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Bush To Announce Manned Trip To Moon, Mars
edmunz writes "Foxnews just placed an article on their website saying that Bush is expected to make an announcement towards the middle of next week, proposing a manned mission to Mars as well as a return to the moon. Bush hopes to spark a renewed public interest in space exploration. No mission would happen any time soon, rather a preparation of over a decade would take place before the first men/women set out to explore Mars."
It's too bad there isn't a "Survivor" series in the works: "Who Will You Vote off the Planet?"
"Survivor Planet Wide Edition"
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
There are a number of common arguments against sending humans to Mars. I thought I would address them up front before too many people put forth incorrect claims.
- Mars exploration is expensive
Not so. The best estimate I've heard is a 20 billion startup cost spread over 10 years with a 2 billion cost per mission. Sure that's a lot but it's well within the current NASA budget if you take away ISS and the Shuttle program. Neither of those are of much use anyway.
Also, If you take a look at the federal budget, you'll see that the NASA budget of around 17 billion is an order of magnitude cheaper than either the defense budget, or health and human services (wellfare). Even Veterans affairs gets about 3 times that money. It's a small part of the national budget if done right with large rewards down the line.
- Mars exploration is dangerous
True to an extent but nothing work getting is without risk. NASA will run out of hardware long before it runs out of volunteers. That's not to say that we'll be killing most people we send up, but rather than there is no shortage of people willing to take the risks. Oh, and if you're going to bring up the old "too much radiation" argument, see this. There are lots of things more dangerous on Earth than going to Mars. My morning comute is probably more risky.
- There's nothing to gain from going to Mars
Where do I even start? New home for humanity. Unprecedented Scientific discovery. Easy access to the asteroids ($trillion apiece in ore!). Tech jobs at home. Youngsters inspired to go into science and engineering. Plentiful fusion fuel (this will be important in the next 10-20 years). I could go on.
Going to Mars and taming space is the only way forward for humanity as a whole. For a better description of this and more please check out Entering Space and The Case for Mars.
Lastly, I would urge everyone who is enthused about this to take action and write your representatives. I cannot stress that enough. Papa Bush made a call for this but backed out when it looked too hard because of a falsely inflated sticker price. We have to make sure that he sticks to his guns. We have to make sure he does it write and we have to make sure that he has the backing in Congress to make it work. Check out this for a primer.
Blaze a trail to the New World
the same president who wants to cut funding to NASA? So we'll be sending people to Mars on a shoestring budget? Yay for making it there alive!
What?
While we can practice (as this version of the story at Yahoo! suggests) a possible Mars mission by going to the moon, we have already done that! We did it in the 60s... that was almost 35 years ago!! What's on the moon? While a nice place for an observatory, we should go straight to Mars.
Everyone today wants to be "safe". And while there is certainly no justification for recklnessness, this country didn't get to where it is today by being overly cautious. I hope that President Bush has the courage and conviction to challenge America to take our space program to the next level and plan a mission direct to Mars.
For those of you that don't know, Dr. Robert Zubrin, in his book "The Case for Mars" has shown that a mission to Mars is not only feasible, but that it is feasible with much of the technology that existed in the 60s! For more information, see here. With the technology we have today, and the ingenuity, fortitude, and bravery that America has demonstrated for almost 230 years, we should go straight to Mars!
libertarianswag.com
Cue flood of "Bush Invades Mars" and WMD jokes in 3...2...1...
So did we find oil on the moon and on Mars or something?
"Hate bush so much but want to find hot alien babes someday..."*head explodes*
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Remember when conservatives were all about limiting government spending? Wow. what the hell ever happened to that party?
I suppose Bush may be looking for a 'legacy' here. JFK is always thought of when people mention Apollo and other programs from that era. I'd personally hate to lay the credit for a return to space on Dubya.
If it's a serious proposal I think that'd be great. Let's get the funding approved and be off then.
I fear though that this may be a stunt to gain some more traction in the polls. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
now bush plans to invade the moon and mars... tsk tsk tsk...
Bush hopes to spark a renewed public interest in space exploration.
Bush hopes to spark renewed public interest in his re-election campaign....
It's campaign season, folks. I'd love to see it happen, but let's save the Huzzahs! until it actually does, hmm?
Funding and realistic goals. Reusable craft and cheaper delivery methods to space and blah blah blah. You know the drill.
Or, we could just throw money at the problem and pretend it will go away that way. Actually, I'll chip in to a fund for an X-Ray machine for the NASA managers' and directors' skulls in case someone's actually looking for the source of the "setbacks".
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I'm all for space exploration, but you have to wonder whether this is just an "inspirational" idea that isn't REALLY meant to get implemented.
The reality is that there is a ballooning deficit that already threatens the health of the ecomony, I don't see how the average joe will think it's such a great idea to go to mars or the moon when suddenly the mortgage payments have doubled because interest rates have gone up because the govt has a money shortage!
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
using conventional rockets, a mars trip would take at least 2 years. During that time, NASA has estimated the crew would be irradiated at such a high level that every cell in the body would have received some damage. There are few solutions to this: 1) Go faster. Requires nuclear propulsion. Not going to happen in my lifetime. 2) Use lots of sheilding with high density materials (e.g. Tungsten). 10x more weight than we can currently send to mars and back. 3) Some new thing nobody has thought of yet. It's nice to think it's just a matter of money, but it really isn't.
Hmm. I've been back to the 'States a few times in the last few years, and I'm no longer convinced that Fox News is any worse than the rest. Certainly, CNN isn't any better anymore.
Tragic but true. Sigh.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
What this really means is that NASA might see a 1% budget increase instead of a budget cut next year, and after that (after Bush is re-elected or someone else is elected), it'll go back down.
I was reading this link http://boingboing.net/2004_01_01_archive.html#1073 57767583280159 over at boingboing.net and think it's pretty relevant. basically it's a comment towards why bother going to mars when we avoid the mars like climates on earth.
I don't totally agree with the article, especially since it doesn't consider our need to eventually figure out how to live off this planet, but it is interesting.
I dont see why China Europe and America and maybe even Australia (haha) cant all work together, the costs can be lessened that way.
The problem lies with the people in power, they all wanna be the first to do something.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
The idea of further space travel may inspire americans to innovate more. Plus a lot of inventions and discoveries come out of the space program. Computers would not be where they are today without the space program. I see a great potential for new recycling and power consumption technologies to come out of this, which could help reverse the damage we've been causing to the planet. Etc.
here. They have links to other news sites. In particular, the UPI article has a mention about a presidential commission to review Nasa's plans. Interesting...
I am not particularly happy with the statement that all other Nasa programs that do not support the new effort are to be scrapped. Indeed. Perhaps this whole proposal can be amended to include a peer review of top scientists in reign in some of this...
Yeah, you're right, let's just stop all space exploration.
Anything else that makes life fun that you care to destroy, while you're at it?
Better that a rat bit your sister, and MANKIND is on the Moon, than a rat bit your sister and the Moon nobody's on the moon.
Finances shouldn't be too big an issue. As an earlier post mentioned, it is well within the budget of the US government to sent people to Mars. Hell, if they really wanted, they could bring back rocks from Mars and sell them to make up for some of the cost.
Not to mention the unity of a massive, interplanetary project for the country to rally behind. Look at the sense of national and global unity gained from landing on our own moon, and extrapolate it out to another planet.
Of course, Mars is more exciting. But practicly, exploring Antarctica is many orders of magnitude easier. The barren continent (a few penguins may be) may hold plenty of promise within a much easier reach...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Halliburton has just started a new manned-space-exploration division.
It cost them more than 3x the original estimate on ISS, and this is after the project was watered down. Your $20 billion number is laughable and I defy you to cite the source as being remotely legit or realistic. Even if a valid scientific method can be attached to the $20 billion number you haven't factored in the absurd cost overruns this project will most obviously experience.
