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NASA, European Space Agency Want To Go To Mars
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."
As long as they agree on one set of units it should be fine.
Pfft! If they give enough money to Nasa on difficult enough project, they'll solve all of those. Well, maybe not the deficit, unless you consider the possibility of martian gold.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Perhaps investing in developing the new technologies we would need to get our asses to Mars would create all sorts of new jobs.
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
NASA's budget is such a small fraction of the overall budget ($17.318 billion out of $2.9 trillion in 2008) that it really has very little effect on the economy. If you want to worry about the U.S. economy, fighting two different expensive wars is a much bigger problem. Less than half a penny out of every tax dollar goes to NASA. 5 cents goes to the 'global war on Terror.' [see: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/Fy2008spendingbycategory.png%5D
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
Euro agency is nothing to do with EU, but hey don't let that stop you!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Okay, I know there are tens of millions of tons of gold on Pluto. Please send me a check and it is yours. Heck, I'll give you a fifty percent discount.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I think that being able to establish a base on the moon FIRST would be more practical and give us good practice for preparing for a base on Mars. Gotta walk before you can run....
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
China seam to have more money to throw about, I hear Japan are pretty good at technology and russia seam to be the goto guys if you want something launched. If getting to Mars is a serious scientific venture and not a cock swinging contest, why not work with them as well?
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Just wait until you don't have to borrow the money to do so.
The US needs to figure out its side of the equation, what is more important, buying votes or science?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I disagree entirely with this comment but flamebait? I Think it is a valid concern, a stupid one given the NASA is a fraction of the US's Budget but not flamebait. stop modding by agree/disagree!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Your wholly invented figures have surely disproven his claim. And your specious* reference to parable of the broken window hammers it home.
*The point of the parable is that net economic gain of an action is the sum of the gross economic gain (work for the glazier) and the economic cost (reduced spending power of the cobbler), and therefore an action with an economic cost equal or greater than its gross gain is a net loss. Outside of your invented figures, you have not demonstrated this.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Good afternoon Sir, I represent Monster Cable® Future Investment Planning Committee. We are interested in providing the highest definition audio and video solutions to our customers, and as such we would like to project our interest in purchasing your stock of Plutonian gold.
As my old chemistry teacher used to say, "'ey you with the gold!!"
Why not do both. if you look at somewhere like France they invest in "practical" research such as fusion reactors, blue-sky research such as CERN (15%) and the ESA (23%) which is somewhere between the two. The value of blue-sky research is hard to predict but taking a Thatcherite view and dismissing it altogether is naive and apart from slowing progress, it's not economically sound (I'm not saying spending too much on blue-sky is a good idea either). If you look at biological research I'd argue that much less progress has been done recently (compared to what could have been achieved) because too much funding is attached to direct studies like cancer research and not enough is being spread around to just see what happens (mapping the human genome style).
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Oil?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Actually, I wonder the same thing with actual gold sales where you don't physically receive the product. How do you know it isn't some dude with a phone center and a good printer?
Realistically, you could pull off such a scam by simply issuing gold notes. Lets say that the price of gold is $1000/ounce.
You collect $100000 from some guy and issue him a certificate stating that he has purchased 100 ounces from you which are his to collect within maturity of this note (or whatever language you want to include)
Now, you have $100,000 to work with. If Mr. Gold Buyer waits 10 years and wants to cash out his gold, all you have to do is outperform the gold market with that $100,000. You keep (or lose) the difference (ignoring taxes for simplicity)
There really isn't anything magical about the market... and come to think of it, why did I call that a scam? It's roughly what is going on in today's market with those notes. That's how most things are traded.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Well, you can conceivably build things in zero G. The question would be whether it's easier to build things in zero G or where there's a bit of gravity. Gravity has some advantages: Drop something and it will hit the ground, rather than floating away. While building stuff in zero G looks way cool, I'm more interested in efficiency.
The problem with getting stuff from Earth is that it's at the bottom of a really deep gravity well, which limits how much stuff we can get out of it. So shipping water and building materials up to Earth orbit is expensive. Remember that, for x amount of fuel, you can ship 6X the weight from the Moon than you could from Earth.
The problem with getting stuff from Asteroids is political: you have the "what if something goes wrong?" crowd. "Let me get this straight--you want to go find an asteroid and send it toward the Earth?! What happens if you can't control it?! What happens if something goes wrong and it crashes into the Earth?!? Won't somebody think of the children?!?!"
You could mine it and process it on the asteroid and then ship it to Earth orbit for assembly. But we're back to the gravity issues: Mining and processing in negligible G (eg Ceres, the largest asteroid, is 0.03G) will have it own issues as well. On the moon, we have to deal with dust--imagine how much dust mining an asteroid will generate? This a problem we have to solve anyway, whether it's on the Moon or an asteroid.
As for water, I may be wrong but space is not only pretty darn cold, it's pretty darn hot. The ISS temperatures range from -250 F to +250 F, depending on whether it's in direct sunlight. So I would think water would melt. But I may be wrong.