71 Percent of U.S. See Humans On Mars By 2033

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71 Percent of U.S. See Humans On Mars By 2033

Posted by Unknown on Monday February 11, 2013 @10:00PM from the proving-babylon-five-underoptimistic dept.

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."

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In related news by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-11 22:03 · Score: 5, Funny

99% Percent of U.S. See Flying Cars by 1985.
1. Re:In related news by isorox · 2013-02-11 22:14 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  99% Percent of U.S. See Flying Cars by 1985.
  October 2015. And jaws 27 at the same time.
2. Re:In related news by segedunum · 2013-02-11 22:19 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  I'm sure that most of the population in the 60s and 70s thought we'd had bases on the moon by 2001. That was twelve years ago.
3. Re:In related news by backslashdot · 2013-02-11 23:13 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  We had the tech, but not the money. Are we going to have the money by 2033? I sure hope so, but it looks iffy. A Mars shot would probably take 20 years nowadays (the moon shot took 20 years too if you count the time that the Saturn V engines were in development when Kennedy announced it). That means it would have to survive 4 presidential elections and 8 congressional elections. Space is one of the easy budgets to raid money out of. In essence we'll need 20 years of sustained prosperity. It will probably be 2020 that a Mars shot will be announced. Probably around the time China announces a moon shot. Or maybe their own Mars shot. I hope they announce it. Maybe we need that to get up off our butts. There's no way in hell we're gonna watch someone else get there first.
4. Re:In related news by Seumas · 2013-02-11 23:40 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Half the population believes in creationism and alien abductions.
  I'll pass on putting any stock in their predictions or beliefs.
5. Re:In related news by blackpaw · 2013-02-11 23:54 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  No he probably means the highly abrasive regolith dust that is kicked up and tracked in by every person using the airlocks.
6. Re:In related news by guzzirider · 2013-02-12 00:57 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I don't believe that a manned mission to mars could ever be achieved from international competition. It would require international cooperation on a massive scale.
  Costly, expensive does not even begin to cover it. A program for a manned mission to Mars is at least a magnitude of order more difficult than the Apollo program. A starting guess would be 10x of the cost of the Apollo program in adjusted dollars for inflation. One figure I found was $135-billion in 2005 Dollars (cost of the Apollo program).
  Now if it is 10x harder to do mars, are we talking about 1.3 Trillion?
  Personally I would like to see this seriously pursued in my lifetime, however ..
  We have gotten good at robotic missions and I would like to see more exploration and science missions. I know that a sample return mission would get some level of excitement, but it is likely that placing more science on the surface is of more benefit. Maybe rovers with an ability to find samples to be sent to a surface based robotic lab instead of / in addition to of self contained rovers.
  We also must ask if Mars is to use so many resources would we be neglecting other robotic planetary missions?
7. Re:In related news by Kjella · 2013-02-12 06:33 · Score: 3
  
  A program for a manned mission to Mars is at least a magnitude of order more difficult than the Apollo program. A starting guess would be 10x of the cost of the Apollo program in adjusted dollars for inflation. One figure I found was $135-billion in 2005 Dollars (cost of the Apollo program). Now if it is 10x harder to do mars, are we talking about 1.3 Trillion?
  Why exactly is a mission to Mars "at least an order of magnitude more difficult" and at 1969 prices to boot? Let's take a look at what it would cost to return to the moon, no we no longer have a Saturn V but since then we've perfected rendezvous operations in space both ship to ship and ship to station enabling us to put the ISS in orbit that is 4 times what Saturn V could lift to LEO. With about 2.3 launches with a SpaceX Falcon Heavy we can put the same weight in orbit for roughly $230 million. You know how much of those $135 billion the Saturn V was? About 47 of them. So already there you have a $46.77 billion savings. Russia has been making fairly serious moon program plans, they estimated the cost of putting humans on the moon starting now to about $15 billion USD.
  Elon Musk of SpaceX has been pulling out some rather ambitious plans for a Mars colony for $36 billion, even if we include a certain level of exaggeration and optimism I feel quite confident that with another Apollo program in cost we'd already be on Mars and then some. It's certainly not "another order of magnitude" away. But the thing is, there's no interest in another Apollo program or even half of one, it's trouble enough finding a billion or two for rovers, probes and telescopes. And it's rather hard for anyone private to see the ROI in funding it themselves, and not for a lack of trying. SpaceX is doing great building rockets but there's a commercial market for that, Mars crew capsules/landers/habitats/launchers not so much.
  