Regarding the forthcoming Bush announcement on space policy: From the various sources reporting on the subject, here's what the Presidents plan will look like. 1. Manned space flight will be NASAs only priority. Almost all non-manned projects will done away with or rolled into the manned program if appropriate. 2. The space shuttle fleet will be retired. Done. Finished. They will stay in service long enough to finish construction of the space station in the next few years. 3. A new space vehicle, the CEV (Crew Exploration Vehicle) will be built and rolled into production in place of the shuttle. The era of winged spacecraft is over for nasa, the CEV is akin to a large Apollo capsule, only able to carry up to 6-8 crew. The CEV is usable in earth orbit AND lunar orbit. The shuttle was only capable of reaching earth orbit, the CEV will be able to leave earth orbit and fly to the moon! 4. Europe's Ariane rockets and Russia's Soyuz capsules will be used to access the space station until the CEV in finished and ready for use. 5. The hierarchy of NASA will be changed so that the Defense Department is now included in the planning and future use of future technology. Expect big stuff from this. Having the military involved is a GOOD thing. 6. The first return trip to the moon is planned for 2013 and the following missions will begin the process of building a permanent, manned presence there. 7. Also starting in 2013, NASA will end almost all involvement with the ISS. Expect this to possibly become a private venture. 8. The CEV and moon base construction will be a test-bed for the Mars missions that will follow. 9. MARS 10. After mars, there will be manned missions to the asteroids. NASA will become one of only 3 federal agencies to get a spending increase (5%) in its budget over the next 5 years. The other two being the Department of Defense and Homeland Security. In 2005 a lump sum of $800 Million will be awarded to NASA. If this is indeed the Presidents plan, it is nothing short of remaking NASA in the image of what it once was in the days of Apollo. Manned space flight with a purpose, the days of space truckers in orbit is *over*.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
The moon is a giant rock that happens to be covered in a consistent layer of Helium 3. Harvesting that could, combined with the advent of Fusion power, provide us enough power to light the entire planet for thousands of years. Oh, and we'd make a tidy profit from it. The Moon is also a really fine source of raw material for building other things in orbit alot cheaper than lofting them from earth. It's also likely we can find sufficient raw materials to seperate out vital components for rocket fuel, also a lot cheaper per pound than trying to bring it up from Earth.
:D
Mars is a spooky prospect for me, too. I'm not thrilled with the idea of bringing back samples, let alone sending people there. Bringing samples back to a well isolated lab on the Moon (or in some other spot, like a lagrange point) is another matter.
I'd a lot rather have us go from the Moon to the asteroids anyway -- now there's some profit potential! Plus, what we don't find a direct commmercial use for we can always drop down the gravity well on terrorists at really nice velocities. Kinetic energy is our friend.
Bottom line is that 04 will see a record budget deficit - there is not room for a $50-$200 billion Mars mission.
I think this is the beginning of the signs we're going to see for his re-election strategy..
With all the soft PAC money restrictions annulled, Bush will play "good cop" trying to get Americans excited about the future and his leadership, with goofball pie-in-the-sky claims he has no intention of fulfilling, but after all the fear and awe his administration has laid on the people, they'll buy into the crap, while his corporate cronies unleash all the fear and mud-slinging at his opponents. The American people will be stunned like deer in the headlights of the GOP media-blitz.
The moon IS the road to Mars. If we can't inhabit the moon for 18 months at a time, we sure can't go to Mars.
I think sending manned missions to Mars directly is a tad bit over-ambitious. For starters, isn't it true that the 60's technology that got us to the moon is largely lost? I remember reading somewhere that the plans for the Apollo missions were lost in a sea of red tape somewhere. Look at the failures of unmanned Mars spacecraft. Even if we had the technology, you would expect a few human-less dry runs first, much like the Apollo missions. Even then you would want to send astronauts to Mars orbit without landing (like Apollo 10). With Mars being months away, and with essentially untested technology, establishing a moonbase seems a more realistic and attainable goal.
NO CARRIER
Y'know...
First of all, nice rhyme. Don't know if it's original or not, but well done.
The same argument was made in 67, when they started to pour tons of money into the first moon landing, and continued for ages. There was a comic in Mad Magazine, from roughly 1972.
Q "How come the guvmint can put people on the moon, but they can't feed us poor people?"
A "Who wants poor people on the moon?"
The same argument goes towards any and all basic scientific research, and budgets for groups like NASA and the NSF get attacked regularly, because there's always somewhere else more dire to spend the money. Unfortunately, throwing more money at medical care won't fix the problems there, and will take away from potentially incredible discoveries. True. you need money--LOTS of money--to make (for example) health care work, but the money is already there. It's reform that's needed, not more cash into the same system.
As for the statement about the US deficits, it's very true--and (again) stopping the space program won't help in the slightest. The US is in a stage of horrible mismanagement, rampant unchecked capitalism, and money(for the people) or power(for the government)-lust. I'm starting to think that within my lifetime, I'll see the first capitalist country to burn itself up, and make no mistake--it will be the US.
And killing off the space program won't change a thing.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Why should it be so long before we can have people on mars? We got people on the moon with 60's technology, they should be able to have people on mars within a couple of years tops.
I got first dibs on the cryo-unit next to Sigourney Weaver!
"HAL." :)!
"Yes Dave."
"Tell Houston we're a little behind."
Stuff that matters.
Nothing is on the Moon--absolutely nothing. That's what is so great about it. Cost effective space exploration depends on developing propulsion systems which developing on Earth is very risky to the environment.
This might be a case of NASA unintentionally catching lightning in a bottle. First you have China sending a man into orbit, and also announcing aggressive plans for space and possibly the moon. Then you have the success of the Spirit landing, especially so soon after what's looking like a big setback for the ESA on a similar mission.
We really can't afford to be passed up by China in the space programs. The implications on many fronts, from technological, military, and national stature are too important. As the wars of the 20th century were swung by air superiority, a future war bewtween the US and China could easily be swung by space superiority. (Imagine how blind our forces would be if our satellites were disabled or destroyed.)
And we've proven we can get craft to Mars and land them safely. Granted, there have been some spectacular failures, but the US is the only nation to put functioning equipment on the Martian surface. With humans at the controls we would dramatically lessen the risk of a crash on the surface. There wouldn't be anxiety over whether the airbags were deploying or what petal the ship was landing on. The biggest issue would be getting supplies there ahead of time and being sure they landed. We'd have to send supplies and a means of getting off the surface ahead of time. Astronauts would be spending several months on the surface, and there is no emergency return, so we'd need to be sure that everything is in place.
I think those two factors - a space race with China and our ability to get craft to Mars - came together at the right time. A successful manned Mars mission would be a stunning success for mankind, and if we're going to do it, now is a good time to start the planning process.
Amoung other things they are saying that they plan to scrap the shuttle fleet after ISS is finished.
It also says that NASA will be the only department other than homeland security and the military to get a budget increase. Personally, I'm not sure this will really happen, since they are planning through 2013, which is (including the current) four presidential terms away. The US goverment isn't very good at sticking with one plan that long.
plus-good, double-plus-good
Yes. Let's colonize mars.
Hmm... this sounds awfuly similar to an awful mistake made in the past. Spain reluctantly sends Columbus to America. Before you know it, they've colonized much of central/south America. This leads to a series of wars which has yet to end.
Seriously. If you look back, every war to this date can be traced back to some form of colonization or another.
Even the war in Iraq can be traced back to colonization. As the European empires are beginning to implode on top of each other, WWI breaaks out. Once it's over, the empires are desparate to keep what little land they have left, and hastily write the Versailles Treaty which causes WWII, sets borders in the arab states (creating political instability in Iraq and Iran), and prompts for the creation of Israel.
It seems that now we've learned our lesson, and that the countries of the world are not willing to expand or colonize. They know the consequenses all too well. Sure, war will always happen, but I just can't see the US, china, or India becoming expansionist nations.
