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NASA, European Space Agency Want To Go To Mars

Posted by Soulskill on from the merging-to-beat-their-competitors dept.

coondoggie writes "NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are aiming to cooperate on all manner of robotic orbiters, landers and exploration devices for a future trip to Mars. Specifically, NASA and ESA recently agreed to consider the establishment of a new joint initiative to define and implement their scientific, programmatic, and technological goals for the exploration of Mars. The program would focus on several launch opportunities with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical, climatological, and other high-priority investigations and aiming at returning samples from Mars in the mid-2020s."

2 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Manned missions? by divisionbyzero · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Good. With the focus now on probes and robots maybe they can stop talking about the idiotic idea of sending people there. I'd rather see them dump the money into developing human-like androids to send to Mars than planning and paying to send humans.

  2. Re:Congratulations by commodore64_love · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I was making a semi-humorous point, which seems to have gone over your head. If you to be anal-retentive, heree are some actual figures on how much it cost the United States to save jobs. Note how the government spends more than the damn jobs are worth (in terms of salary):

    ID $130,028 per job
    KS $ 99,077 per job
    ME $187,220 per job.
    MI $376,443 per job.
    NV $97,782 per job.
    NM $628,989!
    SC $1,502,839 - each

    continued - http://www.google.com/search?q=cost+of+jobs+saved

    --
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