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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."
99% Percent of U.S. See Flying Cars by 1985.
Two things man is exceptionally good at with great consistency; overestimating his progress in the future and underestimating the resilience of nature.
76% of the U.S. population believes an invisible guy in the sky watching them all the time too.
Unlikely doesn't get more likely just because you got the majority to believe it...
Developing a new high speed rail network - London to Birmingham..
"Construction along the line is due to start in 2017 and be completed by 2025. The first train services will run between London and Birmingham from 2026." https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/developing-a-new-high-speed-rail-network
Add in the delays and 2033 looks possible! - Would you believe England used to rule 3/4 of the planet?
Poll sponsored by Boeing and Mars exploration group finds public opinion agrees with their own wishes. Here is essential information on how polls work, courtesy of "Yes, Prime Minister": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
Translates to "71% of humans wish humans could be on Mars by 2033"
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
What those 77% of people fail to realize is that we can no longer organize ourselves well enough to accomplish this sort of task. NASA, as an institution, long ago stopped being about technical successes and exploration. During my years working with NASA, I discovered that a NASA manager's career success is measured solely by the number of people they manage and the size of the budget they control. Not by how many successful missions they achieved, not by the technology breakthroughs they fostered, and not by any other rational measure beyond their org chart success.
So we have no government agency capable of focusing on such a complicated goal as landing humans on Mars. They immediately get distracted with project management issues and politics. If private industry were to try and undertake this effort, there would have to be some financial incentive for our largest private spacefaring corporations to try and cooperate, since none have the resources alone to achieve the goal within 20 years. And the only model they have for organizing themselves is NASA today. No one still working in the industry knows how NASA of the 1960's worked, and society has changed to the point that the technical people required for such an effort are no longer motivated to make the selfless sacrifices needed to achieve such a goal. All the good engineers left aerospace for the Dot.Com world in the '90s. Those remaining few are motivated by commercial and personal financial success, and that requires a much shorter planning and gratification cycle than 20 years.
Sorry, we won't be going to Mars. We're a bunch of greedy, self-absorbed, small-minded apes that have reached the pinnacle of our organizational skills at the bottom of our gravity well.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
98.6% believe in an invisible force that causes objects to fall to earth when released.
You may as well be on the Moon for all the good it does. Mars may be a great goal on some scientific agenda however we have the Moon and it's much closer. The only thing however that comes to mind in both cases for colonies or even some manned outpost is what would you do with it? Yes, there's the scientific exploration aspects of it but as World History would point out, Explorers were in search of riches, trade routes or room to expand. The technical hurdles would certainly mean more expansion in terms of possibly new technologies that we can use here on Earth, new material science, new electronics or new discoveries on Physics. Other than that, I would submit that the Moon or Mars don't really represent much other than commercial mining opportunities. In order to have the remotest chance of being economically feasible, this would mean that there would have to be some new or unknown mineral lurking out there, or something so rare here on Earth that the astronomical (pun intended) costs to retrieve and process would make sense. Now, if it were purely for expansion would could always find a planet like Pandora and just send in the Military to fight blue giant cat people or if you're of the Star Trek genre, then you could find Orion Slave Girls and bring them back for fun and profit!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
And 57% of respondents agree by 2053 we will be flying around the galaxy in faster-than-light spaceships. You know, like the Millennium Falcon. They saw it in a movie. And most of those believe Obama is a Secret Muslim Nigerian. What are we trying to prove here?
(emboldening, mine)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like we're simply trying to prove the validity of a certain method of business...
Hello, I am the Nigerian President of the USA,
As you know, my countries are in turmoil, so I need your help to smuggle my Secrit Muslim inheritance of pressious diamounds from Nigeria into the USA to solve this dire $16.5 trillien nashonal debt problem.
Unfortunately, only the Millennium Falcon is capable of transporting these valuables through the Evil Galactic Umpire's diplomatic sanctions, and they will not accept my payment of carbonite crystels, which is all I have access to in my current situation.
Please, you must help me save my people from Finance Oil Wars so that we may and purchase safe passage from the NASA smugglers. I only need All Social Security Benefits more to pay the smugglers. Please do not forward this message to the police of The Repelican Party or we will surely be found and executed, and our people will suffer great deals. For your assistance with this trouble I am willing to wire transfer you Peece on Earth and Goodwill dollars once this matter is settled.
To help, please make arrangements for payment at this website.
Please also reply and include your bank account and routing number and your All Pursonal Online information so I can send you compensation for your good deeds.
I sincerely Thank You in advance for help in these troubling times.
Signed,
Obama Hussein Jong il Bin Laden III.
if any humans get to mars by 2033 they wont be american, theyll be chinese.
