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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.
No one's going to Mars, coming back or not. There is simply no purpose to it. Apollo was the Mother Of All Demos, and it was a big stunt. We used that stunt to distribute wealth to private contractors to build gadgets for a symbolic purpose.
Nerds haven't gotten over the emotional impact of this pseudo-religious experience ever since.
We invented Facebook.
Maybe he should be running the country instead of padding his resume as some kind of scholar?
..which will be needed on Mars... but still just hot air. This is not Kennedy saying we will go to the moon. This is a president on his way out making a speech that will likely not be followed up on by any new administration.
Silence is a state of mime.
Now that it'll be someone else's problem, he can promise the moon. Or Mars, in this case.
Can't we launch slashdot editors into space starting now?
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
Every outgoing presimadent since the Reagan, blessings upon him, makes the same grandiose claims that we'll put a Man on Mars real soon now.
Just like Lucy tricking Charlie Brown into thinking she's not going to yank the football away this time.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
obama should lead the way. he can leave as soon as possible, maybe next week!
The Chinese Space Program is far more advanced than the US could ever hope to catch up on. NASA barely gets any money (it's great how they always pretend they actually have any) and have accomplished fuck all aside from being called out for cutting feeds at suspicious times.
No, China has us by the balls, sorry Obama.
Its really clear how CNN attacks the big O and H of America, that they are just crazy against these people. They slant every single story against our glorious current and future leader. This is just insane how biased and nonfactual this network has been, they need to bow down and pay real homage before someone drone strikes them!!! Think of the Children and don't they know this is a SAFE ZONE??
In the US the space program has become a plaything for oligarchs. NASA is just going to dole out the taxpayers money to contractors like SpaceX so they can smash more rockets into the desert/ocean.
Obama '08
HOPE!
Colonizing Venus with floating cities is a far more sexier venture.
http://www.universetoday.com/15570/colonizing-venus-with-floating-cities/
3-ish months before the end of his reign the guy that killed US heavy lift development is prattling on about Mars..... WTFever.
Space is for China now.
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?
What is it about presidents at the end of their second terms that they love to float space goals?
Bush, near the end of his 2nd term:
""Our third goal," Bush said, "is to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond." He proposed sending robotic probes to the lunar surface by 2008, with a human mission as early as 2015, "with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods of time." "
While I'd love it ever to be true, I can't imagine any post Obama congress will fund it at all.
-Styopa
Us colonising the moon first. The moon doesn't have much to recommend it for shipping to earth, but it's the ideal launch facility for the rest of the solar system. And that's about all its good for.
"...they've gone to space not just to visit, but to stay -- and in doing so, to make our lives better here on Earth."
Yep, I can definitely think of a few people that would make life better on Earth if they went to live on another planet.
Mars is a dull spot to colonize- wouldn't get much. The moon is really only useful for rocket launches and observatories. The best spots in the solar system to colonize are Mercury (heavy metals), the Jovian satellites (liquid water, loads of raw material) and the Saturnian moons (same story). These are also the ones being ignored.
... of people who should definitely be sent to Mars - especially if there is no chance of their ever coming back again.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
The United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday the country will send Americans to Mars
First I'm hearing of this country called Tuesday. They must be pretty advanced! The people of Monday, on the other hand, are presumably in a constant state of depression and tiredness.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Barack Obama is full of shit. That lame duck should shut up and play golf until he's booted out of the White House.
"We choose to go to the moon.. in the few decades or thereabouts."
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
The United States President Barack Obama said Tuesday the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth."
