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Barack Obama: America Will Take the Giant Leap To Mars, To Send People There by the 2030s (cnn.com)
The United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth." This is all part of a longer-term goal of making it possible to "one day remain there for an extended time," he added in an op-ed published on CNN. The effort will require cooperation between public and private space interests in meeting that goal, the president added. As a sign of forward progress, private space companies will send astronauts to the International Space Station within the next two years. "Someday, I hope to hoist my own grandchildren onto my shoulders. We'll still look to the stars in wonder, as humans have since the beginning of time," Obama wrote. "But instead of eagerly awaiting the return of our intrepid explorers, we'll know that because of the choices we make now, they've gone to space not just to visit, but to stay -- and in doing so, to make our lives better here on Earth." The White House in a joint blog post with NASA said that seven companies have received awards to develop habitation systems. And this fall, NASA will provide companies with the opportunity to add modules and other capabilities to the International Space Station.
Ignoring the physics problem (solvable with enough brute force), the radiation problem doesn't seem to be solvable in the near future. How do his advisors think that this will be solved? Pretending that the problem doesn't exist?
Before sending people to Mars we should send a practice mission to the moon for 2 years.
From what I read elsewhere, one of the Martian moons would become a way station for the initial flyby and landing missions.
Like the sex scandals destroyed FDR?
Apples/Oranges comparison... here's why:
* no social media, no Internet
* the GOP at the time was about as popular as catching syphilis (Fairly or not, Herbert Hoover presided over what became The Great Depression, he and his party got the blame, so...)
* media at the time was almost exclusively run by newspapers and radio, and news stories that made it to these media were controlled by a relative select cabal
* much of the scandal (and pretty much all of the evidence) was quashed even before it could make its way to the media, and most of it wasn't really studied or verified until after his death.
* most of the country was a bit preoccupied - either with the Great Depression, or WWII.
* During WWII, any further mention of the scandal would be instantly dismissed as Nazi propaganda (whether it was true or not).
* rumors like this about presidential candidates were as common as white on rice (and was pretty tame compared to the mud they used to sling at each other), so at the time most of it was almost instantly dismissed unless corroborating evidence was present, undeniable, and obvious.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Very little, for two reasons. One, technical advances that go into weapons tend to be classified. Second, science and exploration are not only by definition more open processes, they are are also more complex and interdisciplinary.
It's safe to say that medical and food technology spinoffs from manned space flight would not have occurred in a missile-only program. Likewise most of the advances in materials technology wouldn't have happened either without the need to man-rate space vehicles and equipment. It is unlikely we'd have the photovoltaic technology we have today if we'd only done missiles alone. Chemical batteries will do for a short intercontinental hop.
I think some people here have a problem with cognitive dissonance: if nothing the government tries does anyone any good unless it's defense spending, then any benefits we got from the civilian space program must have been something we got because of the missile program. That simply doesn't fit the historical facts for the US space program after 1960 or so.
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Earth and Mars make their closest approaches every 2.16 years roughly, but note that each time we get a launch window it's not equally favorable. That's because the orbits of Earth and Mars are elliptical, not circular. That means each time we get a launch window it's at a slightly more favorable or less favorable distance than the previous one because of the *absolute* positions of the planets in their elongated orbits.
This variation in the closeness of the closest approach follows a fifteen year cycle.
Note that a mission to Mars is still physically possible even if you launch in a year where the closest approach isn't very close (e.g. 2041). It just means that your mission takes longer, costs more, and requires vastly more energy. Since Mars is at the extreme of what we can probably do, your chances of success are much greater if you choose the closest possible approach for your mission.
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