a few months later with the Juno 1. The Minuteman 1 (n.b. a solid fuel rocket) went into service in 1962, and from that point forward there wasn't really a lot of overlap between the US space and ballistic missile program. The situation was different in the Soviet Union, whose space program was really much more a step-child of the weapons programs. Soviet designers were just as capable as America (and America's Germans), but they could only dream of the kind of funding Apollo got.
Anyhow the whole argument about "symbolic" vs "practical" is naive. Something as massive a the Apollo program doesn't happen for "a" reason. It is necessarily the confluence of many different interests and purposes. One of them was clearly "symbolic", although that does *not* mean it wasn't practical. At its peak Apollo approached almost 1% of US GDP, and the politicians who approved it were not all interested in space at all. They had very practical, Earth-bound reasons to value the symbolic power of a US Moon landing.
Re:Lame duck making lame promises (Score:4, Insightful)
No purpose to it?
People go to Death Valley, Philadelphia, church, and climb Mt. Everest.
No purpose is required, just curiosity.
Re:Lame duck making lame promises (Score:5, Insightful)
Other than "it's there" and "Nobody else has gone" what's the point?
I seriously don't think it's worth the trouble to go to Mars, just to go. However, I support the effort because it will advance technology and likely lead to gains in scientific knowledge should we actually get there (which I don't think is likely).
What's sad here is that this is *obviously* Obama searching for a legacy, not a full hearted attempt to actually do this. Had this been important, why didn't he do it 8 years ago when his party had both cambers? Oh, no, wasn't important then. He has 180 days left with Obama Care is as popular as getting a root canal, it's over for him. Now he has a Congress that won't give him the time of day even if he asked nicely and literally zero power (legally and politically) to get this funded this so he's been reduced to plagiarizing JFK and banging on the bully pulpit trying to get attention in the middle of a election that is a whole circus of side shows. He's spitting into the wind.
Economics is the big obstacle (Score:3)
Other than "it's there" and "Nobody else has gone" what's the point?
Lots of reasons. Scientific discover, technology development (particularly biotech and life support), financial gain (funding tech R&D has a huge and long term payback), preserving our species, spinoff technologies, learning how to explore away from Earth, national pride, colonizing, and quite a bit more. Certainly more than "because it's there".
However, I support the effort because it will advance technology and likely lead to gains in scientific knowledge should we actually get there (which I don't think is likely).
I think our likelihood of getting to Mars depends heavily on how low we can drive cost to orbit. If it gets cheap enough a manned mission to Mars will become
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I seriously don't think it's worth the trouble to go to Mars, just to go. However, I support the effort because it will advance technology and likely lead to gains in scientific knowledge should we actually get there (which I don't think is likely).
We don't need to get there to get the gains. Just like the heyday of NASA, the money spent on this goal mostly goes towards R&D, that historically has led to both direct and indirect commercial value and consumer products.
Inventing the stuff to get humans to Mars promises both medical advances and a serious reduction in payload cost-to-orbit, plus all the inevitable side-effect technologies and products.
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What's sad here is that this is *obviously* Obama searching for a legacy, not a full hearted attempt to actually do this. Had this been important, why didn't he do it 8 years ago when his party had both cambers? Oh, no, wasn't important then. He has 180 days left with Obama Care is as popular as getting a root canal,
Not disputing that yes, this probably should have been done at the start of his presidency, but you're betraying your Republican bias with the next statement. Obamacare seems to be pretty popular with those who are actually using it. The only people I still hear bitching about it are people it doesn't apply to any way. One of my old friends is a small businessman and he hates Obama with a passion but admitted to me that Obamacare has lowered the health care premiums substantially for him and his family.
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Ok, so it's marginally more popular than a root canal, but the MAJORITY of voters don't like it and nearly EVERYBODY admits from Hillary Clinton on down that it is not working. Trump want's to repeal it, Hillary want's to fix it...
But that's my point, Obama is powerless now and has no real legacy that's positive, so he's left to stuff like this..
Re:Lame duck making lame promises (Score:4, Insightful)
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I can go to death valley, and come back alive. Philly as well, though Chicago might be more of a gamble, but still.
Going to mars is a one way ticket, just to say "I did it first" and have some monument built back here on earth to you. Which is why egotistical maniacs like BHO and Richard Branson are prime targets to go. Let them waste their Billions.
Meanwhile, I would much rather see something like HyperLink built with the money, which would benefit more people more immediately.
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Going to mars is a one way ticket, just to say "I did it first" and have some monument built back here on earth to you.
You go there for science. You go there for discovery. You go there to lead to colonization and making mankind a multi-body species.
You don't go just to plant the flag. The red on the flag would clash with Mars's orange.
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Going to mars is a one way ticket, just to say "I did it first" and have some monument built back here on earth to you.
You go there for science. You go there for discovery. You go there to lead to colonization and making mankind a multi-body species.
You don't go just to plant the flag. The red on the flag would clash with Mars's orange.
The UN flag won't (if it is up to BO or HC, it probably won't be the US flag), but then again having a flag that shows a projection of the earth's land masses planted on mars might not be the best "progressive" legacy image either...
On the other hand the brain damage that occurs from cosmic radiation might just be enough to get this to happen...
People go to Philadelphia for a reason... (Score:2)
Oh,come on now and be reasonable! People go to Philadelphia for many purposes, although most of those reasons are as a punishment. Many of the highways in the area also serve as examples of how not to build highways.
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No purpose to it?
People go to Death Valley, Philadelphia, church, and climb Mt. Everest.
No purpose is required, just curiosity.
