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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.
"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.
Senate Panel Says "Get Your Ass to Mars."
Shouldn't we be spending that money to save humanity by stopping global warming?
5 billion?
That's a drop in the ocean compared to (eg.) the military. One F35. A few days in Afghanistan. Why don't we start there instead of cutting the sciency things??
Making people interested science isn't a waste and NASA are the ones who might actually save the planet.
No sig today...
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%.
You pulled those numbers out of your ass, eh?
No sig today...
Most of that is because Americas factories have moved to China. Most of what China builds is exported. Reduce your consumption and you will reduce China's too.
I bet you blame India completely for the Bhopal disaster too.
See, this is the real problem. You move your most pollutive and dangerous shit overseas and then blame those countries when they are building the stuff you want.
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.
Studying the geological and environmental evolution of other planets, as well as their weather patterns and their constitution can help us greatly here on earth.
Mars could've been inhabitable in the past. Understanding what happened in Mars' past could have implications in the ways we deal with, for example, global warming here. Mars is the closest thing to an Earth we have around, so it is a good laboratory. Better than Venus anyway, which is amazingly hostile.
Also, these missions serve as a test-bed for the latest improvements in space travel technology. Space travel has improved immensely in the past few years. Now we have a (more or less) working model for a reusable rocket, which will reduce the environmental impact and costs. This could've never been achieved without investing on space research.
Finally, space exploration and space travel IS about saving humanity. In the long run, we can't stay on this rock forever. Not the way things are going. Resources are becoming depleted. Population continues to rise. We are vulnerable to cosmic events, such as asteroids or gamma ray bursts.
We NEED to go out there, or, at least, to learn how to survive out there. We can't do that without research.
There are over 300 million Americans. We do have the ability to work on multiple projects at once.
The problem with global warming or humanity issues isn't lack of money or resources. But the fact such changes will be in peoples behavior and culture. Money and government can't solve that by themselves.
A manned trip to mars. Is a PR stunt. But a PR stunt we really need. We have been overloaded with news that shows how we are such bad people. We need a big accomplishment to remind people that we can be better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Rockets using kerosene: Atlas, Falcon, Soyuz
Kerosene is a fossil fuel
Manned mission accomplish a single role, exacerbate chauvinism. That was the main motivation behind the Gemini and Apollo programs. It has nothing to do with science, science is a collateral damage.
Achille Talon
Hop!
We currently spend stupendously huge amounts of money on healthcare, education and infrastructure.
Education "more than any other nation in the report' (per capita, roughtly $15,000 per student, approximate $1 Trillion):
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us...
Healthcare "$3.2 Trillion" (over $10,000 per person):
http://www.forbes.com/sites/da...
Infrastructure "$416 Billion":
http://usa.streetsblog.org/201...
That's approximately $4.5 Trillion
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.
Wikipedia page for the F35 says: "In 2012, the total life-cycle cost for the entire U.S. fleet was estimated at US$1.51 trillion"
"Afghanistan costs 124 million a year"? Did you actually type "cost of war in afghanistan" into Google?
Some estimates put the at 14 million per hour:
http://www.ibtimes.com/14-mill...
Of course that's a junk new site so that figure is wrong. More reliable site put it two or three times higher than that:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
No sig today...
Let me be the first (of undoubtedly many) to say, "LOLWHUT?"
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Actually, the moon shot was one of the things that did a lot for US economy. Not only by the directly noticeable technological advances. Of course you had an incredible boost in a wide field of technologies. Propulsion. Electronics. Metallurgy. Plastics. Data processing. And so on. Lots and lots and lots of breakthroughs and developments that would otherwise have taken decades instead of being done "before this decade is out".
You also had a lot of supporting technologies that developed during this time. Hell, some were pretty much invented at that time. Process management and systematic creation of work routines in office positions was pretty much a novelty back then. Dedicated positions with defined interfaces between them, and how this is being documented and interwoven with technology, was a complex but crucial part of the organization of the moon shots. This translated incredibly well to corporate management and you can actually see productivity rise in the 1960s in the US. This was technology that wasn't so immediately visible and it took the other countries a while to actually realize where that productivity boost comes from.
But one of the most important factors was the human factor. First, people saw that these things work. They could see first hand that these changes are GOOD! Today, when a new process is introduced in the company, the resistance is usually incredibly high. What do we need that for? Why should we change, our old way is good? Who died and made you king? Here, you had NASA workers who took their experience with them when they left for a job in the economy, and they knew that these processes and these management structures worked. They knew it first hand. And anyone not knowing it first hand could see it. That's the stuff that got us to the moon, that works!