Now we bring another planet into the equation. Mars will soon become the next fronteir. Bush wants it to belong to America.
Just as it was Europe's destiny to colonize America, it seems like it will become our destiny to colonize Mars. If the Earth's population continues to explode at the current rate, the survival of our race may depend on an interplanetary colony in the future.
Do you see the dilema we have? If America colonizes Mars, we will create a conflict which may never be ended. If we don't, another country will. Either way, the world will fight over the control of Mars.
It's sad to think that our future seems destined to hold both great discovery and great war.
A new epoch is about to begin.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
It won't "make life fun" since it isn't going to happen. The budget will not allow it.
For the past several days the president seems to have been announcing initiatives with no expectation or even desire that they pass. This is like the temporary work visa thing that was announced yesterday, which was an attempt for the Hispanic vote and which has little hope in Congress. This space initiative is a crowd pleaser for everybody. But with the budget like it is, an expense this large has no chance in hell of passing. Unless they ditch their precious ISS, and there's virtually no chance of that happening since they have spent so much money on it already.
Y'know...
First of all, nice rhyme. Don't know if it's original or not, but well done.
The same argument was made in 67, when they started to pour tons of money into the first moon landing, and continued for ages. There was a comic in Mad Magazine, from roughly 1972.
Q "How come the guvmint can put people on the moon, but they can't feed us poor people?"
A "Who wants poor people on the moon?"
No, it is not original. In fact, it is a rather famous poem, Whitey on the Moon by Gil Scott-Heron.
For the lazy slashdotters who need not click links for fear of evil pictures (and now popups! damnit goatse.cx trolls, quit with the popups! goatse was enough already!) I have reproduced it here:
Whitey on the Moon
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey's on the moon)
I can't pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Ten years from now I'll be payin' still.
(while Whitey's on the moon)
The man jus' upped my rent las' night.
('cause Whitey's on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
I wonder why he's uppi' me?
('cause Whitey's on the moon?)
I wuz already payin' 'im fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes takin' my whole damn check,
Junkies makin' me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin' up,
An' as if all that shit wuzn't enough:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an' arm began to swell.
(but Whitey's on the moon)
Was all that money I made las' year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain't no money here?
(Hmm! Whitey's on the moon)
Y'know I jus' 'bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I'll sen' these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)
Technically speaking the US government is bankrupt against its own domestic entitlement payments already on the books ($40 trillion shortfall on existing/booked entitlements for medicare and social security).
So buying a pack of gum right now is not within the US budget.
The original aim for space exploration was really a space arms race. I'd wager that this is what this is about you probably just wont hear about that part of it.
With the ISS serving practically no purpose, and the shuttle fleet's reevaluation after Columbia was destroyed, there is no better time than now to redirect NASA and give them a real goal. This gives NASA an excuse to stop funding the ISS money pit and mothball the shuttles.
If the resources spent on those two projects could be diverted to a singular goal, such as sending people to Mars, then we should have the ability to accomplish it.
Oh, and this leads me to another thought. One way trips to mars. One way as in a volunteer(s) that go to Mars, explore, and when resources run out they die. Step back and take a look at our planet. It is covered with several BILLION creatures with the capability to do amazing things. MILLIONS of us die a year under the most trivial and wasteful circumstances. Sending a few of our kind to explore a whole new world (literally) at the cost of their "premature" deaths is an extremely trivial thing in that light - if the rest of us could stomach it as individuals.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Better yet, if Cheney could get any intelligence reports to hint that the Martians might have weapons of mass destruction, then the sky's the limit as far as the budget goes. And Halliburton could get the contract!
Yeah, because that $400 million, extensively-tested and over-engineered Spirit rover was a disaster, while the $65 million, under-tested Beagle 2 is sending back useful data.
While I'd like nothing more than to see NASA become more efficient money-wise, cutting corners isn't the right way to do it. There's a reason NASA's projects cost a lot: they check, double-check, then triple-check everything. Their systems tend to be over-engineered, which is exactly what is needed when travelling to another planet.
And before anybody trots out Mars Polar Lander, remember that the problem was, or so I have read, with one of the contractors not building its part of the spacecraft according to NASA's specifications (using Imperial measurements instead of metric). In fact, recent evidence suggests that Mars Polar Lander may have landed intact, which means that it failed for some other reason.
A human scientist on-site could probably learn much more than all the landers and rovers combined. During the course of its entire mission, the Mars Pathfinder rover only travelled a grand total of something like 40 feet. The reason the mission ended (and the reason that the Spirit and Opportunity missions will end, if everything goes well): dust gathering on the solar cells until they can no longer provide enough electricity for the vehicle to function. Not a problem with internally-powered humans.
Communications lag means that rovers can't be controlled in real-time, and the people involed with the mission don't want to risk getting the rover stuck (rightfully so), so each destination, and the best way to get to that destination, are carefully planned out. Combine that with the rover's low speed, and it's easy to see why Mars Pathfinder didn't travel very far. On the other hand, a human walking around on the Martian surface can decide which rock looks the most interesting and pick it up in a matter of seconds.
Lastly, NASA's budget is much smaller than many other federal agencies, as others have already mentioned.
First, it's about fu*king time we went back to the moon and Mars. We need to get to the Asteroid Belt and secure access to the resources out there. New technologies will surely result, perhaps even fusion with the help of He-3, and the ultra-pure manufacturing possible in zero-g are only immediately obvious commercial benefits.
Seriously, the people we send to the moon and especially Mars need to work as a unit and either get along or be married couples. People who are cramped in a pressurized metal tube for days on end will start having problems, especially if the didn't like each other in the first place. Assuming it will take at least 7 days to get to the moon, do research, and get back, the strain is tremendous when it's all done in 1000 cubic feet or less. If Mars is involved, the travel time could be just over 6 months (ideally with a plasma drive system and only 2 weeks at Mars, 3 months there and back) to just over a year (advanced chemical drive system). The wrong combination of people could cause unprofessional attitudes among other things. Also, how big is the proposed Mars craft? And will it have artifical gravity?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
I tend to suspect that this "leak" is a way to test the water. Some people will say it just what the country needs, others will whine about the cost. If they flag wavers seem to predominate, he'll make the actual announcement. If the whining is louder, he'll say that it was just a tentative plan that the media blew out of proportion.
Either way, this just isn't going to happen. I mean, where's the money supposed to come from? And Dubya knows this, of course. He hopes to commit a few billion on "plans" that will come to nothing. But by the time this is obvious, somebody else will be President.
Except this might all backfire. This kind of blatant manipulation tends to feed people's cynicism. It's certainly feeding mine.
Bush has no interest in men on Mars, this is a political statement designed to make him look "presidential" in the JFK way, a la Apollo. What he hopes is people will rally around and say "this guy Bush, he has VISION! We need VISONARIES like George Bush!" It's all fluff and spin, no substance.
What would really impress people is if he came out and said "I am nationalizing the pharmaceutical industry, and the world will no longer need or want for the meds that will stem world suffering."
Or, he could say "I have decided to walk the walk, and get rid of all the Weapons of Mass Destruction that the United States has both developed and proliferated to mankind."
Or, he could say "I have decided to fund new technologies that will free us from the chains of fossil fuels, and bring about a new era in sustainable energy."
But no, instead he will wax wildly about Man's need to discover new frontiers, to extend Man's reach into the universe. Look for wild ideas about multinational corporations mining minerals on the surface of Mars, polluting it just as we have done here on our own planet.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Re:Skip the moon! Go straight to Mars!
At the time that our solar system is greatly developed and colonized, you will find that the Luna (our moon) has become a major transport hub, and that the Earth is a very lush residential garden planet.
Luna's lack of gravity makes it easier to land, refuel, refill, maintain, take off. It is an excellent storage post for mined resources and medium-scale manufacturing.
