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Bill In U.S. House Plans Manned Mars Mission
maddogsparky writes "Spaceref.com has a copy of a bill laying out a roadmap for NASA to send a manned mission to Mars by 2022. Highlights include an manned asteroid landing, building a research outpost on one of Mars' moons and actually providing funds to start mission planning."
when I saw Spaceref.com, I first thought it
must be Spacefarce.com. Damn slysdexia.
I mean jesus, MARS? we can;t even get back
to the moon.
2022... wow lets not get too far ahead of ourselves hehe
I call shotgun!
Sounds good, very reminicent of the National Space Commission report except that had more emphasis on return to the moon versus Lagrange points.
e r.html,
(Of course I know a little bit about Lagrange points,
http://www.finds-space.org/thomasneuraut
We do have some stuff to publish soon.)
Well, as always, I'd like to believe.
-Jay Thomas
http://www.uiuc.edu/~jthomas2
Who wants to bet that on the end of this bill some idiot is going to add a clause that all our web traffic has to be monitored. I can see it now "We are finally going to mars better make sure we konw what people are talking about online."
but this will probably turn out like that manned space station we were going to be using in 1980. Plans for it were drawn in what, '64? The logistics of this are unreasonable and currently impracticle. Self-sufficient environments on other planets will remain the realm of science fiction for years to come. The largest problem to overcome IMO is distance. The distance between Mars and Earth is phenominal. Like the English who first came to America, this would be almost doomed to failure. There will be many Roanokes before one Jamestown.
Just my $0.02.
P.S. First post?
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
In this day and age we need to be thinking about things like making sure there is enough money going into welfare, war on drugs, war on terrorism, enforcement of gun laws, etc and not on crazy stuff like going to mars. I hope this bill is struck down as it might be damaging from investment into the social programs of this country.
Research bases on Mars' moons, are they crazy? Haven't they played Doom!?
I think we need flying cars before we should take Mars exploration seriously.
no really. flying cars. everyone knows the future is upon us when we all have flying cars.
One of the problems with these various large scale concept/projects is that things can flounder forever in the planning stages.
For those of you familiar with large bureaucracies, everything lies in the funding. By forcing the funding of something and laying out a defined timetable, this bill would IMHO stand a good chance of actually causing this to become a reality. (Technical delays notwithstanding.)
I agree, this probably won't pass... but it would a very clear signal, a strident first step, and a more exciting two decades if it did.
So write your Congressmen, damnit! =)
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
He's a cool guy, and definitely one of the few that "gets it." I've talked to him about the benefits of Open Source, and we're currently migrating most of our office server infrastructure to OpenBSD. If the uptime keeps up (it will!), he'll suggest it to his coleagues!
If we donate money can we maybe send off a few of the slashdot trolls on the space shuttle? I think Mars would suit them well.
please.
this intrigued me too for about an hour. None of the "evidence" that we never made it to the moon is convincing at all. this is despite the fact that there would be NO WAY to pull off such a "vast" conspiracy.
rage away
NB -- parent is already at -1, So I will quote:
we never made it to the moon you boob. it was all a vast and deep penetrating conspiracy [dibona.com] with key hitters such as RMS [stallman.org] and the mexican government.
In general the /. community is interested in the Space Program and the benefits it provides to the technology community.
/. crowd is numerous enough to put some good pressure on Congress to do something right.
As this Bill progresses it will be important to have the Slashdot (dare I say "geek" crowd) write their representatives and encourage the support of this bill.
Please keep the Slashdot editors informed on news regarding this Bill so that more people can read about it on Slashdot and in turn write their Senators to support it.
Seriously, the
Read the bill, it makes note of some serious issues facing the Country's space program and it's future years down the road... such as no MAJOR challenging missions after the ISS "Alpha" is assembled.
Ever need an online dictionary?
Remember to write you congress men and whatnot to make sure they vote for this.
I definately feel we need some sort of goals on what we are going to be doing in space, and need to start planning to achieve those goals.
Almost everything NASA has done for the past 20 years has been geared toward getting our sorry butts off this planet, on onto Mars, and eventually out of the solar system.
Planetary and eventually galactic exploration is the single most important task facing humanity today.
Yes, more important than terrorism. More important that saving babies. More important than really good wine.
Getting off the planet and spreading out is the key to human survival. Alas, I doubt our idiotic politicians will approve the kinds of funds needed for this stuff.
After all, we have over priced, completely unnecessary military stuff to buy, not to mention all the money we have to spend enforcing Christian morality on the populous. (Consensual Crimes, etc.)
The only other thing I could possibly consider nearly as important as manned space exploration is the development of hydrogen energy technology. (Fusion, pure fuel cells, etc.)
finally, a new flavour of Tang!
-pyrrho
the first (two) words out of my mouth when i saw the article was "holy sh**"... thought i'd share that.
while, yes, there will be a ton of technical challenges, but then the technology base from it will propel everything to a whole new level -- asteroid mining / zero-G manufacturing (for things like aerogels) / etc. so even if in the end we don't get to mars, this is still a very good opportunity for science to advance; this is, by the way, exactly how we have teflon today =)
but damn... i wanna go
My life in the land of the rising sun.
As much as I long to see a person set foot on mars within my lifetime, I feel like we shouldn't even bother unless we're going to give a compelling reason to go. We went to the moon long before we had any plan or reason (other than "beat the russians"), and look how far that's gotten us.
Personally, I consider "research terraforming" to be the best of all possible reasons, and I think now is as good a time as any, but I don't see a bulk of the population realizing anytime soon how valuable another livable planet would be to the future of the human race.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
If the U.S. had a competitor in this race for Mars like they did for the moon in the late 60s, they would have a man there in a few short, focussed years. So, um, can we maybe pretend there's a competitive nation and get on with it?!
We aren't at the point where Mars makes any kind of sense. It's a bit like Columbus discovered America and now we've been to American 6 times and everyone is saying- hey we've never been to Antartica! Antartica is the next step! It's the future of mankind!
Even that is pushing the analogy too far. Antartica is a lot more habitable than Mars. Mars has no atmosphere- well just 1% of earths- it's a vacuum; the lightbulbs in your house have more gas in them. Sure we can live on Antartica, or Mars, but we can't thrive there right now. We have the technology, but the economics aren't there- it's gonna cost hundreds of millions per person. That's no way colonise anywhere. It's pure flags and footprints. We go, we plant the flags, we come back. That's it. Yeah, it'd be glorious. But so what? It leads nowhere.
We need to mine something that isn't at the bottom of a gravity well. Mining something at the top means you can slide it downhill to LEO, or towards Mars. Until we have mining, Mars is out of reach for practical settlement; as is most of the solar system for that matter.
Phobos or Deimos- yes. The moon- maybe, a NEA or a comet, yes. Mars? Later.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Go here and find out who your House Representative is (if you don't already know) and write him/her! This is the first time in a long, long time that I have seen a really good-intentioned bill come out of Congress. For once they are doing something for the people. Hell, they even say:
;)
The United States captured the imagination of the peoples of the world and inspired a generation of young people to enter careers in science and engineering when it successfully landed humans on the surface of the Moon in the years 1969 through 1972.
