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Senate Panel Authorizes Money For Mission To Mars (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: With a new president on the horizon, a key Senate committee moved Wednesday to protect long-standing priorities of the nation's space program from the potential upheaval of an incoming administration. Members of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee passed a bipartisan bill authorizing $19.5 billion to continue work on a Mars mission and efforts to send astronauts on private rockets to the International Space Station from U.S. soil -- regardless of shifting political winds. Under the Senate bill, NASA would have an official goal of sending a crewed mission to Mars within the next 25 years, the first time a trip to the Red Planet would be mandated by law. The legislation would authorize money for different NASA components, including $4.5 billion for exploration, nearly $5 billion for space operations and $5.4 billion for science. Beyond money, the measure would: Direct NASA to continue working on the Space Launch System and Orion multi-purpose vehicle that are the linchpins of a planned mission to send astronauts to Mars by the 2030s. The bill includes specific milestones for an unmanned exploration mission by 2018 and a crewed exploration mission by 2021. Require development of an advanced space suit to protect astronauts on a Mars mission. Continue development of the Commercial Crew Program designed to send astronauts to the space station -- no later than 2018 -- on private rockets launched from U.S. soil. Expand the full use and life of the space station through 2024 while laying the foundation for use through 2028. Allow greater opportunities for aerospace companies to conduct business in Low Earth Orbit. Improve monitoring, diagnosis and treatment of the medical effects astronauts experience from spending time in deep space.
Shouldn't we be spending that money to save humanity by stopping global warming? Instead, we're going to burn a bunch of fossil fuels for a pointless one way mission to Mars. This is a waste of time and money, with so many better ways to spend it that will actually benefit humanity.
"an unmanned exploration mission by 2018"
It's too bad no one thought of that 40 years ago. We could have had an unmanned exploration mission on Mars back in 1976 or so.
Oh. Wait. Viking landed on Mars in 1976, didn't it.
40 F'ing years ago. Are we maybe kind of done with the exploratory crap, and ready to send people yet?
Let's see... we went from the first autogyro to landing on the moon in 40 years. Now it looks like we've moved from an unmanned landing on Mars ... to Yet Another Unmanned Landing On Mars(tm) over the last 40 years.
Good job, dudes.
The real polluter is China, at an official 1/3, and far more likely to be close to 50%.
The one that should be putting their money into dramately lowering their emissions is China. Sadly, theirs continues to rise, while America's continues to drop.
Even now, America is under 33% coal for their electricity, while China remains around 88%.
Senate Panel Says "Get Your Ass to Mars."
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NASA and Senate are forcing the people to pay for expensive photographs resulting from these exploration rituals. the end result practically is to insult existing religions, so as to say that instead of trying to reprove religion like did Werner Von Braun's flat-earth plane-dome confirmation epitaph, NASA goes the way of the Dodo bird in endorsing death by Ghandi ad-hominem attacks to artful religious expressions: gpobal humanism at it's lowest point in history by not learning to work neither for nor against existing religious exploration documentation. reminds me how mainland Chi.ese government officials get pissed off at the piety of the existing true Puncheon Llama so they imprison religiious leaders ala CIA style only to replace with a religious leader in their favor.
Beam. Me. Up.
Since the coming president ( R, according to recent polls ) is likely to inject a lot into the military (thus less for the rest), better to save a bit for NASA now.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
this can not be done in Europe: mandate historical space missions by law. We for sure, over here in the EU, have the dough for it...
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Egon Musky wants public funding to help plant his manly seed on Mars.
Yes let's spend huge amounts of tax money on wars and getting to mars instead of healthcare, education and infrastructure.
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The bill includes specific milestones for an unmanned exploration mission by 2018 and a crewed exploration mission by 2021.