And once they return, they will be eminently suitable to hold public office. Like a fostering program for future presidents, senators, congresspeople and so on and so forth, if you like.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Even thousands of years ago history shows a love affair with space. Many even talking about Gods being from space, even televisions shows entertaining the ideal of ancient aliens visiting and directing human evolution. The ideal that our home or more exact our roots come from space could explain this need to return. The ideal that space is this come full circle back to where we began is certainly a reasonable theory. But we still have a long ways to go to populate another planet. Especially one that your cannot even say can sustain human life in any significant way with out a lot of work. Personally, I think developing a exploratory space craft would be a more plausible way to explore space than living on Mars. At least a space craft could be more controlled and developed for sustained human survival rather than the harsh environment of Mars. Not saying let's build a Enterprise ship, but obviously something that can sustain multiple human life for years.
Is there nothing this man will not touch to secure his own tenable legacy? Please. I'm really starting to believe this life we think we have is just a simulation. Nothing makes sense anymore.
I'm not too thrilled about them myself spend some quality time watching the stars and you'll realize they have several added benefits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There seems to be a tradition of U.S. presidents making bold claims about sending people to Mars on a time scale well after their political careers are over. Welcome to the club President Obama.
lead developers their parting in jEocks or chaps I thought it was my you can. When the
We haven't seen a meaningful increase in the NASA budget in how long? It certainly isn't going to happen any time soon, either. Even after Drumpf takes a beating next month in the general election we still won't see congress pass a budget for expansion of space exploration.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Mars in 2030s? Dream on! We'll have defaulted by then. NASA won't have funds to even stare at Mars.
We should establish a permanent presense on the Moon first. Maybe even build industrial infrastructure there, use it as a staging area for a future manned Mars mission. Honestly, how much easier would it be to launch from the Moon? Also, if we can't work out the kinks of living on the Moon, then how can we reasonably expect to live on Mars for extended periods of time? The Moon is the perfect Proving Grounds for this sort of endeavor, and it's literally right in our backyard. Seems like a no-brainer to me to take advantage of it. Also, in future decades, why couldn't any number of industries or research facilities build their facilities and do their work there? There's no environment to pollute, no ecosystem to destroy, you could do any number of things that are expensive or even prohibited on Earth without harming anything.
Just words folks, just words..
- Trump
No one's going to Mars, coming back or not.
Really? You can tell the future? If you want to say you think no one is going to Mars in the time frame specified I probably would agree with you. I think pulling it off by the 2030s without a crash government program seems improbable given the technological, economic, and political realities of the day. If you are claiming no one will go to Mars ever I think that stands a very high probability of being a false statement.
There is simply no purpose to it.
Entirely false. There absolutely is a purpose to it. More than one in fact. You may not like or appreciate the reasons for trying to get to Mars but they are real and meaningful. Here's just a few of them. Scientific exploration, technology development, national pride, joy of exploration, curiosity, preserving our species, financial gain, biotechnology, and the list goes on and on and on. It's an expensive and difficult task and it will probably take decades if not centuries to actually pull off but to claim there is no purpose or value to it is just idiotic.
Apollo was the Mother Of All Demos, and it was a big stunt.
Yes it was. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing or that something like it won't be worth doing ever again. Furthermore the cost of getting to space has fallen substantially since then and we are a lot better at it now. Every indicator points towards cost to orbit continuing to fall. Once it gets cheap enough to get to space I would argue that a manned mission to Mars will become almost an inevitability. First for exploration and then for other purposes.
Less than 3 months left of this war monger and then... we get another one-- Hill Dawg! I wonder if the Eurotrash will put a Nobel Peace Prize on her, as well.
Colonizing Venus with floating cities is a far more sexier venture.
How exactly do you propose to float something the size of a city on Venus. Furthermore how do you propose to get it there and how do you propose to build it? Bear in mind that you don't get to invoke magical levels of sci-fi technology just because the idea is cool. Seriously - what is your credible plan to make such a fantastical thing happen within the next 1000 years?
Oh,come on now and be reasonable! People go to Philadelphia for many purposes, although most of those reasons are as a punishment. Many of the highways in the area also serve as examples of how not to build highways.
Lol! Get a load of this guy! He thinks there are more important things to spend US tax dollars on than giving it away to terrorists in Syria in an attempt to overthrow Assad for Saudi's interests! Hahaha!