This one is truly by the people and for the people. Don't let this one perish from this Earth. (couldn't resist, sue me
Write your Reps by postal mail, now!
Hargun
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Really, why send humans to Mars? The cost and time needed to send humans to Mars are enormous. Apollo program costed NASA 2 million dollars per year for seven years. A program to Mars may cost ten times as much. And, what can humans do on Mars that robots can't? Is it really worth it?
The only real reason I see to send people to Mars is press. Maybe, people will actually vote to pay NASA money if they will go to this project? I don't think so, however. Cold war is over, so US doesn't feel that it needs to prove it is the best any more. I'm also not sure if there will going to be much reaction - imagine if people will think "Well, we've already been on the Moon, who needs Mars now?" Finally, again, is it worth the money and effort?
It would souch nicer to see more cheaper robots out there... Send a craft to Pluto while there's still time... Send robots to Mars - how much cheaper it is to return Martian soil with a robot than with a human... How great Mars Pathfinder was. Not much public attention (or money for NASA), though... *sigh*
Or, maybe they can persuade Bill Gates to be the first space tourist to Mars in 20 years for some $20 billion now?
;)
I say lets solve some earthly problems. Sure the technology coming out of this will be cool but alot of it is just "tons of money to build esoteric specialty equipment".
:-)
I'd rather see the money spent on say, I dunno, shaping up jobs or school. I mean sure you can't invest all in school [what is an educated person todo?] but spending billions on sending 3 people to Mars is probably a lot less useful then say funding ~10k valid research grants ort using the money to invest in businesses that are struggling to make meet ends-odds.
Or how about use the money to fix up branches of the government like the UPSO
Or how about donating all the money to Canada?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Personally, I would like to see space exploration start happening, and continue happening. Let's be honest: The moon missions, while probably the most significant and arguably the most complex engineering feat in human history, basically was "Wow! We made it! Now what??".
Instead of throwing all this government money into the sh**hold where we know it will probably never come out, let's give tax incentives to get private companies into space. First company to mine an asteroid gets a 20 year tax moritorium! Same deal for space-based factories!
The key is that space has to pay for itself. If we depend on the government to put men into space, then men in space depends on the whims of budgets and politicians. The only way to get there and stay there is to have an economic incentive to stay there.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Great, maybe congress can infuse a little enthusiasm into NASA, whose lofty goals involve a few decades of launching incrementally better satellites.
Just make sure nobody tries to do inter-dimensional space travel over there. You never know what Hell will do... and I don't want my rabbit to die.
This money would better be spend on other projects that could help people.
I have an idea. How about we spend it on something that will kill most of us . .
(cancer, heart disease)
...something coming from the Dems that we can support. Now, I know Rep. Lampson has an agenda (bringing the pork home), but I vote the we begin contacting our Reps and Senators and try to get this thing pushed through. Only with a serious show of geek support will this thing survive.
----
PS:
It'll be dead before it hits the House floor. Some idiot-fool will try to stick an anti-abortion or anti-missle defense rider to it and it will die in committee. Sorry, I'm a little cynical these days.
Good bill. It's always refreshing to see politicians work toward dreams in science, technology and exploration. The time table for this bill may need to slow down a bit to be realistic, but what is really needed to make the human Mars exploration and the further exploration of the solar system after Mars practical and economical is the development of nuclear propulsion, something that has always been a political hot potato.
Without nuclear propulsion, a manned mission anywhere farther than the moon will always take too long be too costly and have a much too small margin of error to be acceptable.
originally NASA planed the first humans landing on mars by 2012. looks like we will be delayed 10 years. Now think back to 1980 and contrast the technology, and then extrapolate to 2022.
In this day and age we need to be thinking about things like making sure there is enough money going into welfare, war on drugs, war on terrorism, enforcement of gun laws, etc and not on crazy stuff like going to mars.
Yeah, alright, we'll just put science on the backburner until every other problem is completely solved. Gees. I got news for you: we're always going to have big problems here on Earth. You need to watch a little less Star Trek. I'm all in favor of social programs but we need to fund science as well.
Now, I'm not an expert on space and, to be honest, I didn't even read the Mars proposal, but the idea of "hold off on the space stuff until we fix problems on Earth" is one of those things that really grates on my nerves. This bill should be judged by the scientific benefits of the Mars trip alone. The fact that there are so many other needy non-space causes shouldn't enter into this.
GMD
watch this
...drive in two dimensions, nevermind three.
Imagine the disaster that would be.
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
In 2050 we will hear old people complaining
"We can put a man on Mars, but can't make a car that works right"
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Mars is interesting and romantic, but mankind's future in space is really going to be driven by the availablility of resources.
The mention in the report of a manned return to the moon and a first manned trip to an asteroid is (IMO) far more exciting than a trip to Mars.
A long-term, manned presence on the moon would be more useful than the ISS (and probably far cheaper too). Apart from the resources available, there is a lot of basic science to be done on the moon's formation and the role it had in Earth's past.
The constuction and launching of ships from a completed ISS would save alot of the cost of escaping the earths gravity well, and this isn't even taking into account what other technologies may be available by then.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Fuck you! No one ever needs to watch less Star Trek! That is the way it's gonna be. Well, without Chronowerx, the Euenics wars, and so on. If Star Trek was a person, its name would be Nostradamus. bizatch. Just kidding. :-P
This will not happen.
Simple... send people to Mars, but don't bring them back! Much less expensive, they get more accomplished (since they're staying a lot longer). Question is, who should we send? Congressmen, lawyers, or Microsoft Marketing execs?
...money on funding an Islamic space programme maybe we could get another space race going. That's the only way we're ever going to see any more manned exploration.
-- SIGFPE
Redundant: In 1969, Vice-President Spiro Agnew committed the United States to a manned Mars mission by the year 2000. That beats this bill by 22 years. [As a side note, the Vice-President has traditionally been the administration's point person for space activity. That is why Apollo mission responsibility shifted from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Mission Control in Texas (Lyndon Johnson's home state) as soon as the Saturn V cleared the launch tower.]
Toothless: There are no penalties for failure to execute. If the mission is not completed on schedule, NASA bosses should be looking at some hard prison time. Otherwise, what's the point?
'Nuff said.
If manned spaceflight were that cool, we would be talking about all the nifty things we could add to the ISS right now. The fact is, there is not enough science up there that requires human beings to justify the cost of sending them.
Now, getting costs down is smart. We should be investing our money in cheap methods of getting to orbit. That is the kind of thing that will pay off. Once space is cheap, a hell of a lot more space science is justified.
Anything done by anonymous gets a score of 0 or -1.
how much do you think it'll cost for some billionare to get a ride on this?
sig - .
Even if this bill passes, which I doubt it will, a simple act of Congress cannot possibly restore NASA to its former glory. Space exploration is no longer a top priority for the American people, now that the cold war is over. Once thought of as essential for national security, NASA is now suffering due to budget cuts.