So in other words its a ton of hot air and complete horseshit. At best it's a way to secure funding for NASA under a label that'll be hard to attack - HAY U GUIES LETS GO TO MARS!!1! is the latest pop-sci meme after all. The Lunar missions only happened because of the most intense military/industrial standoff in human history - and even then there were Presidential advisers doing their damnedest to kill the Moon missions. The political will to undertake the Apollo program was purely the result of the Cold War standoff - where two superpowers were locked in an existential deathmatch - and the specific technology to deliver astronauts could also deliver thermonuclear warheads to enemy territory.
The likes of Apollo will never happen again. If you weren't convinced that "25 years to Mars" is a horseshit timeframe, its appearance in a Congressional budget bill should remove all doubt.
It is true that the Apollo program generate great innovations and jump started the US Tech sector. Which is why going to Mars is the wrong focus and a waste of time. And the reason is the very same reason people think it's a good idea to go.
Going to mars from a tech perspective, is an incremental affair. Sure, there will be new tech created, but it will be incrementally new. Better this, better that,more powerful, etc. But still the same thing
Today's equivalent of the Apollo program isn't incremental improvements and shooting people across the solar system in tin cans. The equivalent would be to build an actual Space Ship.
Features of a space ship vs a tin can
1. Nuclear Power Supply...hundreds of megawatts.
2. Non-chemical propulsion.
2. Magnetic shielding to protect against solar radiation.
3. Rotating living quarters for "artificial gravity".
4. Complete atmospheric and waste recycling.
5. Detachable vehicles for EVAs and descent vehicles.
Now THAT is a challenge that rises to the level of difficulty as Apollo and would spawn a like number of innovations for the rest of the world.
Hell, if you can make number 4 alone work reliably enough to go to mars, then imagine the benefits here on Earth.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The real polluter is China, at an official 1/3, and far more likely to be close to 50%.
China 28%, the United States next at 16%. Since America has less than 1/4 the population of China, though, we're still putting out 2.5 times more greenhouse gas per person. Source: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissio... alternate source: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_w...
Even now, America is under 33% coal for their electricity, Sadly, theirs continues to rise, while America's continues to drop.
yep, America is about a third: http://www.eia.gov/energy_in_b... That's primarily because of the drop in cost of petroleum and natural gas. I don't have good numbers for China, but they do burn a lot of coal.
The one that should be putting their money into dramately lowering their emissions is China.
The answer is "both". Since China already uses only 40% as much fossil fuel per person than the US does, it's going to be 2.5 times easier to reduce the US emissions, of course. But, this is exactly why it is a wicked hard problem : no single actor, no single organization, no single country can solve the problem on its own. The problem is global in scale.
cost $123.9 million...per year
You're confusing budgeted and actually spent. Wartime expenditures are not restricted to budget.
This is a really good point. In fact, most of the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was funded off-budget: the Congress would pass their budget not including costs for the wars, and then do a supplement later to fund the wars. A lot of the cost is not accounted to the war. The cost of munitions, for example (the munitions were bought under general military budget, and when they were used in the war they had already been paid for. Of course, they have to be replaced... but that's not cost accounted to the war.
For example. On paper, we budgeted only a few billion for wartime expenditures between 2001 and 2006, yet the actual money spent was in the trillions. My poli-sci teacher said in those 5 years, we spent enough money on the war to fund all healthcare and college for all of the USA for 10 years.
Good summary here: http://time.com/3651697/afghan...
Nope. Venus is more interesting in this regard. Mars is WAY smaller than Earth (about halfway between Earth and our moon, actually closer to our moon), so it's pretty obvious what happened, it simply lost its atmosphere due to a lack of gravity to retain it.
Actually, not. That would be Jeans Escape, but that's not how Mars lost atmosphere. It lost its atmosphere primarily due to the lack of a magnetic field, allowing coronal mass ejections from the sun to slowly strip away the outer layers of the atmosphere.
Its orbit is also way more eccentric than ours, it has no liquid core, it's almost outside the "habitable zone" of our sun...
Really, if you want to take a look at what could be our fate, Venus is where you want to go.
Venus is similar to what Earth will be in several billion years.
But a billion years is a long time.
