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Lockheed Martin Wins Contract to Build Mars Lander
Lord_Slepnir writes "Lockheed Martin has won a contract to build the Orion crew exploration vehicle that will eventually take humans to the moon and then on to Mars. This vehicle will hopefully also replace the aging space shuttle fleet. According to NASA the vehicle will have manned missions by 2014 and moon missions by no later by 2020."
Of course yes, there is a whole different social reason to go there and whatever, and times have changed..
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clever truncation of the sentence. The point is we are finally getting back into real exploration. If we have to make some runs to the moon to get to mars, then fine. I think it is great that we are getting back into the manned exploration of the solar system. I think that most of us that remember the 60's and 70's thought we would be well past the point we are at now.
So really...why do we need to go there?
Because we can.This is the age old debate that killed the Apollo program in the 1970's. People asked the same basic question, "Why spend all this money to go to the moon. We've been there done that. We have starving people still on earth and wars and other bad things we could solve." There is also a voice withing the scientific community, most notably comming from Carl Sagan, that robots can do it faster, cheaper, and arguably better.
If NASA went totally robotic, yes they may learn things, but public interest and their budget to do such missions would shrink as a few nerdy folks in the bowls of mission control would actually care.
Case in point: the current mars rovers that are STILL going around Mars. Spirit and Oppertunity have been wildly sucessful way beyond their initial expectation, yet when was the last time you heard a news report about how well the mission as gone? The arguement goes, the less the public sees pretty pictures (like from hubble) or having people fly the missions, the less the public cares. The less the public cares, the more funds go else where to other things and missions continue to scale back.
Frankly, NASA's $15B budget is meager considering they are one of the few outfits that spends money on Basic Research. Basic research is what yields new technologys that help keep the economy going and improves daily life. It's thinks like that that yielded us many of the devices we use every day. I'm not going to go into them all, but you can read other posts about it.
Here is my arguement.
Fact: If humanity is going to survive, we have to get off this rock.
Also, given the times, sending people to the moon and mars is something that could be used to rally people together. Let's face it, there is a lot of bad things on the horizon. Militant Islam is going to be a problem until enough brave men stand up instead of doing nothing. (I'm sorry, but there are some things going on now that rhymes, as Mark Twain would say, with what happened in the 1930's.) Also you have new global economic battlelines being drawn between the US, EU, and China. With all that going on, reaching for the stars is something, if sold to the people, could turn things around.
Then there is this: if not us, who? The Chinese? Frankly the Chinese would be the type to land on the moon and start mining for resources and say: "Screw the moon treaty, what are you going to do about it?" The Europeans? So far they've had no interest in doing so... If the US gets back to the moon and keeps the mentality of using it for exploration and scientific purpose, it continues a presenant that is hard to break politically.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I wish I had mod points.
Opta ardua pennis astra sequi.
"There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."
It is a far better use of our energy than immolating each other while arguing about god.
Sign me up. I'll dig ditches for the launch pad if that's what it takes for me to be involved.