The public might still think that space exploration is "cool," but few would be willing to sacrifice other government programs or accept a tax hike in order to free up money for NASA. If the public doesn't care, why would politicians care? NASA won't win you votes at the ballot box.
This week, over 600 people died in India as a consequence of the worst heat wave ever recorded. This warming is a consequence of the use of fossil fuels.
The nuclear power industry has a safety record never matched by any other human activity: just *one* fatal accident in more than 40 years of commercial activity, with 31 deaths in the immediate aftermath and 9 more deaths of cancer in the region (Eastern Europe) in the following decades. This means that, during this week alone, non-nuclear power has killed 15 times more people than nuclear power has killed in all history.
Yet, those fucking luddites with their scare-marketing tactics have convinced Humanity that nuclear power is a terrible thing which must be avoided at all costs. Nah, Humanity has a looong time to learn before a reasonable percentage of us know enough science to be able to make any rational decisions.
I'm all for Democracy, as long as it's about things that can be decided by common sense. When it comes to science and technology, we need some sort of meritocracy, or blind fear of the unknown will send Humanity back to the Middle Ages.
Will they ever learn that we need to build a dry dock in orbit, then a moon base first?
Here's the problem that I see. Even if this bill passes it is only the first step in the grand scheme.
.).
The bill would offer -
$50,000,000 for fiscal year 2003.
$200,000,000 for fiscal year 2004.
This would be used for planning, etc. . . This is only a small fraction of what it is going to take to develop the needed equipment/technology to get there.
They are shooting for 2020? Even if this bill does pass that leaves 16 more years for congress to de-rail or bury this project in favor of something else (see military spending, tax breaks, etc. .
I agree that this bill is a start, but it certainly doesn't offer a lot in the way of a long term commitment from the American government. If only there was a way to get a president involved maybe he could get the American people excited about the space program again.
Every politician is looking for their ticket into the next term, and it looks like Rep. Lampson is going for the space angle. Hell, he may be even trying to capitalize on the ATOC sci-fi brouhaha (it wouldn't suprise me, knowing how the political system works in the USA).
With an administration that has been chopping NASA's budget left and right, this has very little chance of actually taking place.
Dys.
This comment is brought to you by the drug caffiene, and the number 5.
Yeah, the Senators aren't involved in this ... its in the House. So write your House Representatives. No need to mess with the Senate governed by Palpatine... it will just backfire. Lets make sure Natalie Portman gets the office of Senator after her terms of Queen are up!
Ever need an online dictionary?
Our previous pres. said that NASA was going through a test. NASA was bloated, innefficient etc. and the budget cuts were to see if NASA could get their act together. Just before Clinton left office he mentioned in a speech that NASA had passed the test and would be getting lots more funding to do stuff like go to Mars. So this bill isn't totally off the wall. There is a reason for its existence.
But will it pass?
Come on, if someone running for election said that they would get someone on mars, they would get some serious votes.
And /. keeps feeding the desire to think that NASA can do things worth doing. Get over it...NASA is a govt. tool for military research. Nothing in it for John Q. Public except the bill.
A tax moratorium to encourage space development would be great... if companies actually paid taxes. Enron never paid a dime of federal taxes. Tyco International dodged $400 million in taxes last year by incorporating in Bermuda. Etc. etc. etc. ad nauseam. There are too many tax shelters already that are a hell of a lot easier to establish than an asteroid mine.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Classic, someone mod'ed humor/irony as insightful. That only makes it better.
What about the masses of humanity that are starving? The MArs budget could solve world hunger - US elitism.....baaahhh!
Robert Zubrin has proposed a, what I believe to be, a better idea. An execellent introduction to his "Mars Direct" plan can be found here at his Scientific American article.
While this bill throws puts on emphasis on "reusable," that isn't necesary or the necesarily the cheapest. Mars Direct launchs several space craft to the Martian surface - the only one without redunancy is the one with people in it. The trick of it is that it is one of the pods uses the atmosphere of Mars to produce the necesary fuel for the trip back - an obvious advantage.
Probably the biggest advantage is that it is a 10 year program, using technology we have around right now. The rocket boosters proposed are not off-the-shelf but they are off-the-abandoned-rocket-parts and uses 30 year old 'technology'. Having a 10 year interval between starting and results, such as the Apollo program, is very important. The program proposed in the bill not only has unnecesary research, but its 20 year program is unrealistic - programs simply can't go on the long.
A problem with Mars Direct is that it uses nuclear energy. I don't have much of a problem with nuclear energy when its on another planet, but it makes it politically more difficult. I think its use stems from Zubrin nuclear engineering background and from his unwillingness to consider advances in technology that will be obtained by the time a Mars program actually starts. I think the latter is overall a good tactic for Zubrin, as it fends off accusations of science fiction.
Much of the same technology used to go to Mars could be used to go the moon (though obviously fuel can't be made on the Moon, but that isn't as much as an issue). Returning to the moon has merit, especially when it comes to radio astronomy - the far side of the moon is the unique position of probably being one of the only plces within a few light years of being free from human radio interferance.
Don't Mod, Reply
Show me how this is not true...
not trying to troll or anything. Just think that this is true.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Interested in AI? MACR
All of these add up to very very little money for Mars.
I would love to be proven wrong, but I suspect that this bill will not see much debate.
shouldn't we be planning a mission to Venus instead?
There was a good reason to go to the moon and there is a good reason to go to mars: the technology and equipment we need to get there and back. We are all reading and typing at machines that greatly benefitted from the moon program. Such programs pay a dividend, it just takes a little time.
Not enough votes on Mars.
No farmers, no steelworkers, no Cuban immigrants, no nothin'. It ain't a key "swing planet", it has no electoral votes, no representation, no key industries, and it isn't even a decent vacation spot.
What we need is a lobby. First make land grants on Mars. Slip it in as a rider on some military spending bill. Then, we can start complaining about how transportation is lousy there; maybe divert some funds from Amtrak, grease a few palms here and there. The first rocket needs to be loaded with representatives for welfare mothers, schoolchildren, teachers, steelworkers, farmers, union members, and other key constituency groups who know how to lobby. The scientists can come later.
If the rocket makes it we'll get one helluva Mars lobby. If it blows up, that'll be fine too. It's a win-win situation.
Hey, don't blame me. You were the ones who brought Congress into the picture.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Seriously, the cost of housing here on Earth has skyrocketed in urban areas. I have to live more than an hour away from my job just to have a nice, affordable place to live! It seems to be that the population density is too high in our cities, and a great way to thin that out would be to put some businesses on the Moon (or Mars).
Once the basic problems of atmosphere, water, food, shelter, and internet access are all taken care of, there could be a real boom in the tourism industry. Tourism would fund the preliminary commercial establishments like restaurants. And think of the novelty of being one of the first people to play on the "look-ma-I-can-slam-dunk-now" basketball courts. Once a somewhat viable economy has taken a foothold you'll start to see people take up permenant residencence to avoid the somewhat expensive and non-tax-deductible Mass-Moon transit system.