Go watch a funny video of Oliver Stone and Jimmy Fallon and forget about space, kiddo. Uncle 'bamie and auntie Clinton got it all figured out for you.
Biden would be preferable to Obama, Trump, or Hillary.
Other than "it's there" and "Nobody else has gone" what's the point?
Lots of reasons. Scientific discover, technology development (particularly biotech and life support), financial gain (funding tech R&D has a huge and long term payback), preserving our species, spinoff technologies, learning how to explore away from Earth, national pride, colonizing, and quite a bit more. Certainly more than "because it's there".
However, I support the effort because it will advance technology and likely lead to gains in scientific knowledge should we actually get there (which I don't think is likely).
I think our likelihood of getting to Mars depends heavily on how low we can drive cost to orbit. If it gets cheap enough a manned mission to Mars will become almost inevitable because just getting off the Earth accounts for the lion's share of the cost and a pretty substantial percent of the risk as well. There are some significant engineering obstacles but there is no reason to believe these could not be overcome if the economics can be made to work.
Lame duck or not. If Obama were on the rocket to Mars, Trump would get the Martians to pay for it.
$7 to $8 dollars in goods and services produced, for every $1 of government money spent. Acceleration of computer, miniaturization of computer parts, which benefited mankind. Software development Freeze dried foods Countless others. Before you go on with your anti-capitalist socialist agenda, you might want to look this up. It will help you from looking like a FOOL.
Creating the environment for ISIL to exist with your dual policies of negligence and inappropriate intervention is your legacy.
Not Mars.
How did that go last time? A democrat -- JFK -- makes the brace decision and announces we will go to the Moon. A Democrat -- LBJ -- carries through with the heavy lifting and budget work despite stiff objections from congress. A Republican Nixon lights the rocket, takes the credit and promptly cancels the program.
Nope. Do not want.
And create more Democrat voters.
Bringing People Back makes the whole task more than twice as difficult. We should be aiming to make it a one way trip. At least a semi-permanent one-way trip. I'm not volunteering for such a trip but I'm sure plenty will.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
He's trying to grab credit for a bunch of things that didn't get done over the past eight years so he can fly around making speeches about them at a million dollars a pop.
If he listed only the good things that actually got accomplished by his administration it would be a very short speech.
Low delta to land and take off. Lots of easy to excavate resources. Hydrocarbons everywhere. Obvious
Who's pee pee the POTUS is pulling, or vice versa. Alliteration is fun, kids. I bet Obama isn't on the self-proclaimed death mission, either.
I'm sure we can find good enough astronauts who would be perfectly fine to not come back. That should reduce the cost of the project significantly. At least these guys can consciously decide that they're fine with the outcome, unlike Laika.
We used that stunt to distribute wealth to private contractors to build gadgets for a symbolic purpose.
These gadgets weren't symbolic at all.
And I'm not speaking about "space technology has trickled into society" (Microwave, Velcro, whatever...)
I am speaking about very practical stuff some politicians had in mind :
- To send people to the moon, you need to be able to lift into low earth orbit everything they need to reach the moon : the astronauts themselves, their capsule, enough fuel to accelerate the capsule for the trip, and then decelerate when arriving, lander, fuel for the lander, fuel for the return trip, supplies, air, etc...
The whole trans-lunar package weights roughly about a hundred tons.
That's why the NASA needed to build the Saturn V rocket (and the Soviet attempted to build the N1-L3): to have something able to lift ~100 tons into low earth orbit.
It would have NOT been possible with previous generation of launcher technology (or you would have needed a couple of launches that you assemble in orbit. The kind of approach currently considered for Mars).
- The Tsar-Bomba, the biggest nuke ever, in its theoretical full 100 Mt configuration (not the "puny" 50 Mt that the USSR used for tests, to avoid too much nuclear fallout), would probably have weighted in the 50-100 tons range.