We will get to Mars, and we will live on Mars, but I can guarantee that there will be a grungy little spaceport dive bar on Luna before the first permanent residence is even attempted on Mars.
Before we can go to Mars, however, there are some issues we need to figure out. A Mars mission (round trip) is expected to be somehwere in the neighborhood of 2 years. Thats 2 years without the possibility resupply from Earth, or the ability to quickly return to Earth should a serious problem arise, not to mention you simply can't land on Mars and expect to live off the land.
What I'd like to see is a Moon base be built and have some volunteers provide the proof of concept that a 2 year mission without Earth's help (except for remote control where needed) is doable. Its easy to send up a few barrels of water to the ISS every few months. Its quite another problem when your talking about sending it to Mars. We didn't go land on the moon wit the first Apollo launch. At least one (I can't remember how many) Apollo missions circled but didn't land on the moon prior to Apollo 11, taking the incremental approach to what would turn out to be a very successfull project.
Sure you can send stuff on ahead of the humans (which is what some proposals I've seen suggest), including habitation modules and equipment that can manufacture the needed fuel to return home, before the humans even leave Earth, but none of this has been proven to be practical for a Mars mission yet. We have a hard enough time sending unmanned missions to Mars to help understand what is and isn't on Mars.
Personally, I see a human Mars mission being an international effort. After all, the USA isn't in a space race against any other country humans to Mars first (okay, maybe China is thinking about it, but Russia definatly isn't).
The ISS and Shuttle were great concepts when designed and planned, but frankly, both of them keep us chained to LEO with no place to go. And the ISS isn't even close to living up to what it was supposed to be.
Ahh, Grasshopper, when I was a big space program geek during the 1970s and 1980s, I would say the same thing in response to arguments about the space program versus social needs. Then I grew up and learned that social needs are pretty damn important if you to live in a free society where everybody ahs access to the same privileges that I have as a white middle class guy. Then I went to college and ended up as a poor person. I support sending robots to Mars but I can't support the man space program. When people are freezing to death on the streets of America tonight, you have to be a cold-hearted person to argue that sending people to Mars is more important than building affordable housing for the poor and homeless.
Lets start harvesting resources in orbit. How about dipping into the atmosphere to capture oxygen (and nitrogen if needed) then regenerate the momentum with Solar Energy pumped into a Electromagnetic Tether boosting system. Then all we need to haul up for space probe fuel is light weight hydrogen.
Lets build a super telescopes (optical and radio) on the far side of moon, but do it with robots. I think this could be done on cheap, buy making the primary spherical (like Arecibo or the proposed OWL), so you ferry out hundreds of paper thin identical spherical portions, with tiny adjustable stilts. A robot plants them around a suitable crater, Adjusting the stilts until each section is properly positioned to focus on a central boom. Some portions of the crater may be too irregular to properly position a mirror section or to high or too low for the stills to compensate for. Doesn't matter, you just need to get enough aggregate surface covered, it doesn't have to be uniform. Does require a halo orbit moon probe to stay in contact with earth.
Then there's that water that might exist on the poles of the moon that could be cracked for fuel, or just used for sustenance and radiation shielding.
Autonomous robots could do a lot of work Earth, and space would be a good proving ground and science driver for autonomous robot development.
Lets exhaust the search for life on Mars with probes before we contaminate the biosphere with human exploration.
That's enough rants for one post.
Letter To Iran
The only ISP would be -Earthlink-
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Now let's get down to it:
Let's take these one at a time.Dude, I hate to be the first to tell you this, but humans breathe air. This means that, from a pure economic standpoint, Mars won't be settled until Antarctica is full. Since I think the planet Trantor is more fun to imagine than to actually live on, I think we'd better find a solution to the population problem that takes effect before Antarctica is full.
They're called "robots". You may have heard of them, since one is on Mars right now. NASA designed and launched two of them for $860M, less than the estimated cost of three shuttle flights. We could and should build a lot more of them, at very reasonable cost. They're fun, they're cheap, they work pretty well, and even if they occasionally blow up... nobody dies.
I'll bite. Which ore is this, exactly? Dilithium? Here's a homework assignment: after you realistically estimate the cost of mining an asteroid and shipping it back here, tell us which asteroidal element could be mined profitably. And please don't try and pretend that humanity hasn't invented recycling.
I can't argue with this, I guess. Pass the pork! All I can say, though, is that you can generate gratuitous tech jobs with useful projects (zero-pollution cars?) as well as you can with useless projects.
There are already plenty of inspired youngsters. They become postdocs. For every scientist with funding, there are 10 scientists working as postdocs, or accountants, or cabdrivers. Instead of spending billions of dollars trying to put spam-in-a-can where no spam has gone before, how about if we give that money to actual scientists? So we can cure diseases, or reverse-engineer the brain? Or even... build robots?
Please, do go on. I can already hear the violins, warming up to play the Star Trek theme.
While many of us think manned missions to the Moon and Mars mars are a great idea, it's also election year, and Bush's motives in setting this goal are clear. So what if he isn't re-elected? Which other candidates are in favor of these missions?
Litigious bastards
Grasshopper? Not likely! I'm finding that along with most of my fellow "children of the 60s" I'm starting to creak and turn grey.
My two points however, were that (a) taking money out of THIS program to fund THAT program is a fallacy, and (b) doesn't work. I am, in fact, a scientist and a humanitarian social democrat, and my heard bleeds for those people who need (and get, I might add) my help to survive. Th problem is that at the extreme, eliminating NASA from the US budget entirely wouldn't appreciably help the poor. As a planet, we're producing enough to feed and clothe everyone. The US as a microcosm, is fully capable of feeding, sheltering, and caring for it entire population; AND at the same time, capable of funding research and science to unprecedented levels. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that either.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
We have proof that the Martians have extensive Weapons of Mass Distruction programs that pose an IMMEDIATE threat to the US, therefore we must go there and disarm them before they can harm us.
Windows is not the answer.
Windows is the question.
The answer is "NO."
I suppose going to mars is important in that it will hopefully make long distance manned space travel a reality.
Do we really want another flags & footprints Mars mission? If so, go there first, get it over with and then we can all forget about interplanetary travel for 50 years like we have with the Moon.
:v)
I suggest a more thorough approach, which incidentally gets around the problems associated with a quick and dirty Mars mission.
Establish a lunar manufacturing base, and build what is essentailly a moveable space habitat, say, 400 metres in diameter. Shield it with a fixed shield of several metres of lunar-derrived material. Fill large storage tanks with more lunar material. Establish a known working, self-sufficient, rotating habitat inside the shielding. Build a solar-powered mass driver pointing out the back. Fire lunar material out the back, taking large numbers of colonists and thousands of tonnes of materiel for colonisation to Mars nice and slowly.
It won't run out of food as the habitat is self-sufficient. Psychological stress is minimised because of the habitat's large size. Gravity is sustained, and a full medical team can go out to maintain health. Shielding removes the radiation issue totally. Journey time becomes irrelevant.
What's more, the vessel is completely reusable so rinse and repeat. Refuel from Phobos/Diemos and go back to the Earth/Moon system or head on out as far as the asteroids. Any further and the solar panels will have difficulty powering the mass driver.
There's an old joke related to this:
An old bull and a young bull are at the top of a hill, looking at a herd of young, healthy, and dare I say attractive cows in the fields below.
"Let's run down and do a few," suggests the young bull.
"Let's walk down and do the lot," replied his elder.
There's an immoral moral there.
Vik
OK, I'll bite on the off chance that this *is* an honest question.
NASA's annual budget is something like $15B.
There are about 2 billion individuals who survive on less than $2 per day equivalent purchasing power (this may not consider non-wage agricultural production such as gardens, but $2 is obviously very little money).
Give $15B to 2B people -- it's $7.50 per capita. In other words, if direct subsidies are the answer to poverty then NASA's budget would be inconsequential.