Some of the corporations that run the tourist shops up there will want to establish some kind of branch office for clerical employees and consultants. Now you've got jobs for everyday people on the moon, and regular Joe's like you and me can sell the house to fund the cost of re-location. Or maybe the company could pay for it.
After that, it's only a matter of time before the moon starts drawing off a significant portion of the Earth's population. This is a good thing because the Earth's cities have a very high density. Then the cost of housing will go down and I can live closer to my job.
So yeah, I'll help fund a mission to the Moon because it will eventually shorten my commute. Or something like that.
First USA may not even exsist in 2022 if we dont stop terrorism.
Second by 2022, we should be building on mars, not sending the first man to mars.
I mean damn, If we are going to pollute earth shouldnt we be preparing mars.
2022? Come on, we can go to Mars 5 years from now.
2022? ITs not a technology issue, its cheap Americans who want tax cuts. My Prediction, China or Russia will go to Mars before us.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to go to Mars.
To Terraform Mars it would cost trillions. I think we should start doing this LONG before 2020 though.
I think 2008 we should send a Man to mars, 2015 try to terraform mars.
By 2030 Terraforming will be done, and we can build stuff on mars because the pollution and the population will increase to the point that by 2050 we will need to be on Mars.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
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Who knows? Maybe President Bush wants to leave a legacy... All he has to do is get on TV with some fancy flags behind him and tell us all how much he and his administration support this bill, and how its up to us as americans to strive forward to Mars, or something like that. Hey, well all know the line from Kennedy, "we choose to go to the moon in this decade...", perhaps bush wants a legacy and will help push this thing forward. Or not.
pour the equal amount of pressure on your congress critter to vote for this as we poured on to not vote for things like the SSSCA! I'll be writing some letters tomorrow. of course, I'm unemployed so I have a lot of time to do such things..
---
I post links to stuff here
Why cant we invest in both? Increase taxes by about 2 trillion dollars
(it was cut by about 1.5 trillion)
This leaves 500 billion for a manned mission to Mars.
The terraform project would require trillions, we cant afford to terraform mars. But we can send a man there, the reason we dont is, is it worth all that money just so we can claim we were first?
The terraform project is more important, we should begin now taxing for it, so that in 10 years we will have a few trillion dollars which will be enough to begin.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
POLLUTION, We wont have air in 2020, there wont be any rainforest left, and the Ozone layer will be completely gone,
yeah thats when we will send a MAN to mars, when will we terraform? 2050? If we wait until then, it will be too late, We'll all be dead.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The day when the only thing that man cares about is seeing just how comfortably he can live is the day that the human sprit dies.
It is entirely possible that we may be the only living thing in the Universe that has left and returned to its planet through its own abilities. Think about that for a minute. Doesn't that give you a sense of awe?
We have the potential to explore and command the Universe in ways that we do not have reason to believe that anything else ever has, or that anything else ever will.
The reason we do these things is not just because they benefit us, but because they are the fulfillment of a yearning desire to grow and to stretch our limits as far as they can go, because it is the destiny of all living things to either grow and expand or eventually to die.
And if that is not enough to satisfy your materialism, then consider this: there are untold riches out in space that are just waiting to be tapped to meet our needs. But before we can get them out of space, we are going to have to invest a lot into space--not because space is strange and wierd, but because this has been the case for every technology that has come before it.
So, please, even if you fail to be attracted by the dream of space travel, don't just dismiss it as a useless toy. See it for what it is: an untapped technology that is just waiting to solve our problems. And solve them it can, if we only take the time to figure out how.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
There were all these out of work techies in the US going to work for al Qaeda terrorist cells after 9/11 because they were pissed off that the government expanded the H-1B visas by 40% in the middle of a tech downturn despite the fact that over 80% of the US public opposed expansion of the H-1B program. George Bush Jr. figures out most of the trecherous techies are aging boomer males who, having paid huge amounts in taxes over the years, are now being punished by the welfare bureaucrats. Their crime: Applying for welfare while white and male. Thinking fast, POTUS gets his boys in Congress to do an end-around: A crypto-welfare program for the angry white male techies, giving them what they've always wanted since they saw Sputnik fly overhead as children: "Jobs" working with space stuff. Since the time horizon isn't until they retire 20 years from now, no one will be able to hold them to account for the failure to accomplish any of the promised objectives of the program. There is ample precedent for this sort of scam so little risk discount need be applied to the investment. The program may cost tens of billions -- even a hundred billion over those decades, but compared to the damage those bitter old white guys could do, savvy Bush has economically side-stepped a disaster!
Seastead this.
....3 Trillion and failed. Turnabout is fair play, now let's spend 3 trillion on space. I bet we get better results.
Oh! and Fuck gun control! Ban guns and I will do a "John Galt", quit my job and go on welfare to drag the system down! Read "Atlas Shrugged"!
I hope your post was really in jest because if it wasn't, you are one sick fuck!
We legalize marijuana, tax the hell out of it like we do other vices and put all the money in space exploration.
I can see the ads: "Smoke White Widow Sensimilla and well take you to the moon and beyond."
zac
I have a better idea. Send a manned mission to near-Earth asteroid 3554 Amun, bring back $20 trillion worth of metals, and solve NASA's budget problems forever.
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My dad was 12 years old when he first saw the television broadcast of Neil Armstrong take the first steps onto a world of wonders.
The whole world stopped and watched. People in the former Soviet Union and the world sat dumbfounded at the accomplishment. It wasn't just 'America' that made it to the moon, it was the entire world.
Now imagine that feeling, for one moment. What would it be like for just one second to actually have a sense of accomplishment that goes above anything and everything. Above all the petty differences regarding possessions and wealth. I would give anything to have that excitement in my lifetime. What was your feeling on Sept. 11th? I can tell you mine, horror. Can't we have something different? Something spectactularly humbling and amazing?!
I think it's time that we as humans actually try to accomplish something more then making money and material wealth. That we prove to everything and anything out there that we will continue to survive if we actually try to work together. Think of the jobs that this type of project would create.
I've read some other posts regarding this...ppl saying we should do this to welfare and blah blah blah. What if this created 100,000 more jobs? What if this actually motivated ppl to get off their butts and do something?
What if for even 10 mins, you could say that you someway, no matter how minor it was, YOU contributed to something so grand, so spectacular, that nothing or no one could ever take that satisfaction away from you.
But then again, we as humans will probably never be able to experience that feeling. We'll continue to argue about welfare, who gets what money and what possessions. Who's house is bigger. etc. etc. etc.
I just turned 21. I hope for just one second I will be able to experience something that will atleast leave me somewhat satisfied so that before I die, I can actually relfect on the accomplishments as a race that we have accomplished. What I have accomplished will never compare to what if we all worked together to accomplish.
I wish for that feeling my Dad had...33 years ago.
That is my dream, and hope.
This is cool. Don't get me wrong, I like the Idea, and am for it 110%, but, there are other projects that need funds, like projects developing impulse and warp drive.