Do the maths.
Creating the Saturn V for the NASA (and attempting to create the N1-L3 for USSR) was not only done for the purpose of sending people to the moon.
Sending people to the moon is a very obvious demo telling the world : "We can send people to the moon. We have the technology to lift ~100tons into orbit. So we can lift a translift vehicle that will bring these astronauts to the moon. (And so we can also lift to LEO 100-tons worth of nukes, enough to completely obliterate a whole enemy country)".
The whole space race was for show and awe to the masses, but was thinly veiled menace between the defence programs throwing money at it. (A way to tell "with this new bigger rocket I could also be hurling even more nuke to you"). For the defence sector, lunar launcher weren't gadgets, they were very practical vehicle in a pissing contest/nuclear deterrent race.
It also explains why back then no nation bothered anywhere more than probes on Mars. Nobody developed anything bigger than Saturn V, and that could only launch very small payloads to Mars before getting hit by the Tsiolkovski rocket equation (or before considering in-orbit assembly like the current trend).
Given the lack of military application of possible solutions (even bigger rockets with bigger payloads, or in-orbit assembly), that's one reason less to get funding.
I am not saying that the single reason behind anything that happened during the space programs was due to the defence sector.
I am simply saying that potential military application was among the arguments that has pushed some technology faster forward than others and has contributed to prioritizing some aspect of the space program.
(Of course: economics and other have also played very important roles in practice).
And thus to fall back to the subject:
- space program wasn't a prestige only useless gadget.
- space program wasn't only a cash-cow for private subcontractors.
- it was also a program with very practical application for the defence sector (which helped fuel cash into it)
(And that's a small part of the reasons why it is a little bit less easy nowadays to re-start space programs :
- Military aren't interested in more space-toys - Drone and autonomous weapons are the new hot topic, No army desperately needs a 300+ tons package in orbit.
- Telecoms are the one interested in the current program (cheaper per-launch platforms means possibility to assemble in-orbit an interplanetary vessels like current Mars proposals... but also means cheaper way to put satellites in orbit).
- But those tend to has a smaller expendable budget to throw at the space programme).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
America will not set foot on Mars.
This is a lawyer making promises far beyond his lifetime. His predecessor wanted to go back to the moon and he torpedoed it. America is already taking a back-seat in space, and that isn't going improve until efficiency in US government improves - which is not going to happen until we get another hot-war on American soil.
You are no longer the world leader in that arena - and you are making promises that cannot be delivered. That is how to fail.
Barry, welcome to the fraternity of idiot billionaires who will cure all disease in 2 years, get a man on the moon by 2017, and a woman in, er, 2069. Mars: the final boondoggle.
The entire solar system is in the hip pocket. Then you can pie in the sky about arid resorts on mars or balloon colonies floating on venus. Nuff said.
Once I built a rocket, I made it fly
Made it to Mars in good time
Once I built a rocket, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
with Russia that Hillary is set on starting?
We got the technology to launch a blimp on Venus.
No we most certainly do not have that technology today. Not on anything remotely resembling the scale you are talking about. We certainly have no experience doing large scale airborne construction starting solely with an airborne blimp. We haven't even tried this on Earth much less on another planet several light minutes away.
Large scale construction wouldn't be that far behind.
Really? How do you propose to get the materials there? How are you going to get them in place? How are you going to create enough buoyancy to actually float an honest to goodness city? How are you going to maintain the integrity of the flotation system? What is the flotation system going to consist of? Who is going to pay for the whole thing and what is the economic return?
Your link talks about a PRELIMINARY feasibility study at NASA that provides essentially zero specifics. It's basically a think tank mental exercise of a really far out there concept with no reasonable probability of implementation within the lifetime of anyone reading this.
