Slashdot Mirror
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."
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 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?
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?!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Creating jobs is always popular. A manned mission to mars would create millions of jobs on earth.