:)
And maybe a faster then light communications method... Plus, we need to setup a sensor permiter of our solar system
Maybe if the government didn't give $180 billion to farmers then a mission to Mars would be possible. I know let's send the farmers to Mars.
It's a whole lot easier and cheaper to do interplanetary science if you don't have to figure life support into the equation (or coming back either, for that matter). I could get a lot more excited about armies of robodroids beaming back data than another "giant leap for mankind".
I wonder how fast we could get a colony on Mars if we could cinvince people that our entire specieis is in danger of being destroyed. If we spent half as much effort as we currently spend on religon or anything else, how long would it take? Perhaps it could become it's own religon, saving the species by getting some of eggs out of the same basket.
Krispy Cream is people
How appropriate that this bill should be presented to Congress now, just after I have finished reading Frederick Pohl's "Man Plus." (For those who don't know, "Man Plus" deals with sending a man to Mars.)
I was thinking about how an actual Mars mission might be accomplished, with minimum cost and maximum gain. Here's what I came up with:
1. Construct a large ship in orbit--launching the entire ship on one rocket wouldn't really be feasible for a Mars expedition as it was for the lunar missions.
2. The ship might need to simulate gravity by spinning on an axis--after all, this will be a long mission (1-2 years) and we can't let the astronauts get too weak.
3. Send the ship off to Mars, land with a couple (or three) landing vehicles, then bring the ship back to Earth.
4. Use the ship as an orbiting space station. That's the real brilliance of my plan. We get a free space station in the process.
Well, that's all.
Hmm...looks like Bruce Willis aint working in movies after a while.
He's gonna get busy preparing to nuke an asteroid u know.
The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.
Thank you for stating the obvious. Perhaps you don't know what you're talking about ~ . ~
Wonderful. Might as well raise the debt ceiling again while we're at it. All so that one guy can be the first to plant a US flag in the red dirt and blow his line.
I mean, that "total unity of the world's population" line comes right out of the ISS propaganda leaflet.
Why, when it comes to space exploration, do we take it upon ourselves or everyone points fingers towards the United States to take charge? I seriously don't think that we will be able to get a manned mission to Mars going without an international effort. Congress keeps taking money away from space programs, yet they are expected to set up a manned mission to Mars in a few decades? Not to mention they are constantly seeking INCREASES in their pay. God. I could be a Congressman. "Hello sir, I'm an idiot! (sticks thumb up ass)" And I'd do it for free!
I'll do anything to get off this god forsaken planet. If I'm going I'm not comming back! And I'll blow up any ship that will try to take bueatiful mars away from the /.ers! It's ours. We deserve it. GET US AWAY FROM ALL THE IDOITS IN CONGRESS!!! Set up our own network using linux. Brand new start. Wonderfull. By the way shouldn't we teraform it first. Or a least increase the oxogen levels. Just a thought.
Yes I am trying to be funny. --- NEWB
==========
Sincerely,
Locke
Anyone else worried that maybe when a base is established on Mars the entire human race may eventually be turned into zombies by demonic forces pushed forth from hell through ancient slipgates still present in the depths of Phobos and Deimos?
At least my name's not Jerry.
Where are they planning on going?
As long as people are starving and warring in other countries, going to Mars is only going to be an accomplishment of the Americans--and as such, it will stand as a point of resentment to the rest of the world.
Going to Mars may make the USA feel better, but to people starving to death, it's gotta look pretty damn frivolous. There is a world outside of the USA...
At the very least some very strong basic science (with applications) in MEMs and nanotech, not only for the machinery needed to get to Mars, but for construction and terraforming. To make a large scale settlement there, we will have no choice but to build with local materials.
Second, major advances in space travel need to happen. We could possibly cobble together something that would get there and back but it would be of little lasting value. We need to understand more about alternative propolsion and energy adaption.
Third, we have very little useful information on human spaceflight, other than it is harmful. We need another twenty years for biotech to help offset the effects of space travel on our muscle and bones.
Fourth, some major advances in environmental science need to happen. We can barely keep the garden of paradise from turning into a sewage pit, so there's a lot of work to be done if we hope to take something as fragile as Mars and make it liveable.
Lastly computing still has a ways to go insofar as creating robust systems that can operate autonomously, although consumer applications from blenders to driveless monorail cars seem to be making progress.
We'll get there, but right now we just don't have what it takes to make the trip worthwhile.
You wanna your grand-kids alive? Then don't touch Antartica - it's one of the biggest climate keeper on the Earth.
Unless there was a threat of an asteroid hitting the planet, there is no way right now that nations are going to get involved in another community space project.
So some megacorp builds a factory up there. Who claims that planet(oid?) You could have a whole world claimed in the name of Microsoft! :P
:P
The point is that the ones who make the taxes will be the people who can actually get up there.
Or not. If some megacorp like Microsoft did something like that, most of their actual people are still down on Earth. All congress (or legislative body of any country, for that matter) would have to do is pass a 'personel tax' on all the corporate personel working within its borders, reguardless of location of official corporation.
You can trust lawyers to come up with new and more creative ways of inflicting taxes.
There's probably no way to reverse serious weather disruptions in the next century or rising water lines as a result. I have heard 17 ft as being a possible amount of rise over the next fifty years. That's dramatic.
Let's just put a bunch of solid fuel boosters on the ISS and head off next week. May as well get some use out of it. They can bring it back when they're done, and most people wouldn't even notice it's been missing.
But change human organism at first - I don't want to spend the life inside the building and I am not ready for Marsian air yet.
The history will repeat itself again: a centure ago we had brought slaves from Africa to America, in few decades we will bring slaves from Earth to Mars. Slave trading have ever been and will ever be as the most profitable business. That makes us, humans, different from all other animals.
The hypocrisy of this aside, legalizing pot and leaving gun owners alone won't get you as far as Pennsylvania let alone Mars.
As for the comment about the "war on terrorism", let me get this straight, America shouldn't defend itself, but instead go to Mars. Okay!
Mr. Lampson is the congress-critter for the area around the Johnson Space Center, which is about to get hammered for inducing a $5 billion overrun on the International Space Station. The Houston Chronicle recently had an article stating that 4000 jobs were at risk at JSC (out of ~16,000 total). Lampson wants to be able to say that he tried to save jobs at JSC in order to bolster his re-election chances.
NASA funding has been in a slow decline for decades. During the Apollo program, NASA had a lot more money to spend on the people and equipment needed to do the job right. Today, the agency is in a slow-motion implosion. Many people are retiring or are being forced out by budget cuts. Very few new people are being hired. There is little money for developing new technology or replacing old equipment. Faster, cheaper, better, pick two.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Buzz Aldrin has some interesting ideas for getting to mars, again and again for relatively cheap. I actually read a little blurb in this month's popular science that got me interested. Basically you put a few 'space hotels' as the media has begun to call them in orbit around the Sun. Once you've got those puppies in orbit it makes the trip much cheaper then using rockets to get all the way to Mars and back.