That isn't to say that $15B could not be employed to raise the standard of living of many individuals. A "Manhattan Project" to end Malaria would be a boon to hundreds of millions of people. There are other, similar sorts of investments one could make.
Instead of aiming your ire / consternation / disapproval at NASA for 'wasting' money (needless to say they're wasting American taxpayers' money), why not examine the kleptocratic warlords, juntas and strongmen who use food, water and education as weapons against their ethnic, cultural and political foes?
CNN has some more info like dates etc...
Personally, I think the money would be best spent on fusion research first. There are several reasons:
1. The urgent need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, the middle east, reduce global warming and pollution in general
2. We obviously have to get fusion working before even thinking about mining the moon for fuel. And once on the moon (or Mars) fusion would be an excellent power source
3. Fusion powered rockets will get us to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system much faster than chemical rockets
Another thing we've gotta get right first is closed ecosystems or biospheres. eg. Growing food, recycling air and water etc. They had a pretty good crack at it a few years ago with Biosphere 2, but IIRC there were problems with oxygen being absorbed into the concrete foundations. So again, they've got to get that right before sending anyone out to the moon or Mars to live on a base. You could do a nice simulation by putting a biosphere underwater, far enough down to reduce the sunlight to the same intensity as Mars. Then check which plants are best able to grow and produce oxygen.
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
I read a very interesting editorial by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post the other day (here, registration required). Basically, she says that putting a robot on mars is a good idea because a robot is well suited for this kind of scientific work. Humans on the other hand are supposed to stay on earth - inhospitable climat, muscular deterioration during space flight and extreme radiation make a trip to mars less than pleasent.
Quoting: Mars, as a certain pop star once put it, isn't the kind of place where you'd want to raise your kids. Nor is it the kind of place anybody is ever going to visit, as some of the NASA scientists know perfectly well. Even leaving aside the cold, the lack of atmosphere and the absence of water, there's the deadly radiation. If the average person on Earth absorbs about 350 millirems of radiation every year, an astronaut traveling to Mars would absorb about 130,000 millirems of a particularly virulent form of radiation that would probably destroy every cell in his body. "Space is not 'Star Trek,' " said one NASA scientist, "but the public certainly doesn't understand that."
So....do we really need a man on mars? Not for scientific reasons, that's for sure. And what other reasons are there? Anyone who thinks we can just teraform mars into a habitable planet in the next 300 years when we can't even keep the ISS leak-free is seriously deluded...
I guess the question of "Why does Bush want it" doesn't even deserve an answer because it's so obvious...
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
These jokes just never get old.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
Folks, take a step back and absorb this:
Manned exploration of Mars.
Permanent human presence on the Moon.
This is probably the most exciting news I've ever seen posted here at Slashdot. When do we leave?
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Might this soil crust on Mars be same/similar to the biological soil crust found at Arches National Park (Moab, Utah)?
Additional details regarding biological soil crusts maybe are to found here:
intermediate details
advanced details
I believe Juanita
The moon has half the space station problem licked. Physical containment and radiation-shielding? Just dig down into rock. Supplies? Mine for them. Storage space? Plenty going begging, on the surface or dug down into rock, and no atmophere to blow stuff around or rain on it.
Its low gravity and lack of atmosphere make cheap slow-acceleration launch tech like linear motors perfectly sensible. It's ideal as a place to build spacecraft or spacecraft parts, to launch things into earth orbit, to park and refuel spacecraft, and to land, warehouse and refine things mined in bulk from elsewhere in the solar system.
Seeing the moon as a planetary colony is IMO the wrong model. Seeing it as the ultimate ready-made orbital space station makes much more sense.
...if he just condensed all his recent "victories" into one large slogan, ie
Saddam Hussein to pilot specially-crafted WMD to Mars, thanks to tax cuts and a reduced deficit! Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
So, mars / moon is in the menu, since catching Laden and fixing the economy is not the first priority ...
Well ... whatever works! Personally I believe it would been better for economy ( not eco friendly ) to say take a "Super Highway" project where hundreds of people will get job thru Cheny's company and we can drive on those highway at 200 miles / hour.
Yes, car design will have to be re-thought and so is the whole thing associated with it, like we will see "super gas", "super oil" etc. etc. and "super highwaay capable" cars ... man that will be a dream.
Look, I know speed kills but I would rather die at driving 200 miles/hr than driving at 40 miles/hour. You die anyway ... just go with a better bang!
I guess I am crazy geek in here with no life posting at slashdot at midnight! Sure there are people in the right places are doing the right thing to make my life better...
or, they just don't give a $@##@!
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
If the President who sends Army personel to Iraq without flack jackets, is in charge of the NASA budget.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Looks like Bush Jr. is fixated on finishing up what his Dad couldn't: He announced this 15 years ago and it was ultimately scrapped because it was too expensive...even without the record deficits we face now.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
"The administration examined a wide range of ideas, including new, reusable space shuttles and even exotic concepts such as space elevators" (my emphasis).
A space elevator, now there's a project worth pursuing. If we could only master the technology needed (superstrong materials, read Arthur C. Clarke's Fountains of Paradise or see this site for details) a space elevator would pay for itself in a matter of years and open up space for humanity like no other initiave we can even imagine today.
That aside, I wonder if we will read about this period in 30 years time like we do today about Nixon's deliberations about what to do with the Apollo program, not to mention how special interests got the Space Shuttle funding even though there was little science to gain from the program which basically tied us to LEO for decades? I wonder how much frenzied scrambling has been going on inside NASA these past few months to come up with realistic programs while the Prez is in a benign mood (all part of the re-election strategies, no doubt).
Whatever comes from this, if anything at all, let's try to make it an international effort. First of all that would be good for international cooperation in general, it wouldn't look like one country was doing this for strategic purposes and it would ease the burden somewhat for the US taxpayer. Fair is fair, the entire human race will (hopefully) benefit from this, so we should all chip in.
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
Dubya is sure trying to put some zap into his reelection campaign with this nonsense.
... oh ... 80% over the next 10 years.
Now, back to earth and things that matter: How about a plan to reduce our dependence on non-renewable sources of energy? What I'd like to see is a commitment from our government to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel by
Like the proposed space program, such an effort would produce profound advances in science and technology and create thousands of jobs. In fact, the technological and financial impact of fossil fuel reduction would be far in excess of anything a space program could possibly hope to accomplish.
But, unlike the space program, our efforts would be spent working on several very earthly problems: climate change and dependence on imported fuel.
'Impossible' you say? That's what they said when JFK proposed putting men on the moon within the decade. Technologically it's well within our grasp. All we need is the political will.
We can and should go to space when the time is right. But right now there are pressing matters to deal with here on earth: War, Nukes, Climate Change, War, etc.
Dubya and his posse are crooks. They could give a flying fuck about Mars or the Moon. They just want to get reelected. Ignore them.
I find it somewhat ironic that on the very day scientists announce a likely 15% to 37% reduction on plant and animal species due to climate change that Dubya spews forth something like this.
Space travel with chemical propulsion is never going to get any better. Chemical fuels are as good as they're going to get. There's been essentially zero progress in thirty years.
Building more chemically-fueled spacecraft is a dead end. The weight reduction required for them to work at all makes them so fragile that they'll never be reliable. If you could build a spacecraft with the weight budget of an airliner, (40% or so of the gross takeoff weight is fuel) spacecraft would be affordable and reliable. But when you have to build something that's 90+% fuel, (SSTO machines are something like 97%+ fuel, which is why nobody has built one), it has to be a fragile balloon full of fuel.
Nuclear power, maybe. But chemical fuels? Been there, done that.
An unmanned lunar orbiter would be worth doing. Last time, in the early 1960s, the US sent five orbiters, which used 70mm film, a chemical film processor, and a scanner to transmit the images back. So they only took 1654 images, and the imagery is only 60 meters per pixel. Putting a modern survellance camera in lunar orbit would get us 1m imagery of the whole moon, if not better. Maybe we'll find something worth checking out.