Exactly. And why are they still using useless wheeled rovers, instead of LEGGED robots,
Because wheeled locomotion technology is about five thousand years further down the technology development learning curve. Wheeled rovers are reliable compared to any other locomotion technology.
that can move about a hundred times faster,
The speed of rovers is not limited by how fast the wheels can roll.
and be designed to overcome or go around any obstacle, and virtually never get stuck?
Legged rovers that have better capability of traverse over rough ground than wheeled rovers are yet in the future.
You could make tracked rovers with more obstacle traverse capability-- but they are mechanically more complex, and hence less reliable.
The bill includes specific milestones for an unmanned exploration mission by 2018 and a crewed exploration mission by 2021.
So in other words its a ton of hot air and complete horseshit. At best it's a way to secure funding for NASA under a label that'll be hard to attack
This is the authorization bill, not the funding bill.
It tells NASA what to do. Funding them to do that is separate.
The "unmanned exploration mission by 2018" refers to the Insight lander; the "crewed exploration mission by 2021" probably refers to SLS launch EM-2 (testing the launch system with a crew.)
If you weren't convinced that "25 years to Mars" is a horseshit timeframe, its appearance in a Congressional budget bill should remove all doubt.
This isn't a budget bill.
Trump will build an habitat on mars and claim a 20 billion tax break for himself.
Congress, the Senate, whatever... They've been announcing their "bold 'new' vision" to go to Mars virtually every year or two since we landed on the moon. What has been done so far during the 45 years they've kept up this bullshit? Absolutely nothing! For decades they have been spending billions and billions of dollars on programs that are ALWAYS canceled. ALWAYS!
This is a complete waste of time and money. NASA is not simply completely useless at achieving any sort of bold vision, it is actively harmful. They deliberately sabotage efforts that are not subservient to their bureaucracy. Government subsidized launches directly compete with private launch systems that do not have the luxury of spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money, and thereby retard if not utterly stymie their development. That SpaceX has managed to succeed has nothing to do with NASA and everything in spite of them. (Without government launches, the private satellite industry would have had loads more money to contract with private launchers like SpaceX.)
If we get to Mars, it will be because of people like Elon Musk, doing it his way. If NASA has any part of it, it will be simply to go along for the ride, solely to grease the palms of the bureaucrats sufficiently that the government doesn't actively oppose Elon Musk's efforts.
Peter
The real reason it is a waste of time is that a Mars mission is something that will take well over a decade to complete, and 19.5 billion is relatively speaking like put a $1000 dollar down payment on an aircraft carrier -- or it would be even if that money didn't have to be shared with Earth orbital priorities and we had the attention span to carry on funding the program consistently.
The recurring problem with NASA for decades now has been bold-sounding rhetoric backed up by very timid levels of funding. You want to get this done? Create a quasi-governmental authority with the power to tax people up to, say, thirty-one billion a year for the next twenty years. That would be, adjusted for inflation roughly Apollo's annual funding but extended over about twice the program duration. If that sounds insane to you, it's because we don't do that kind of thing anymore.
I will go out on a limb here and predict that the US will not be the nation to land a human on Mars. That's because we have a political system that's really bad at focusing on things that take longer than the interval between a Congressional election and the congressmen gearing up for the next one -- about a year and half tops. Stuff that takes longer than either never gets started, or runs horribly out of control (F35).
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We do not need NASA if they are just going funnel tax money into the pockets of oligarchs so they can smash pretty looking rockets that do not work into the desert or the ocean.
There is no legitimate reason for spending 10s of billions of dollars on manned missions to Mars, unless you count aerospace/defense corporate bottom lines.
Congress actually did something right? Amazing!
>> Beyond money, the measure would: Direct NASA to continue working on the Space Launch System and Orion multi-purpose vehicle that are the linchpins of a planned mission to send astronauts to Mars by the 2030s.
REALLY dumb to lock them into a particular vehicle and program. Especially one that is so outdated already. There are FAR better, cheaper and quicker alternatives to get to Mars already out there:
http://www.marssociety.org/