For geeks going to Mars is a technological achievement, a cool thing to do with no material benefit returned to the people (taxpayers) investing in it. Even the lowest estimates for a Mars mission run in the tens of billions for a single mission. Tens of billions of dollars to...plant a flag, take some measurements, and shoot some pictures? Apollo was a similar sort of mission though they actually had some nice returns on the investment because the technology to accomplish the mission didn't exist. The universities and contractors that designed and built equipment or just worked the numbers for the Gemini and Apollo missions gained immense amounts of knowlage about working in space. Had Apollo not needed small powerful computer systems which didn't exist at the time, slashdot probably would not exist and neither would your PC. The problem with a Mars mission is we have much of the technology needed to get there meaning putting an investment into the project isn't going to give you much of a return. It is inefficient and wasteful to mine Mars or even fabricate materials there for export. Say you had a Mars colony with a space launch infrastructure, it would cost them about as much to send something to Earth as it would cost us to send something to Mars. It is much more efficient to send a self sufficient manufacturing/refinment system to a much less massive body like an asteroid and have it send material back down to Earth. It's like mining the top of a mountain and rolling stuff downhill. As long as you've got a method to stop stuff it requires much less effort than trying to send your material up hill.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Creating jobs is always popular. A manned mission to mars would create millions of jobs on earth.
We should all go postal on Congress? :-)
We are pointless little specs of rust, sitting on a pointless spec of dust floating in the vastness of an infinte universe.
> We have the potential to explore and command the Universe in ways that we do not have reason to believe that anything else ever has, or that anything else ever will.
Get a grip. It's quite a leap from getting a tin can from here to the Moon to demonstrating potential to "command the Universe".
As far as "exploring" the Universe. Forget it. The Earth simply does not have enough potental energy.
> It is entirely possible that we may be the only living thing in the Universe that has left and returned to its planet through its own abilities.
It is also possible we aren't. I'm personally of the camp that hopes the Universe is full of life. I can't imagine the arrogance of being the only things around to bring beauty to it by observing.
(For that reason, I eschewed standard religions. The paradox between the sin of Pride and believing we're personally annointed by God as the sole guardians in the Universe simply blew the fuse.)
> there are untold riches out in space that are just waiting to be tapped to meet our needs...an untapped technology that is just waiting to solve our problems.
Been there, done that, we found no riches, few solutions. Sorry about that, you got Tang and Calculators. To get to Mars, we'll need, you guessed it, Tang and Calculators. Getting to the Moon was a new and enriching experience, getting to Mars is a re-run.
Indeed, now we know the Moon is pretty much made out of dirt, Mars is pretty much made out of dirt, and we've got plenty of dirt right here.
*******
Want a dream to work towards? Try some of these...
1) Fusion, or sustainable, energy. Something that's exhaustable only after any number of population density variables are exceeded first. Give all the future generations a thrill.
2) An equitable Economic system. One that isn't based on luck, greed, lies, and the Government Gun.
3) A way to save that peculur and amusing culture we know as "The French" (and every other flavor of human diversity) in the face of the current day "It's One World After All" experiment.
4) Find a way to implement true reduce, reuse, and recycling systems that serve more to conserve resources than to fuel corporate greed in the name of "feel'en good".
Mars is such a cold and impersonal dream. Typical of modern day thinking. Try setting your sites on improving the human condition right here at home. So much could be done, right here, with Man-on-Mars scale intellectual projects.
This is the same congress that won't fix our local (earthbound) transportation issues.
Lets drive and jet everywhere. Great idea! Going from NY to DC, take a jet! Go thru 50x more fuel then you need to on a 1 hour flight.
I'm not sure what good mining asteroids would do, except as a means to get material for space projects. The only thing that seems to pay about space so far is tourism.
Doom 2022: Demons on Phobos
Why? Because it's there. Because it serves a fundamental need of humanity: To expand and explore. When we will get there is another question altogether. It might happen suddenly because the Chinese are already planning to start a lunar colony by 2015 (astonautix.com) and the US feels the peer pressure. It might happen because the technology eventualy advances to the point where in 2030 say, it is relatively easy to do so. It might happen because someone might realise that the comet/asteroid wacking into the earth theory a la deep impact and armegeddon is not so far fetched (Just ask the dynosaurs) and they need to be able to rendezvous with asteroids. It might happen because of political reasons such as a president needing something to take away the focus from other important problems.
But it will happen. And even the deepest cynics don't even seem to doubt that. The how and when they doubt, but not the if.
i hope we will. mars should be left alone we already have enough bug just in sendmail, add the mars ones woufff!
What's wrong with NASA ??!!? We should have been there 20 years ago, not *after* 20 years.
I really hope this manned mission goes ahead. Obviously we'll have to wait many many years before we see any results, or vision, but I really hope they go to The Face, the D & M pyramid and the City. Regardless of the current and past speculation of what these objects are, or are not, I would tend to think that they are important enough to warrant further investigation.
Justin from Techhead Technology News
So what. I'm still partying like it's 1999!
You can kiss those projects goodbye in your lifetime if NASA wants to make a propaganda win by landing some people on Mars. The probes are about as good for most purposes. You simply can't say the same thing about a permanent moon base.
There are some risky and practical applications for moon missions, yet regarding Mars we'll be lucky to make it back.
I realise your post was an attempt at humor, but it does raise an interesting point.
There are alot of naysayers echoing this sentiment. i.e. Those who view space exploration as a waste of capital.
However the thing they fail to realize(and something that should be pointed out to them) is that space exploration could be the very thing that solves(or at least takes us a long way to solving) the very problems they frequently site as being reasons for not investing in space exploration.
In the short term we could solve many energy problems(though certainly not all of them). It's likely low to zero G's would be very helpful in the manufacturing of new materials for industry(in fact in a couple of cases the evidence is very strong in this regard. i.e. Certain types of fuel refining.)
In the long term we would be opening up a new frontier to deal with the "population explosion". In fact, in some ways it's safer to build a habitat in space than on or under the ocean(as others have proposed.)
These are just a few of the reasons why I beleive this bill, and others like it, should be supported. It might be just a drop in the bucket, but it might also be a big enough boost to finally spark at least a little serious public sector investment in this field. There are players out there already in the wings waiting for the chance to break through the beuracratic(sp?) stone wall that's been in place all these years.
Maybe I'm just piping hot air, but this seems like a reasonable step at this point in our techno/societal evolution.
McDoobie
...a sig is a sig is a sig
The trick is to go there in two steps:
Send an unmanned ship containing an unfueled return vehicle, six tons of hydrogen, and a chemical catalyst. Use the catalyst and the Martian atmosphere (primarily CO2) to create methane and water from the hydrogen (CO2 + 4H2 --> CH4 + 2H2O, exothermic). Store the methane for later use as rocket fuel. Elecrolyze the water to create oxygen gas (for later use as, well, oxygen) and more hydrogen, which you re-use to make more methane and water. This reaction eventually produces 24 tons of methane and 48 tons of oxygen; the plan calls for making an additional 36 tons of oxygen by reducing CO2.