He's run out of places in Iraq to search for all those weapon's of mass destruction.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
As the alternative to more GWB is one of the Democratic candidates slugging it out, a quick survey of their attitudes to space exploration in general and Mars in particular seems appropriate.
Howard Dean is the only one I know of that has explicitly stated his support for a manned Mars program. He stated in a press conference that "we should agressively begin a program to have manned flights to Mars.", though he did hedge on the potential cost (a reasonable point, given how far down the toilet the US government's finances will be in a few years without radical spending cuts or tax rises).
As far as I can google, Wesley Clark hasn't expressed an opinion on the future of manned space exploration, but he did issue a press release heartily congratulating NASA on the Spirit rover. He seems to still be formulating his policy on NASA.
Dunno about the others..
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Schools are crappy, teachers are underpaid, old people have to pay tons of money for pills, homeless people fill out city streets, AIDs is destroying Africa, people are starving in North Korea ....
and... we're going to SEND PEOPLE TO THE MOON AND MARS ??!!
I can think of at least ONE THOUSAND better things to do with that money.
Then again, this is probably just election year hoopla. Even if Bush were to get a second term, we wouldn't be ready to send anyone to a planet until his term was over. I doubt our next administration will be willing to spend this money on such a lame cause.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Rename "Europa" to "Hoth" - an ice planet people HAVE heard of !! It would fit in nicely with Bush' pressure on Australia to join the Star Wars program.
z3ngine.
PS: yes, I realise Europa is a moon and Hoth is a (ficticious) planet.
I therefore think I am.
I'm serious. All you hardcore space exploration people have one country above all others to thank for this, and it's the one who just recently put their first man into orbit and has been spouting off about a moon base for the better half of last year. And from paranoia's point of view, I can see why. Space is the ultimate high ground and danged if I'd want a nation with China's human rights record dominating it. But regardless of how or why...
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a space race!
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Bush has no interest in men on Mars, this is a political statement designed to make him look "presidential" in the JFK way
:)
Well, JFK didn't really mean it either. He had no interest in the moon, and it never would have happened except for one thing: he got assassinated.
So here's the deal. Those of us that actually want to see a Mars mission, let's wait. If Bush makes his announcement, we ice him a few months later. The nation can then spend the next few years trying to "honour the vision of a slain president".
And hopefully, it'll give you something to smile about, instead of whining about every possible thing you can think of
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Making space launches cheaper and having a permanent presense in space will in enable the creation of power satellites that can in time totally replace all polluting power sources.
It looks to me like spending more on space infrastructure actually does lead to a solution to dependence on fossil fuel!
Bush is really scaring me in many ways. With the drastic lowering of taxes and drastic increase in both military and other spending, the US is heading into the biggest budget deficits in history.
And this is the time he proposes to spend a few dozen more billions of borrowed money? Someone cut this guy's credit card!! As much as I hate taxes, I have to say I prefer "tax and spend" to borrow and spend".
This obviously can't go on. Don't believe for a second that this won't start crashing, hard, soon after the election!
The reason the mission ended (and the reason that the Spirit and Opportunity missions will end, if everything goes well): dust gathering on the solar cells until they can no longer provide enough electricity for the vehicle to function.
Actually I was under the impression that the reason the missions end is due to loss of battery performance from discharge and thermal cycling. Dust on the solar panels could easily be cleaned off, as someone suggested, by a wiper. If there is nowhere to store the energy from the panels, then there is a problem.
Anti-Bush/Cheney is not antiamerican. You'll be able to tell the difference better in November.
--
make install -not war
Spain reluctantly sends Columbus to America.
No, they sent him to India. He just mistook America for it..
Perhaps the Mars explorers will bump into some other, currently unknown object, and colonize that with much resulting merriment.
Nobody gives a shit about government spending unless it's for the space program. We spend half a TRILLION dollars a year just on budget increases and debt financing, and nobody says a word. $20 billion for a moon mission and everyone starts carping about money.
What a load of crap.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
They don't have to die prematurely. It's possible to send them enough supplies and resources to build a greenhouse to let them die at old age. By the time they're 60 it'll be possible to pick them up and take back to Earth. It's not impossible nor very expensive.
The greatest human endeavor in a five hundred years is about to be announced, and almost every message is griping about cost and how "impractical" it is.
If a man were to step on another planet, it would be one of the most meaningful and inspiring moments in thousands of years. It would change humanity forever.
The amount of scientific knowledge that could be gained by the research effort to complete this mission is incalculable.
But to stand around and cynically bitch about trivia before such magnificent sagacity is truly depressing. I thought knowledge, science and engineering were values, not budget categories.
This idea should be supported.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Consider this:
Wise up. This announcement has nothing to do with space exploration. It has to do with November, nothing more.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
We aren't going to Mars or the moon. This is election year politics. He's trying to look like a visionary leader, by boldly setting forth to conquer the universe (or is that liberate?).
This will all get killed in budget negotiations after the election. He'll be able to look like he's fighting for it, but ultimately his own people in congress will cut the budget. Kinda like no child left behind. Yeah, real leadership there, except that the budget isn't there to run it properly.
So, for now, just whip out your 3D glasses and check out the photos coming back because that's as close as we are getting for a very long time.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Second, considering the previous three presidents did fuck all to advance space exploration in any meaningful -- or more importanly, exciting way -- I'll take the president that can't pronounce the words, but can try to get people excited about going to the Moon / Mars, thanks.
George W. Bush could declare Linux the official OS of the government, get a Penguin tattoo and give Linus Torvalds the Medal of Freedom and /. would still find a way to bag on him for it.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
You can't have my moon base! Where else could I hatch my diabolical schemes in peace?
If you try and take my moon base, I'll shoot you down with my "laser".
Does my bum look big in this?
Another poster further down made the points, gathered from various sources covering the story, that basically Bush's plan is to drastically cut back unmanned space exploration, finish the ISS with the present shuttle, build a new larger Apollo module type craft capable of reaching the moon, thereafter cease support of the ISS, include the military in NASA decision making and then step by step build a permanent moon base as a testing ground for a mars trip.
/. on how many still believe that WMD was the main reason for Iraq). Americans (and the west in general) are, in principle involved in new type of cold (and hot) war, this time with Islam (One can say it isn't, that it's only against Moslem fanatics, but this is basically what it boils down to). At the same time China, the main competitor to the US left after the USSR collapsed, has been making huge strides in almost every direction over the past one and a half decades. While they are basically still an authoritarian police state, they are no longer communist in any sense of the word, have a huge and strongly growing economy, a military that is improving in quality and technology constantly, which has expressed interest in developing weapons for use against satellites, and a space programme that launched its first manned mission last year. This is the same year that the space shuttle experienced yet another disaster, breaking up on re-entry.
Firstly, one could quite easily see this as an election year joke made by the son of a president who stated similar goals back in 1989, and there is good evidence for that as well: Bush has not been remotely interested in space apart from military projects, and cut funding on a number of science projects. Also, Bush has a track record of trying to accomplish what his father did not.
Secondly, America has done huge projects in the past in order to rally national pride and out do foreign competitors. The whole Apollo programme was announced at the height of the cold war when Russia was breaking space records and third world countries were warming to communism. By the early 70's, after the initial landings had been done, national pride had already been dented by a huge and costly lossful foreign war that had sapped morale and by a revolution of the young not interested in high tech, but in sex 'n drugs 'n rock 'n roll. (That has only changed in that the young are now interested in tech again).
Thirdly, in 1989, although the warsaw pact (eastern europe) was falling apart, the Soviets had by then again achieved a number of space successes by way of a practical manned launch programme with the soyuz vehicles, a long term manned space station with mir (it put spacelab to shame in terms of mission length) and had already launched their own version of the shuttle with the buran, whose launcher , energia, could carry far larger tonnage into space than anything else at the time (or now for that matter - 120 tonnes without the buran). My personal view is that Bush Sr's vision was mainly made to counteract the flagging morale of american space ventures.
