Slashdot Mirror
71 Percent of U.S. See Humans On Mars By 2033
astroengine writes "In a recent poll funded by the non-profit Explore Mars, 71% of respondents agreed that the U.S. will send a human to Mars within the next two decades. Unfortunately, on average, the sample of 1,101 people surveyed thought the U.S. government allocated 2.4% of the federal budget to NASA — in reality it's only 0.5%. With this in mind, 75% of the respondents agreed/strongly agreed that NASA's budget should be increased to explore Mars through manned and robotic means."
Half the population believes in creationism and alien abductions.
I'll pass on putting any stock in their predictions or beliefs.
The latest Mars rover benefited from a lot of hype. Unwarranted hype at that. It's just a rover, it's not doing anything new, only something old and a little extra.
I don't think I'm supposed to respond to AC's but...what we got with the MSL is a small car sized (car analogy eh?) robot that can largely think for itself placed on another planet by the world's largest supersonic parachute, a set of rocket engines used to hover for several seconds, and a crane capable of gently lowering this giant robot from said rocket hover ship without damaging what is by far the most sensitive equipment ever to leave orbit. Oh yeah, all of that was operated by 70+ explosions that all worked exactly as intended. Streamed live for the whole world to see. The fact that jerks in basements can bemoan that as hype shows how many great engineers there are working today. If you spout out "it's not doing anything new, something old and a little extra"* to a feat of that magnitude, it means that there are so many engineers cranking out awesome shit everywhere that you're numb to the amazingness of human achievement. If you think that was easy, but a microcontroller dev kit, switches and motors for under $20 (a miracle in itself) and try and do a simple project like a garage door opener or anything interacting with the physical world and see how long it takes you. Is there a problem with bureaucracy? Sure but don't use that as excuse to spit on all of the greatness that is still currently being accomplished. You guys are as bad as hollywood when they brush off all of human invention as being given to us by aliens in whatever stupid scifi movie because thats easier to comprehend than "smart people exist".
*This deserves its own rant because its 100% bullshit. MSL is doing plenty of new things and the "a little extra" approach is ALL OF SCIENCE...see the development process from mecury to gemini to apollo. Cause really that was nothing new either. I mean the Chinese had "rockets" ~800 years ago.