So far we've hauled six tons of hydrogen into space, thrown it at Mars, and used it to produce over 100 tons of rocket fuel, which is now sitting in a depot on Mars. Compare this to the cost of hauling 200 tons of rocket fuel into space, much less sending that much mass on a round trip to Mars.
Three years later, launch the manned rocket. With the return vehicle and fuel already on Mars, your manned vehicle only needs enough fuel to get there, and doesn't need the ability to lift off from Mars again; in fact, the vehicle is designed to become a permanent, habitable fixture of the Martian landscape. Your first rocket has already explored the territory with a few roving robot probes, and is even providing a landing beacon.
At the same time as the manned vehicle launch, launch a second unmanned rocket, identical to the first. This is your redundant backup for the incoming astronauts, in case the fuel depot springs a leak while they're in transit; at worst they'll have to wait for the second chemical factory to ramp up production, but otherwise you can have a complete failure of the first rocket and still be safe.
Spend 1.5 years on Mars. No need to worry about getting home before your fuel runs out, because you're making more fuel as you go; you brought enough food supplies to last at least three years (and will leave some behind as a backup for the next manned mission, just in case), and you're producing oxygen and water faster than you can consume them.
Get in the return vehicle and go home. Repeat the cycle until you've colonized Mars.
The problems with Mars Direct fall into two broad categories: It requires a small nuclear reactor (smaller than the typical nuclear submarine's) to provide the initial power supply for the first unmanned lander, which makes the anti-nuclear lobby go nuts. The second problem is that Mars Direct doesn't scratch enough backs within the NASA bureaucracy to get funded: It bypasses the need for space stations, lunar landings, orbiting space fleets, warp drives, etc., and thus doesn't get support from any of the intra-NASA groups that want their pet project funded instead.
The reasons we haven't been to Mars have nothing to do with practicality or affordability: Getting to Mars is achievable with current technology, and could be done for the cost of a steel tariff. It's all about politics and votes -- if half a million people marched on Washington to demand a Mars mission, we'd be there by 2010.
The first permenant outpost was made
in -get this- 1492. Didn't pan out,
they were all dead when Columbus returned
in -get this- 1493. So he established
another town. And this one lasted.
(I think the second town was La Isabella,
the first La Navidad, not sure, though).
I'd guess that the first time there were
six expeditions to america in five years
would be the period of 1492-1497. I mean,
even the English (Cabot) were sticking
flags in the ground, by then. Not to mention
that the Spanish already had a four year old
permenant settlement on Hispaniola.
A few of the guys that made early expeditions
were Columbus, Vespucci, Real, Cabot, and
Cabral. Spain and Portugal divvied things up
pretty early, 1494 I think.
It all happened faster than you seem to think.
Please know whence you speak, or at least do
due diligence of a few google searches, before
you forcefully make incorrect arguements, OK?
Thanks.
The armchair method of planning that is suggested might work for a trip to the beach, but active preparation is the order of the day for, say an arctic expedition or a trek up a mountain. During the Apollo days (yes, I'm that old) the science was developed as the program itself advanced. True, there was the *competitive* nature of the space race to provide impetus, but aiting for everything to be developed first, and then getting in an off-the-shelf Mars Bus just won't happen. Because it is boring. Not in the aw-I'm-so-bored whiny way, but in the Public-has-no-interest-so-lets-quietly-spend-the-f unding-on
-something-else-whilst-they-are-asleep sort of way.
Hmm?
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
If you can get to it and put yout little flag on it, it's yours.
Deleted
Russia is the only country in the world with a Manned Commercial Space Program. They have launch costs of around 5% of the Shuttle. Their own currency has been slowly devaluing against the dollar, bvut just a few percent per year. The new leadership at the central bank is unlikely to either borrow profligately or to print money. There inflation rate is comparatively high (that is in relation to Western countries) but that is down to expectations of the new middle classes who want to be able to spend the money that they earned.
Russia is unlikely to go to Mars by themselves, but as the only country with much relevant BFB experience (I understand that much of the Saturn 5 blueprints have been lost). The Russians would be a key partner though for anyone else. In particular they still have the most expertise for long-term missions, in particular of building stuff that is maintainable.
I agree about terrorism but I have problems with the rest of your comments, but please remember what Kennedy did, he gave voice to a vision. Without a vision, blessed by the top, it will never happen. It is important to get off this planet because with recent research on extinction events, whether asteroids or a nearby cosmic-ray burster, humans have a limited time on earth and the clock is already ticking. Mars is only a start.
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The response of some /.'ers ticks me off. Granted, it's because I expect a rather more intelligent debate here than in the general public (foolish optimism), but still...
For every person who complains that a mission to Mars would 'cost too much' or 'be of little/no benefit' I say fooey.
1) Let's take the long view, for ONCE. It's hard enough to get corporations to look into NEXT year's returns. It's hard enough to get politicians to plan for any time after their next re-election campaign. But please, can't anyone see that interplanetary travel will significantly benefit the entire human race, FOREVER? To ever achieve it, someone, somewhere, somewhen HAS to make the first faltering, tentative steps. Someone has to spend the money to TRY. We're the wealthiest, (arguably) most technologically advanced state on the planet. We are basically at peace and have been for 50 years. To echo another poster - if not us, who? If not now, when?
2) for those who argue that there's too little return to a Martian mission I also say fooey. The gains in terms of working knowledge regarding long-term space travel, propulsion systems, long distance communication, life support systems etc are already a long list. But the subsequent gains - if you see the mission to Mars as a stepping stone in a vital and thriving space program - are truly stunning. Asteroid mining - they are a HECK of a lot further away than Mars (in general). Having the nuances of long term space travel well understood would allow the reasonable pursuit of asteroid exploitation in the nearer future. A billion tons of nickel-iron already in orbit anyone? Anyone care to calculate how our space opportunities would explode if we already had the raw materials in space to work with?
Or further: what about longer-range missions? Ganymede? Titan? What if there's a reasonable chance of finding life on these worlds (or even still Mars)? How much is it worth to us to know that there is other life out there? If you are talking dollars and cents on the bottom line this year? Probably $0.00. How much is it worth to us philosophically and as a species? Those of us who are space-optimists would say it's of incalculable value. Those who aren't would still say $0 and I pity them. They're also the ones who said man wasn't meant to fly, either.
-Styopa
Com'on other countries... Plan a mission to mars sooner than 2022 (Say 2010?). This way we can have an old fashioned space race :)
In my opinion, no country, how powerful and rich they may be will ever be able to cough up the money for a mission to mars, let alone the things that might come after that. So I think the best way to do it is to make a world wide coalition to get ppl sent to mars. If we can get the ESA, NASA, and NASDO into this and perhaps even the russians, (they have a huge knowledge on living in weightless conditions), this project might have a better chance than when the US would do it alone.
Sure it'd be a cool engineering feat to put men on mars, but so what? For what purpose? Real world mars? There's only two things I really want to see out of the space program:
1) Find extra-terrestial life
2) Create extra-terrestial human colonies (MUCH lower priority)
1) Can much better be accomplished using robots than manned missions, and the seas of Europa seem a more interesting destinationn than mars. By all means send a serious exploratory robotic mission to mars too, though.
