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Visiting Our Red Space Neighbor
Enthusiasm for visiting our red space neighbor seems to be growing. m4dm4n writes "A study carried out by MIT's Aeronautics and Astronautics department has concluded that getting men to Mars in the 2020 timeframe is possible. The intelligent re-use of crew habitat modules, propulsion stages, and engines in various missions will enable NASA to significantly reduce their initial timeline which was well past 2030." Relatedly, ErikPeterson wrote to mention a Space.com article where Neil Armstrong says getting to Mars may be easier than getting to the Moon was back in the day, because of the hurdles they had to overcome. From the article: "It will be expensive, it will take a lot of energy and a complex spacecraft. But I suspect that even though the various questions are difficult and many, they are not as difficult and many as those we faced when we started the Apollo (space program) in 1961." We're starting to understand more about the red planet as well, as madstork2000 writes "The BBC is reporting on the possibility of active volcanoes on Mars. So now there is water, heat, and soon big business when 4Frontiers gets there. Hopefully we'll get a Google Mars soon to check it out up close."
Considering that the government has severely increased spending (Iraq, Katrina) while decreasing money input (less taxes taken in), something is going to suffer.
Education is almost always at the front, and I'd say that NASA is second in line for the big axe.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
It won't be easier to get to Mars than to the Moon because the US manned space program is no longer run by engineers, but by greedy defense contractors, paper-pushers, and ass-covering PHBs. In short: NASA no longer has the Right Stuff.
And this talk of "the" CEV is disturbing. Sounds like the same "let's-make-one-spaceship-that-can-do-it-all" approach that gave us the Shuttle.
PS - Am I the only person in this country who thinks putting a manned spacecraft (the new CEV) atop a solid rocket (Thiokol SRB; as used by Shuttle) is a really bad idea?
I can see why a country would want to go to Mars. There is always the national honor, staking territorial claims, etc. for a Mars landing. I just can't see spending billions of dollars for no financial return at all.
The most obvious is all of the tech that will be discovered along the way, which would be valuable both to private industry and the military. And that company would hold the patents. This would also establish that organization as the premier space exploration/transport company... Think what it would mean to their earth-based enterprises.
The second answer is marketing. This company would be in the news every day for years, and they would certainly be in every schoolchild's history books for centuries to come. Doesn't Coke have a roughly $1.5 billion advertising budget? Not saying they'd be the one to do it (though Virgin does have a cola, too...) Putting this kind of money into the greatest technological accomplishment in history may be worth it...