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How Can NASA's Road To Mars Be Made More Affordable?
MarkWhittington writes: The Houston Chronicle's Eric Berger published a piece that touched on one of the most vexing issues surrounding NASA's "road to Mars," that being that of cost. How does one design a deep space exploration program that "the nation can afford," to coin a phrase uttered by the old NASA hand interviewed for the article? The phrase is somewhat misleading since one of the truisms of federal budgeting is that the nation can afford quite a bit. A more accurate phrase might be, "that the nation is willing to spend."
Just cancel the F-35 project. That will buy you about 5 trips to Mars.
You want to go to Mars? How about Saturn? Or a neighboring star or galaxy? Maybe even skip to an alternate universe all together?
Hollywood does it every year for $50-200M a pop. Most of the people in this country believe all the impossible stuff they do in the movies is real anyway, and couldn't tell if even the basic physics was so screwed up as to be laughable. Heck, even the school systems and police - you know, the "smart ones" we let teach our kids and the experts on explosives - get all their bomb identification training from Hollywood.
You want these people to fork over real money for real science when fake science that makes them feel good can be had for $11.50 a seat and a $4 soda?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If life on Earth were wiped out (or severely impacted) the Mars colony would have no chance of survival. It's not like sending a ship full of pilgrims across an ocean.
You've understood an important point, but missed a critical companion point. You're correct that cash doesn't normally disappear, it circulates. But the money represents _value_, resources. _Value_ can disappear , resources CAN be squandered.
If scientists spend $1 million of their time doing anything else, such as working on vaccines, you end up with $1million worth of vaccine research done, and still they spend their salaries on stuff. If the engineers design safer cars, we get safer cars (millions of them), and the engineers still spend the cash. On the other hand, if the engineers spend their time designing a space probe, we get a space probe (one) and then literally send that value off into space.
When we say "spend $100 million on mars " what that means is "spend $100 million worth of engineer's time, rather than spending that time on making cars safer, making high speed internet more affordable, etc.)
You CAN argue that it's better to spend that money (engineering time, etc) on a mars probe than to spend it on anything else. And that's exactly the argument you have to make. Because we only have a certain number of engineers , and they only work a certain number of hours. Dollars are a way to put a consistent number on all of the different resources used up in a project, including people's time.
Well, yes. It's affordability too, but try to imagine how soured on space the general public would get to see people slowly dying in an under-resourced "base" on Mars.
I think you greatly underestimate the public's appetite for risk. We've been willing to watch our sons and daughters die by the thousands to take villages and hilltops only to give them back a week, a month or a year later with zero long-term achievement and right now politicians running for President are advocating to ramp that up.
I can't imagine that the public would be turned off by deaths associated with a Mars mission failure. What are we talking about -- 5 people? 10 people? 100 people? And it wouldn't be for some shit patch of dirt it would be to explore space and expand human horizons. That would inspire people, not intimidate them or discourage them.
Exploration has always been risky. People willingly entertain the risk of dying climbing, sailing, diving, parachuting, flying small planes, racing motorcycles, cars and so on. Because somebody might die is a lousy reason not to explore.