And of course pulling this feat off gave the country a boost to its self esteem. Remember, that was also the time of racial tension and foreign wars that don't run so well (sounds familiar?). And then there was this "small step" of a man, some thousand miles away. Moreover, it was something the whole country could stand behind. Because everyone could say that he had a part in it. From the guy at the MDD plant who welded the tank to the farmer in Kansas whose wheat was probably used to create the astronaut's food. It was an US effort. As in WE DID THAT. And that feeling lasted a pretty long time. You had role models that convinced young people to get into engineering and study.
And believe me, that would be a LOT better than what now doubles as role models for our youth!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The F35 is mostly pork barrelly. Hence the pig tag.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Actually, most first stages use Kerolox, i.e. kerosene and liquid oxygen.
And that's the environmental friendly variant. You don't want to know what hypergolic fuels are made of, and what their waste products are.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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. 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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If anything, such an effort should probably be undertaken as a cooperation between different countries. And not for sentimental reasons, only for financial ones.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ok, I bite: How?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm pretty sure that something like this would also be seen favorably in the rest of the world. The reaction of the moonshot was also one of admiration and praise for the efforts of the US, and the general, worldwide feeling that the US is _the_ country, that they can do anything and that they'll show us the way.
Right now, the US is regarded as something between laughing stock and schoolyard bully.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I do not think you can stop global warming. There are different reasons of course and these may depend on the current view of reality that one has too. There is for instance this thing that Baltic sea could be crossed by foot few times in the middle ages and this happened not very long time after significant vineyards have been in operation on north part of the old continent and Greenland was actually green. I do not think you could stop processes that lead to such changes. The common human output is just adding to the change in some way of which we have only started to have a clue. Political bickering is not helping to get closer to truth of course. Secondly even if we were certain about how and could change that there would be the issue of thermal inertia of the system called earth.
Then you can turn from nature of things and interaction between humanity and nature to how production facilities are moved to China and how they pollute everything from there - the reason is probably at least as much quality of these factories (no enforced enforced regulation) as the quantities of stuff that they produce. Besides you turn off the shopping spree in China you will end up with a war as all societies under serious economic stress tend to turn to war to resolve the pressing issue of wealth distribution when there is not enough for lower classes.
Another thing is this - the amount of money and CO2 associated with mission to Mars is minuscule comparing with financial implosion caused by system relevant institutions and what human built economy farts into atmosphere in comparable time window. It does not mean it is negligible but it is nothing as major as you make it to be. Better this than wasting money on so called refugees from MENA or subsidizing banksters aka saving economy.
cost $123.9 million...per year
You're confusing budgeted and actually spent. Wartime expenditures are not restricted to budget. 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.
That's the "we must first solve all X problems before we touch Y" fallacy which kind of doesn't work outside of fantasy worlds. Would you rather completely fix US' crumbling infrastructure first or would you fix the the health care system first? Surely one can wait while the other is getting fixed, just tell us which one.
Ezekiel 23:20
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...
Soyuz also used syntin at one point. Atlas and Falcon could presumably do that as well, at the expense of increased costs (but with higher perfomance as well).
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
Then they might be the first ones to actually start drilling deeper than a few centimeters.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
In a way, that makes sense. The two problems I see are that 1) a partner may turn out to be unreliable (Russia with respect to the ISS) and 2) chances are that political allocations will lead to sub-optimal use of resources. Cue the US doggedly using the STS for assembling the station even if it cost tens of billions of dollars of extra money. In the future, cue allowing ESA and JAXA to use Ariane 6 or H-3 even if, for example, New Glenn could do more work for less money. Because, you know, politics...
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
This does benefit humanity.
We have to get off this rock or we're fucked, global warming or not.
Spending more money doesn't make half the US population stop being deniers, which is literally the only thing blocking us from making substantial gains in reducing emissions here at least. The "world" is a whole other ballgame which, yep, you guessed it, spending money doesn't solve.
I assume the whole aluminum oxide = "VERY poisonous" is some sort of joke.
Of the metals in solid rocket fuel, aluminum is the most common, followed by iron. Aluminum and iron oxides in dust form are otherwise known as "clay".
The hazardous chemical that comes out of SRBs is hydrochloric acid. But it's not super-dangerous in the quantities that are released over the areas that it's released over.
The GP is correct, the hypergolic fuels are much worse for the environment. Some experimental ones have been even worse, such as boron-boosted (zip fuels) and fluorine-based fuels. Crazy-high performance - the highest ISP rocket engine ever built was a fluorine-hydrogen-molten lithium triprop** - but they're a nightmare to work with. I can guarantee you that if beryllium wasn't so crazy expensive it would have gotten a shakedown as well.
** The fun thing in that rocket is that the hydrogen both enters and leaves in the same form, H2. It exists solely to function as a working gas, to maximize the expansion potential of the heat released from the lithium-fluorine reaction. A lot of things with rocket propellants are counterintuitive that way - for example, with aluminized hydrocarbon-based rocket propellants, the optimal combustion is to burn the hydrocarbons to H2 and CO, not H2O and CO2. It's not worth the extra energy release to carry more oxidizer, and you need as much light gases as possible to transfer the energy from the aluminum since it condenses out of the gas stream at high temperatures and thus can no longer contribute directly to expansion.