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Mad skillZ by Dutchmaan · 2013-02-11 22:07 · Score: 4, Interesting

Two things man is exceptionally good at with great consistency; overestimating his progress in the future and underestimating the resilience of nature.
1. Re:Mad skillZ by neyla · 2013-02-11 22:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I think the trend is to overestimate the short-term changes, while underestimating long-term actually.
  And long-term gets shorter all the time. We've made more technological progress in the last 50 years than we did in the 100 before that, or the 200 before those, or the 500 before. (i.e. 1963-2013 has seen more technological progress than 1163 - 1663 did.
2. Re:Mad skillZ by locofungus · 2013-02-11 23:35 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Getting someone to Mars (and presumably back again) is an engineering problem. We know how to do it in theory - we know multiple ways it could be done and all that remains is to decide the "best" way to do it and find the funds to achieve it.
  But "the funds" will be eye watering sums to the average man in the street and the payback is hard to define, certainly in the short term.
  We can't even find the funds to seriously research nuclear fusion. That is currently a physics problem rather than an engineering problem, we don't currently know how to build a working commercial fusion power plant but it seems likely that one should be possible and the payback is pretty obvious.
  I don't foresee a man on Mars or a working commercial fusion power plant in my lifetime - I'm just old enough to have been alive when there were men on the moon but not old enough to remember it. I've some hope that China might spur on the US and EU eventually but I think there's another 15-20 years before Chinese accomplishments go beyond the "well we did it in the past and we could do it again now if we really wanted to but there's no point" attitude of the majority of the electorate in the West.
  So I don't see a man on Mars in 20 years - just possibly I see the start of a race to put a man on Mars in the next 20 years.
  Tim.
  
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  God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
3. Re:Mad skillZ by cheesybagel · 2013-02-12 01:17 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Depends on how you measure progress. Transportation is not any faster. Energy is not any cheaper to generate.
  The computers are better and communications are more pervasive and ubiquitous.
  It is laughable to dismiss the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration like that.
Unsurprising by slimdave · 2013-02-11 22:46 · Score: 3, Funny

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
71 Percent of U.S. See Humans On Mars By 2033 by hcs_$reboot · 2013-02-11 23:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Translates to "71% of humans wish humans could be on Mars by 2033"

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We can't organize that well by cshotton · 2013-02-11 23:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

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1. Re:We can't organize that well by osu-neko · 2013-02-11 23:35 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  We're a bunch of greedy, self-absorbed, small-minded apes...
  ...with a bad habit of glorifying the past and forgetting that there's never been a time where this was even one iota less true than it is today. "The pathetic culture we've devolved into today could never even accomplish today the great things our ancestors did, much less progress even further." This has been the common wisdom since... at least since we've been capable of writing it down. It was certainly the common sentiment among the Greeks (well before they actually accomplished the things we know them for today).
  
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  "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
2. Re:We can't organize that well by CaptainLard · 2013-02-12 00:45 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
It's worse than that by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-11 23:07 · Score: 4, Funny

76% of the U.S. population believes an invisible guy in the sky watching them all the time too.
98.6% believe in an invisible force that causes objects to fall to earth when released.
Re:Physics for Future Presidents by VortexCortex · 2013-02-11 23:39 · Score: 5, Funny

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.
Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps by TheRealHocusLocus · 2013-02-12 00:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

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Re:And... by turp182 · 2013-02-12 01:00 · Score: 5, Funny

That would be the drones flying overhead, and they are in fact real...

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We could get there by medcalf · 2013-02-12 02:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

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