2) We'll learn 99% of what we would on mars by putting a colony on our moon, and it's be a hell of a lot cheaper and safer.
Oh man, I am completely slobbering. Return to the golden age!
(1) Within 8 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to the L 1 and L 2 Earth-Sun libration points and back for the purposes of assembling large-scale space structures such as would be required for scientific observatories, to the Earth-Moon libration points and back, and to lunar orbit and back.
(2) Within 10 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to and from an Earth-orbit crossing asteroid and rendezvousing with it.
(3) Within 15 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back, as well as the development and deployment of a human-tended habitation and research facility on the lunar surface.
(4) Within 20 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to and from Martian orbit, the development and deployment of a human-tended habitation and research facility on the surface of one of the moons of Mars, and the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from Martian orbit to the surface of Mars and back.
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
When you write your Congresscritters, be sure to mention that you're talking about bill HR 4742.
Why? Because others are taking the space-race seriously. While the US cuts back its space program, Russia, Europe and especially China are pushing hard to develope space technology. China wants to land on the moon within _this_decade_. Next, they'll be going for Mars. National honour is very important to them.
"Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." - Dan Quayle
www.marssociety.org Check out operation Congress. Sure looks like a lobbying effort to me.
A terrorist is a person who kills civilians to advance a political aim. Yes, this means that Dresden was a terrorist act (since military aims are inherently political) and the murder of Pim Fortuyn was a terrorist act and so on. The US is theoretically attacking terrorists with "global reach", which would rule out the domestic variety of political murders and such. A freedom fighter, presumably a person whose political goal is to remove the influence of a government over a particular geographic area or some population subgroup, can still be a terrorist, if they kill civilians. Not all terrorism is bad, and not all freedom fighters are good, and the whole thing is mixed up together. What we are currently engaged in is the routing out of terrorists who target people across borders or in some way contrary to our interests.
As to gun control, I believe that Switzerland has a higher per capita gun ownership than does the US. Oh, and the US also has the most murders by knife, defenesration and a number of other methods.
-jeff
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Manned missions are too risky and costly. We should continue to send robotic missions. I just don't believe at this date we have the technology and resources to make a successful manned mission. Just setting foot on Mars isn't a real goal. We need scientific data, not photo ops.
Besides, I don't feel we should spread the human infestation to other worlds till we have cleaned up the mess we made on Earth. At this point, we haven't earned a second home as a species. I see us as filthy little monkeys who shit where they eat. Why would we want to spread that?
If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it. -- Calvin Coolidge
(a) GOALS. - The Administrator shall set the following goals for the future activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's human space flight program: (1) Within 8 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the development and flight demonstration of a reusable space vehicle capable of carrying humans from low Earth orbit to the L 1 and L 2 Earth-Sun libration points and back for the purposes of assembling large-scale space structures such as would be required for scientific observatories, to the Earth-Moon libration points and back, and to lunar orbit and back.
science is a religion
First practical method of production in 1959.
It was initially very expensive. Development of the lunar lander guidance computer drove world-wide production of ICs in the 1960s. At one point, over 90% of all ICs _in_existance_ were in this project! Funding for Apollo is what drove the research and resulted in the basic building block of the modern computer. And without modern computers, a plethora of other inovations would not have come into existance, such as the Internet and anything else you can think of that had something to do with heavy number crunching.
science is a religion
The US is, what, a month from going completely broke?
The only way it'll ever get to Mars is to accomplish its global dictatorship/enslavement ambitions and wipe out its debts by wiping out those it owes. I sure as hell don't want that kind of people taking over the solar system
The father of their space program was a Chinese man who help put the US in space, then went back to China.
When the US and USSR were competing, nobody knew if it was possible; now that question has been answered.
Russian has been selling China space-related technology. They have more experience in space than the US.
The US are 15 years behind schedule because the corporations started milking the system. The Chinese leadership just has to say "it shall be thus" and it is--the reason they haven't started sooner is because their leadership made the concious decision to work on other things first. Now they have turned the corner and decide that they want to go to the moon--permanantly.
And to top it off, they are (in theory) communists, so the capitalist US must oppose them! And as a bonus, they have a red flag, so we can just recycle the rhetoric about "the reds"!
science is a religion
That's the story you're talking about, right? The one where the genius developer Delos D. Harriman ignores the scoffs of everyone and manages to finance a trip to the moon? That's a great story.v en_economics_000414.html
There's plenty of chatter by Larry Niven about this here (despite all the cookies and pop-ups and junk): http://www.space.com/sciencefiction/larryniven/ni
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How dare they don't send a woman on board?! Calling it a 'man'ned mission means NASA DO NOT WANT women to pioneer space exploration!!! BOYCOTT NASA NOW!!!
Do you think a mission to Mars is within our current technological reach? It may be. But I think it's probably a little beyond our current capability. But not so much as Apollo was at the time.
One of the opening comments in the bill states that we need a "challenging goal." I heartily agree with that. If going to Mars isn't challenging enough, maybe we should have a goal of sending an interstellar probe. And maybe go to Mars as a preparatory / test run, to test the technologies we'd be developing for interstellar travel.
Sure it'd take a long time for our probe to get to another star system -- but it'd be a HUGE technological breakthrough. The amount of innovation in communications and propulsion requirements would be comparable to the Apollo missions. We rose to the occasion for the moon; why not for the stars?
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
Ah the beloved "Piggy-back" bill.
I say we find out who decided the piggy-back option for passing laws was a good idea and make them do a national tour. Of "Deliverance" live, on stage! Let them have Ned Beatty's part.
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
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Go to http://thomas.loc.gov/bss/d107query.html
and search for H.R.4742 in the Bill/Amendment No. field.
COSPONSORS(7)
Rep Bentsen, Ken - 5/15/2002
Rep Carson, Brad - 5/15/2002
Rep Frost, Martin - 5/15/2002
Rep Green, Gene - 5/15/2002
Rep Hall, Ralph M. - 5/15/2002
Rep Jackson-Lee, Sheila - 5/15/2002
Rep Smith, Lamar - 5/15/2002
Wired did a story a while back about why sending people to mars with a 40 year supply of gear is cheaper than sending a return vehicle. Henry Spencer (of regex and usenet fame) was even willing to go along for the one way trip.
the Chinese and world community are saying possesion is 90% of the law I guess this inventor figures no one will be able to challenge him !!
Space Propulsion Engine for Flying Saucer - New Physics
Rumor in Silicon Valley -
Inventor of 3D volume holographic optical storage
shopping his concept for Space Propulsion Engine
using Propellantless Mass to US and other countries.
for further look at biography background goto
http://www.colossalstorage.net
he is working in top secret and will not patent, publish or share concepts as he says no physicist or scientist he has ever studied or researched had this approach and knows his concept will work to give near light speed travel thru Galaxy with 500K/Miles per Hour
to start or 138 miles/sec. Nasa fastest time are 25,000 mile/hr or 3.9 miles/sec
he says it is a mankind first concept !!