Fourthly, now, in 2004, we have just had a number of years , since 9/11, that have been turbulent to say the very least. America is involved in military conflicts with two nations, one of which (Iraq) is an outright mess to say the least, involving the nations' involveds' politicians in distrust from their own and foreign nations. (Don't believ me? Take a snap poll here on
Fifthly, this leads me to believe that the goals stated at the top of this post have been made in earnest, but not for the stated reasons. I would think that there is a large interest in the current administration, to develop improved and newer types of space weaponry, in order to deny the Chinese future superiority in that theater. Thus the idea of directly involving the military in NASA. I also think that the moon goal is one of of national pride on the one hand, to get there before the Chinese and Indians do, and partly because the moon would make an ideal place for
Instead of a wiper blade, use a roll of cellophane like you'd find on an overhead projector. When it gets too dusty, just roll out a clean section.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I'd say we send him!
Now!
Please?
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Why? There is nothing there, and it is not useful to stop there for refeuling on the way to Mars because the delta-v required to go to Mars is actually _less_ than that require to go to the Moon. It is probably a good place to launch a ship from, but you would have to build the ship on the moon.
We can always add more steps to the process: space stations, Moon bases, on-orbit assembly, nuclear propulsion, space elevators. And I'm not sayig that any of these are bad ideas, but none are necessary in order to perform a manned mission to Mars. As Bob Zubrin is always pointing out, we are more ready to go to Mars now than we were ready to go to the Moon when it was announced by Kennedy.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
You are completely stark raving sane! How did you find your way to slashdot?
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
If you recall, he promised a renewed emphasis on space after the shuttle crash. This is probably a gentle way of telling NASA that this will not happen, that any new programs will be deferred to another president.
1. The moon is only 3 days away. Mars is months away. Logistically, it's easier.
Untrue. Most of the energy to get to the moon (which is proportional to the size of the rocket you need) goes into getting out of Earth's gravity well. Getting to Mars is a bit more expensive than the Moon in terms of propulsion. However, once you get to the moon, you need a big rocket to slow you down to land, and a big rocket to send you back to Earth. For Mars, you could use the atmosphere to slow down (parachute), and then produce fuel for the return trip in situ using atmospheric consituents and power from a nuclear reactor.
Bottom line is that Mars, if done right, is EASIER to get to than the Moon.
As Douglas Adams once observed, a growing and confident civilization looks upwards at the stars while a depressed declining one just looks down at it's shoes.
Since 9/11 America has done far to much shoe-watching. Nothing could be more inspiring than the country pulling itself up and seriously expanding outwards again. This may be at one level bread and circuses, but if it gives Americans (and the West generally) confidence back in themselves, their civilization and it's values then it's a thoroughly good thing.
As a European there's many, many things I dislike about the USA and particularly it's recent behaviour on the international stage - from Iraq to Koyoto. Nevertheless, the values that America (and western civilization generally), are based upon do represent some of the best that humanity has achieved, and when the chips are down I know where we should stand.
So, if the USA is about to shake itself out of it's introspective, somewhat paranoid, behaviour and regain it's confidence and enterprise there's only one thing to say...
God Bless America.
Luna's lack of gravity makes it easier to land, refuel, refill, maintain, take off. It is an excellent storage post for mined resources and medium-scale manufacturing.
Too bad the Moon is stationed near that huge gravity well known as "the Earth". To get from the Moon to Mars you have to spend nearly as much energy than the same trip from the Earth, and if you add in the energy needed for the initial Earth-Moon trip that's even worse. A Lagrange Point space station or no space hub at all make more sense.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
The moon IS the road to Mars. If we can't inhabit the moon for 18 months at a time, we sure can't go to Mars.
Sorry, but you are wrong, and Dr Zubrin explains why at great length in his books. Summary: it is far easier to get to Mars and make use of locally available resources (primarily the atmosphere which is easy to convert to fuel, oxygen, etc, using a catalytic process, this has been demonstrated on Earth) than it is to ship everything you need to the Moon from Earth, because on the Moon there are almost no resources in a usable form.
My thoughs before I read the article (in true Slashdot tradition) or any of the comments (to remain as unbiased as I can be, which isn't terribly much, admittedly):
... they will ALWAYS have stuff to do.
Why wait a decade? Why not poll around for a group of, say, eight or ten people willing to be sent on a one-way trip to Mars? They'd go in, say, two linked ships (linking them facilitates artificial gravity [by spinning them about a common tether, which might remain behind, in [geostationary] orbit, as a sort of radio station/weathersat/etcetera]) which allows some redundancy in case of catastrophic loss of one of the ships and two entry landers (again: redundancy).
Send regular supply drops for them to replenish tools/atmosphere/food/medicine/etcetera from, say on a bimonthly basis, using the parachute/airbag system currently used for the landers/rovers (though since most of the stuff would be inert, there's less to go wrong). "Precharge" their arrival area with several such drops. They'll be a bit scattered, but that's not a huge deal if they have a "Mars Car" (or two) to to get 'em.
Build an underground habitation facility, with airlocks and hydroponics, with two of those "safe, buried" nuclear reactors for power (like they were discussing for that Alaskan town). Better still, make TWO such habitats, again, to protect against catastrophic loss of the whole colony. People could/would switch off between them when they started to get cabin fever with their mates. Keep 'em busy, and it won't degenerate as fast as in isolation on Earth
Their objective would be twofold: build a permanent, ever-growing, and self-sustaining human presence on Mars and perform the scientific studies and explorations of our sister planet that we simply can't do with autonomous rovers.
I'm sure there'd be more than eight volunteers, even if it *is* probably a one-way ticket. Hell, a third objective (which would appeal to the corps, should they get involved) would be to build the facilites to construct, fuel, and launch Mars-to-Earth vessels. This wouldn't be as hard as it sounds if the really tricky stuff (small parts, electronics, etc.) could be delivered from Earth. Then you can return samples (fairly easily), people (not bloody likely: too much invested in getting them there), and even precious minerals from mining projects (later on, perhaps by running a mag-lin-accelerator up the side of Olympus Mons?).
And so on.
But without a "be able to get them back to Earth" mechanism, the US would never go for it. Depsite the fact that that's precisely how their country was pioneered/settled. And which is also why China is more than likely to be the ones to establish such a colony, first.
.f00Dave
I'm all for science advances but can't help to think he might be trying to drive attention away from some of other problems
[alk]
We need a transformation of NASA, similar to the transformation of military affairs Rummy is trying at the Pentagon. For all the good NASA does, they also waste a lot of money, resources, and time on pork and various functionaries's pet projects. On the one hand, I fear how much more inefficiency will occur if you just hand NASA a bigger checkbook. On the otherhand, perhaps the problem is analogous to peacetime army problems. A lot of BS develops in the military during peacetime, that gets quickly dropped in wartime when the pressure of combat operations shows it to be the waste of time that it is. Sure, some BS survives in a wartime army, but not as much. Perhaps that is what is going on at NASA. Maybe they would be a lot more efficient and have less BS if they had a dramatic and difficult goal to focus their attention. Just throwing money at them will do more harm than good. Throwing a difficult task at them might be what they need.
I am all for space exploration, but sometimes I wonder... Why?? Why should we explore space when we have so many struggles here on Earth where the money could be (arguably) better spent.
I say this to say: NASA does not do a good job marketing itself. I bet a lot of "average" Americans say/think the same thing. I REALLY wish NASA would get a professional marketing team from Madison Avenue to get Americans more excited about space. Big Question: What do we have to gain from it? And I'm talking about monetary gain. Where will we be paid back from out investment in so many tax dollars? Like I said, I'm all for it, but I think NASA (and the government) need to do a better job of selling it.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
By refocussing NASA toward this ludicrous (and despite the peanut gallery's comments, at this point it is ludicrous) project to the exclusion of unmanned probes, he sets up NASA's eventual dismantlement for failing to deliver what even NASA must know they cannot deliver.