I thought people went to Philadelphia for a purpose... ... to buy drugs.
Purpose of a mission (Score:4)
No one's going to Mars, coming back or not.
Really? You can tell the future? If you want to say you think no one is going to Mars in the time frame specified I probably would agree with you. I think pulling it off by the 2030s without a crash government program seems improbable given the technological, economic, and political realities of the day. If you are claiming no one will go to Mars ever I think that stands a very high probability of being a false statement.
There is simply no purpose to it.
Entirely false. There absolutely is a purpose to it. More than one in fact. You may not like or appreciate the reasons for trying to get to Mars but they are real and meaningful. Here's just a few of them. Scientific exploration, technology development, national pride, joy of exploration, curiosity, preserving our species, financial gain, biotechnology, and the list goes on and on and on. It's an expensive and difficult task and it will probably take decades if not centuries to actually pull off but to claim there is no purpose or value to it is just idiotic.
Apollo was the Mother Of All Demos, and it was a big stunt.
Yes it was. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing or that something like it won't be worth doing ever again. Furthermore the cost of getting to space has fallen substantially since then and we are a lot better at it now. Every indicator points towards cost to orbit continuing to fall. Once it gets cheap enough to get to space I would argue that a manned mission to Mars will become almost an inevitability. First for exploration and then for other purposes.
If Obama were on the rocket to Mars... (Score:4, Funny)
Lame duck or not. If Obama were on the rocket to Mars, Trump would get the Martians to pay for it.
Apollo distributed more than wealth! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, because there were a lot of ICBMs that used Saturn boosters.
Gemini used boosters from the Air Force that were retrofitted to make them "man rated" but Apollo was WAY bigger than anything the military wanted at the time. They were working on making things smaller and cheaper.
Re:Apollo distributed more than wealth! (Score:4, Interesting)
Very little, for two reasons. One, technical advances that go into weapons tend to be classified. Second, science and exploration are not only by definition more open processes, they are are also more complex and interdisciplinary.
It's safe to say that medical and food technology spinoffs from manned space flight would not have occurred in a missile-only program. Likewise most of the advances in materials technology wouldn't have happened either without the need to man-rate space vehicles and equipment. It is unlikely we'd have the photovoltaic technology we have today if we'd only done missiles alone. Chemical batteries will do for a short intercontinental hop.
I think some people here have a problem with cognitive dissonance: if nothing the government tries does anyone any good unless it's defense spending, then any benefits we got from the civilian space program must have been something we got because of the missile program. That simply doesn't fit the historical facts for the US space program after 1960 or so.
No purpose ? What ? (Score:2)
We used that stunt to distribute wealth to private contractors to build gadgets for a symbolic purpose.
These gadgets weren't symbolic at all.
And I'm not speaking about "space technology has trickled into society" (Microwave, Velcro, whatever...)
I am speaking about very practical stuff some politicians had in mind :
- To send people to the moon, you need to be able to lift into low earth orbit everything they need to reach the moon : the astronauts themselves, their capsule, enough fuel to accelerate the capsule for the trip, and then decelerate when arriving, lander, fuel for the lander, fuel for the return t
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I agree that a President in his last 100 days probably shouldn't be writing checks that his predecessor likely will not keep.
I disagree that Apollo was a stunt. The materials science and computer technology alone was worth the cost.
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It could be that Obama knows that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are already competing to see who can get to Mars first, and making a promise to get to Mars a few years after the (overly optimistic) deadlines from private organizations makes him look like a forward thinker to future historians.
Hey... it worked for Kennedy, right?
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How do his advisors think that this will be solved? Pretending that the problem doesn't exist?
Well, that is the standard government approach, and they have accumulated an impressive amount of experience with it.
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https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Posted only a few hours ago.
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What for? There is hardly anything usable on the Moon (maybe some water ice dust in the regolith in a few areas in shaded craters on the poles) and landing on the Moon costs lots of fuel since there is no atmosphere to do the braking for you. And then you want to go there and launch again to somewhere else? Why?
Mars at least has an atmosphere and resources like water ice (and lots of it) and CO2. So landing there, staying and also and launching again is much easier (since you can use water ice and CO2 to p
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Whatever became of the whole helium-3 thing? Not that many years ago helium-3 was a common enough thought that it even made it into "Iron Sky". Haven't heard spit about it, lately.
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Whatever became of the whole helium-3 thing?
Guessing it's because the whole 'Tokamak will give us cheap fusion in 5 years!' hype/promise/whatever never really materialized.
You could have a herd of unicorns that piss the stuff hourly, but unless you have a means to actually use it...
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Whatever became of the whole helium-3 thing? Not that many years ago helium-3 was a common enough thought that it even made it into "Iron Sky". Haven't heard spit about it, lately.
Helium-3 is pretty much only good for 2nd or 3rd generation fusion power and we are still working on 1st generation fusion power.
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We invented Facebook.
That should be enough to get people running screaming to go off-planet.
Re:China says otherwise (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you serious? They're basically where the Soviets and US were in the early 1960s.
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Okay, to be fair, they do still (for a very brief while) have a space station, so let's say they're where the US and the Russians were in the mid-1970s. They have a bit of a leg up because of the work the Soviet and US space programs did, and they also have a lot more computer power at their disposal than their predecessors did in the 60s and 70s.
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Its really clear how CNN attacks the big O and H of America
Well, going to Mars will involve a lot of love for the O and the H and the exothermic combining thereof!
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Almost no gravity, no atmosphere, no cool landscapes to take pictures of and send back to a wide-eyed audience at home.
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Chinese space, and Muslim moons (Score:2)
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