During the past 540 million years, there have been five major events which killed over 50% of life on Earth. Do you think humanity will survive the next mass extinction? What if a supernova goes off some hundred light years away, an asteroid heads towards Earth, a global pandemic breaks out, or a third world war erupts? If we make it our long-term goal to establish a permanent colony on Mars, at least we'll have a backup of humanity in case disaster should strike.
I also believe that we'll benefit from developing the technology to settle on another planet. For instance, you mentioned faster space drives; if we don't continue to explore space, where will the motivation and funding for heavy propulsion research come from? If we settle on Mars, can't we use similar technology to populate more arid regions on Earth? If we eventually manage to terraform Mars, wouldn't that revolutionize agriculture on Earth too? And I bet such an expedition will be accompanied by thousands of minor breakthroughs in materials technology, medicine, etc. that we don't yet know how will benefit us.
Jumping the gun is not necessarily the best way to get things done.
The most oft-discussed and visible triumphs of manned space have been by necessity "get there, plant the flag and get out."
But the ultimate goal should be not just to visit space or establish some dangerous and isolated outposts there (though there is no shortage of volunteers!)...it should be to move into space in a series of self-sustaining stages.
This means we first need to build a space colony here on Earth, and decide on some practical steps to take that will achieve the ultimate goal. And each step should be of immediate practical and commercial value.
I would like to call attention to Marshall Savage's amazing project and book, The Millennial Project. another synopsis and at Amazon. Some have picked fun at Savage's priorities, but frankly until this book/project arrived on the scene there had been nothing like it.
In that plan, terraforming Mars is step 6 of 8. In this scenario we are not just landing on Mars to establish an outpost... at that stage we have already perfected the technology for habitats in space. If our focus is on 'the next logical (small) step' instead of some ultimate goal and devote our complete effort to these steps, by 2033 we could be moving outward in all directions... instead of just one.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Number of humans that have been to the moon : 12
Number of humans that have been as far as the moon 24 (Including the 12 above)
Number that have been out of near earth orbit in the last 40 years : 0
In 1970 we were landing on the moon, could travel as a regular commercial passenger at Mach 2, had a plane that cruised for long distances at Mach 3+ (Although we did not know it at the time), and now we don't ....
Forget Mars we can't even get to the moon anymore ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
But NASA can't. If we do get to Mars in that time frame, it will be the Chinese or, more likely, one of the New Space companies like SpaceX.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Do you guys know the Mars Direct Program? It was developed by Rober Zubrin. The point of the program is that we are technically able to go to Mars. We were it 15 years ago en today we still are. We can do it relatively cheap (20 billion) and without need of in-orbit build spaceships. I recommend reading The Case for Mars by Rober Zubrin. wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct
The resource that is lacking is WILL.
Call it "political will" ... "moral fortitude" ... whatever. Once the tech is available, the only thing preventing any group from making a large project like this happen is the will to do it. Which is precisely why we probably WILL have a Mars mission (manned) by 2033 ... but it WILL NOT be the government doing it.
Private enterprise has the will, the stated goal, is gathering the money, and refining the tech. Elon Musk is not the only one, either.
People routinely OVERestimate how difficult this will be once the will is in-place.
(Note: having the will to "do it" includes the acceptance of the RISK involved. Kinda like Everest climbers and cave divers.)
See you space cowboy
Don't get me wrong - I'm not anti-tax and I PERSONALLY would have no issue with paying a little more if I knew it'd go to NASA. I'm just saying that most people probably wouldn't. Most operate under the impression that the government just has all this free money to send where it wants with no clue that those resources and funds have to actually come from somewhere.
Yeah, just think if NASA had been allowed to keep the patents and royalties from teflon, velcro and any number of products developed through the early space program. They could probably be fully self-funded by now, but instead, taxpayers payed for the research and private companies got to profit from it.
In term of technology, you're right, but in term of economy the cost to launch the Mars spacecraft to LEO is a major expense, if you check the cost breakdown at the end of this article, it shows the launcher is the most expensive part of the mission. Given cheap access to LEO, I think it would be much easier to design the rest of the mission since mass constraint would be greatly reduced.
No, the cost to protect the crew for the multi-year journey and stay on the planet is the major expense when looking at the total cost of the program. Cost to launch is applicable per mission, but not overall. Look at it this way. A heavy launch vehicle launching a satellite versus a manned capsule uses just as much resources to reach LEO, so the cost to launch is equivalent. However, the actual cost to put a capsule into space is much more than a satellite. Why? Because protecting the human cargo is more costly than protecting integrated circuits.
Now that is just to LEO. Extend that for a 76 million mile round trip, plus a 12 month or more stay on the planet and see what happens to the cost. If cost is the primary concern, unmanned exploration is always cheaper.
We are on the verge of having cars that can drive them self in everyday traffic. Surely the AI that is advanced enough for that is advanced enough for exploration on a distant planet. The question that needs to be asked is what does sending people to Mars and the associated extra costs get that sending sophisticated machines doesn't provide?