From the peanut gallery:
DNA - 1953, First heart transplant - 1967, etc
If I had more time I could list hundreds or thousands of things that were impossible for humans to do.
With that, I'll simply state that those who say it cannot be done should get out of the way of those doing it.
-Adam
Ah, in this you are making a common error in that you think evolution is a progression towards an ultimate goal of perfection. It is not. It is a reaction to environmental stimulus. An animal can not be "perfect"---it can only be extremely well suited for its environment.
Humanity, as our explosive population growth demonstrates, has reached an unprecedented point of suitability for Earth survival.
At any rate, evolution depends on mutation. Having the luxury to allow those you call "negatives" to survive increases our mutation rate and diversifies our genetic line. More diversification, means we'll have a better reaction should a major change take place in our environment. If we were all genetically fit in the same way then we would all be susceptible to the same attack. Read about the current strain of wheat farmers use for some grim scenarios.
Take plague for example. How do you know that the sickly boy from today does not contain code that will make many immune to the plagues of tomorrow? Read up on sickle cell anemia and its relation to malaria.
That's an "urban" legend, up there with the supposed bureaucratic folly behind NASA's pens, which is also nonsense. When it shut down the Apollo program, NASA didn't shrug and say "Nice trip, let's throw away the map." They kept the Saturn V plans for the future, of course. The problem with a new Saturn V would be recreating old technology -- making boosters would be a particular sticking point -- and getting the launch pad stuff ready for them rather than, say, shuttles.
(Not that going to Mars necessarily has anything to do with Saturn Vs -- or Atlas-Agena B target ships for that matter, as long as we're assuming we're re-creating old technologies.)
Look at the failures of unmanned Mars spacecraft. Even if we had the technology, you would expect a few human-less dry runs first, much like the Apollo missions.
What does that have to do with anything? Um, yeah, speaking of Agena-B unmanned docking ships, they'd obviously have some steps along the way.
The loss of robotic probes, meanwhile, is a reflection of the way those programs work; they accept higher risks in exchange for the lower costs, because there's not the same safety concern. The rover on Mars right now landed in the higher-risk of the two landing sites chosen by the science team. They played the odds, hoping they'd get at least one of them down safely. You can take chances with robots. Beagle 2 was made on the cheap, for an example, with little redundancy in systems. (Oh, well -- it was really the orbiter with its deep-scanning radar that's the bread and butter of that mission, though we're disappointed in the lost chance on the ground.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I was excited about this, and rushed to Slashdot when I heard the news, but now i'm sadden to see the discussion degenrate into who can hate Bush more discussion.
Don't forget the energy to get out of Mars' potential well. Mars has a lot more gravity than the Moon.
Or were you planning on a round trip?
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
But what awful timing. Here we are with the biggest budget defecit in recent memory and an administration that has no plan to get spending under control. They continue, in fact, to commit us to fantastically expensive foreign adventures. Things aren't likely to get better in the short term.
Meanwhile, million of Americans live without health insurance. The federal government keeps shifting the burden of services back down to the states, who are massively cutting things like education just to stay afloat.
There's a soft economic recovery underway, but it won't last long when interest rates begin to react to federal debt. Then there will be inflation, and even more idle workers will add to our miserable unemployment rate.
Now it's proposed we spend a trillion dollars or so on the down payment for a Mars program. What madness.
This is an election year stunt and grounds for the biggest corporate welfare program since the Cold War. The Spirit photos are exciting, but let's figure out how to go to Mars without bankrupting ourselves or putting more workers on the streets.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
From George Orwell's 1984. The enemy of the totalitarian
government. He likely did not exist but was
used as the public enemy and scapegoat for everything (and
used for the state of eternal war which could be used
to keep the population opressed).
I once read an analysis about Bush that attempted to determine the key to his success. The long and short of it is that his opponents keep under estimating him. He loves projecting the personna of being stupid and underacheiving. Then, when lulled into smug confidence, he crushes his opponents.
Sure, you laugh, but we are now about four years into the Bush presidency and look what he has suceeded in doing. He got his tax cuts. He broke the Taliban. He conquered Iraq. He revamped the EPA. He created a new federal agency. Do I need go on?
You may hate his policies. I am sure you will even offer long anti-Bush posts after this. But, it does not change the fact that he does what he says, and succeeds in doing it. If he says we will got Mars, we will go. How can any truly thinking indavidual read the situation otherwise?
My two cents,
-Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
I don't remember lobbing bombs into Iraq, but FWIW, that big 'Wag The Dog' cruise missile attack in 1998 missed Osama Bin Laden by half an hour. Based on quotes from people who watched him make the decision, Clinton knew it would look like an attempted distraction from his scandals but did it anyway -- and came damn close to preventing 9/11 as a result.
The people there are too busy being shot at by dimwitted American troops to engage foreigners about the transgressions of the former regime. The current one is worse.
Really? You've been there and asked the people directly? Gosh, you must really get around to have interviewed everyone in Iraq so quickly! Or, could it be that you're simply regurgitating news you would like to believe is true without first checking to see whether it is true or not? Could it be that you actually want the people of Iraq to be suffering because it feeds your anger against Bush?
Amnesty International was doing its thing. Being a respectable, diplomatic charity, it uses words and public opinion to change the world.
And over 300,000 innocent civilians are DEAD IN THE GROUND, executed by Saddam and his henchmen, while Amnesty International was "doing its thing", being "respectable" and using "words and public opinion to change the world." This all happened since the U.N. sanctioned war against Iraq in 1991. I wonder what the dead would say about Amnesty's "respectable" way of getting murderous dictators to change their ways. Oh, I forgot, they're dead, and you don't care a damn about them. If Amnesty International had been running things back in 1939, Hitler would be in power, the Jews would be history, and Frenchmen would be speaking German. Well, I guess that last one wouldn't be so bad.
And how Bush Sr. gave Saddam equipment to make WMDs, then gave him intelligence to use it. Hardly innocent.
Actually, you'd have to go back a lot further than Bush Sr. to see who was giving Saddam weapons. Try the Carter administration. As for innocence, perhaps you've heard of the all the Russian, German, and French conventional weapons we've found in country. You know, the ones that have been imported into Iraq after 1991 in violation of the U.N. mandate against Iraq? You're so eager to blame the U.S., but the key appeasers in the U.N. have far more blood on their hands, and far more recent blood at that.
You really need to turn off Fox News and read some books.
And you really need to quit living at DemocraticUnderground.com, Moveon.org, and CNN, since that seems to be your primary source of unfounded vitriol against the President and these United States.
Ronald Reagan was called a warmonger and idiot lunatic by everyone not a staunch Republican.
That's odd. The only people who called him that were hardcore leftwing liberals, not moderates, not right wingers, and not conservatives.
Well, seeing as Jimmy Carter has done more for the world during Bush's term than Bush, I think he'll be remembered in a much, much nicer light.
What's he done? Well, let's see. He badmouthed the current president on foreign policy, something that no former president has ever done, regardless of party affiliation, since the country was founded. He got a Nobel prize from a commitee more concerned with sticking their thumb in the eye of the U.S. than anything else. He's pontificated at length on how he doesn't think the U.S. has done the right thing, but he's completely dodged any possible question of what he would've done differently except to say that he would've handed it all off to the U.N -- which is a fancy political dodgy way of saying "I wouldn't have done anything."
I'm sure all of this is falling on deaf ears, because you're clearly too angry and naive to be even remotely rational. Please, try to think about what I've said, though. You're not doing anyone any favors by allowing your emotions to rule you in this manner.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The only thing he hasn't done to capitalize on this is to declare the creation of the Ronald Reagan Space Flight Center in New York, the one remaining mega-electoral state without a Center.