"You abandoned me! You abandoned my hatred!" "I... I have cuttlefish..."
A manned mission won't provide much more details, rover missions would be enough for that purpose as well as orbiting satellites loaded with scientific instruments. That's how we acquire knowledge these days. Sad to say the direct human observation is no longer providing sufficient details and accuracy to be really useful.
Plus, we'll all be alive a few thousand years later when we've learned all there is to learn from Mars. No need to hurry or anything.
The reliability can be safeguarded by the exchange of bonds, payable if contractual responsibilities are not being met. Don't pay? Say good bye to the international financial market. That's easy to secure, but of course, such safeguards hit mutually. Read: Can hit you too if you fail to deliver.
The split should be between the countries simply at what they can do best. Russia has shown time and again that they can deliver with a pretty good safety record and at reasonable cost. Europe is pretty good at getting stuff designed, and the US can create very reliable payloads that can endure years of travel, provided we can somehow teach them the metric system...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
If we want to study atmospheric CO2 the purest place to do that is Mars. Besides that, money isn't going to be wasted, we would be advancing our engineering and computer abilities quite a lot in the process.
A manned visit to Mars is a PR stunt that will suck up all the resources currently being used for rovers and probes that generate real science. A single boots and flag mission could wipe out all science missions for the next forty years. Getting rid of the space station and all the Buck Rogers money sinks is the smartest thing we can do if we want real science.
Spending that money to eliminate fossil fuels would make more sense. The biggest threat to humanity isn't asteroids, it's our inability to deal with problems where the solution would be inconvenient.
Rule number 1 of a business: cost control. The USA spends more on education than anyone else, but ranks near the bottom for results. Spends more on health care than anyone else, but ranks near the bottom. Spends more on infrastructure but ranks near the bottom. It's a pity the Republicans don't bring any business savvy to running America (There is a reason successful business men are called 1 percenters, most Republicans are poorly educated bible thumpers and that's what they bring to government).
Did you know there is no income tax collected on Mars? No property tax either. And not one cent collected for welfare or healthcare.
Spending money does not eliminate fossil fuels, this is what I'm getting at.
Political will is the impediment, and spending money isn't going to convince people to see the science as reality.
Know what happens when you spend money on the problem? That side of the issue just sees it as 'government corruption' and 'oh that research group is just after grant money so fuck their research'.
These things are the reality, you see it every time global warming is mentioned anywhere.
Well we're most certainly not fixing the healthcare system so we might as well work on the infrastructure side.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Trump will build an habitat on mars and claim a 20 billion tax break for himself.
A habitat for what? Human feces? /humor
Shouldn't we be spending that money to save humanity by stopping global warming?
5 billion?
That's a drop in the ocean compared to (eg.) the military. One F35. A few days in Afghanistan. Why don't we start there instead of cutting the sciency things??
Making people interested science isn't a waste and NASA are the ones who might actually save the planet.
Or, worst case, when the aliens get here and see Venus and New Venus, maybe they'll see our abandoned outpost on Mars and ponder what went wrong.
>> 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/
You don't need to go to Mars to work on space travel technology or figuring out how to survive in space. The Moon is only 3 days away and still has plenty of interesting stuff to investigate. Have you watched "The Martian" yet? If you're going to spend any significant time on another world, you need to have some kind of habitat there. Unfortunately, sometimes things go wrong, and you might need to evacuate. As that movie made painfully clear (despite its silly premise of a storm), evacuating a team of astronauts from Mars would take months, close to a year, if not longer, because it's so far away. Most likely, they'll just be dead. That's a gigantic risk to take when we have zero experience setting up permanent habitats on other worlds.. However, with the Moon, it's not that bad: if we have a big problem and need to evacuate the astronauts before sending a new team, it's no problem: the Moon is only 3 days away. Just load them into a small tin can and send them back to Earth with a small rocket. An astronaut having a medical problem on the Moon, for instance, has a pretty good chance of getting back to Earth to get medical treatment in time; an astronaut on Mars with a medical problem is toast.
Once we've figured out how to build and live in habitats on the Moon, then we can try doing that on Mars.
And yet quality of life in Norway is higher than in the US wealth is distributed a lot better and crime rates lower, same for Germany, if I can live like a Norwegian I don't care how much taxes I have to pay , why do you?
Norway has massive oil and hydroelectric resources per capita which completely explain its relatively high standards of living. Germany is slowly destroying its future (such as the doubling of electricity and elimination of nuclear power). I wouldn't be so hasty to emulate them.