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?
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.
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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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.
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.
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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