"The scientists found that even six months after radiation exposure, the rodents still were suffering from brain inflammation and neural damage. Neurons sported fewer dendrites and spines, which meant their neural networks were less interconnected than in a healthy brain. On behavioral tasks, the rodents exposed to radiation performed poorly on tests of learning and memory. Their ability to suppress unpleasant and stressful associations also declined — an effect that could make someone prone to anxiety over a multiyear trip to the Red Planet and back." http://www.latimes.com/science...
... the country will send Americans to Mars by the 2030s and return them "safely to Earth."
I'd like to go, but only if I can stay on Mars. Actually, can I go now?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Not a bad idea. The Taiwanese, or the KMT, can reclaim China, and Tibet can be liberated. Oh, and why not send all Muslims to the moon, which is their sacred symbol? They'll have what they dream of - a heavenly body free of Infidels.
Terrorist 1: Why all this bombing? Why not hit the great satan where it hurts -- in the pocket book?
Terrorist 2: We though about that, but with Iraq, Social Security, Medicare, bank bailouts, quantitative easing and now Mars, their own government and federal reserve are simply beating us to it. We'd just be spitting in the ocean.
(Yes, I know poo-pooing a Mars mission here on slashdot will get me moded into oblivion, but really?!? Mars? Grow some crops in the desert first and then let's talk about space.)
Mercury lives close to the bottom of a very deep gravity well.
https://xkcd.com/681/
If you fall down that well, you gain an enormous amount of velocity that you have to dump if you want to orbit/land on the planet. Mercury has no atmosphere to aerobrake so you need fuel to stop.
The rail gun you'll need to send shipments back to earth would be pretty immense to lift any reasonable mass out of that gravity well.
Delusional comments made by a departing man with no real legacy other than the expanded erosion of personal freedom.
Okay, done. Next?
(what this has to do with is unclear, but there is plenty of research on that score as well)
The current president has NO plans for Mars. Obama has never offered an actual plan, never proposed a Mars program in any legislation (unlike JFK who put actual legislation on the desk for Apollo), never budgeted for a Mars program, has nobody designing a Mars lander or a Mars ascent vehicle, or a vehicle to transport people to or from Mars (SLS,Falcon,etc are just launch vehicles). He has never done anything to actually get us to Mars other than have the NASA web site have a section named with some variation on the slogan "journey to mars" (the actual text on the site has varied over the years). They have designed NO vehicles for Mars, NO spacesuits for Mars, NO life support for Mars, nothing. The odd bits of R&D like the electric rover and the suits they have occasionally hyped are a mix of leftovers of the cancelled Constellation program and usual background generic NASA R&D. The Obama admin has tried repeatedly to eliminate the SLS rocket, yet not proposed any government-funded alternative launch vehicle; they've never proposed funding Musk's colonial transporter, just happily smiled as their supporters presumed that such funding might flow someday.
The Democrats are masters of messaging to every little interest group, and this is a button they push to activate some of their geek supporters every election cycle. In 2008, Obama pushed this button with a speech to the SpaceCoast workers in Florida. It was total baloney, but it worked to energize a fraction of a percent of his supporters and wavering space geeks. Same thing, different election cycle. Obama is no JFK, and there is no Mars program.
Everybody on these missions will die.
There is no known way to protect spacefarers from galactic cosmic radiation.
The Apollo astronauts were in deep space for a little less than two weeks and look what happened: http://www.nature.com/articles...
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
It's naive to think this fantasy nonsense is about legacy. Its about stroking some of his major contributors. Youse guys are sooo naive. Obama is younger than me, so I'll not be around to say I told you so, on the day he's buried without a single person having yet stepped foot on Mars. In fact, at 55, he just might be around -but he certainly will be in no shape to lift his grandchildren (who will be adults) nor carry them on his shoulders. Look, there is nothing technical that prevents us from doing it. The cost would be literally astronomical - we'd have to shutter our military and most other discretionary spending, but it's technically possible, just not politically so. The most likely path to do it is either to create a world empire or set off enough (dirty) nukes so that Earth is no longer long-term viable (or both).
Mercury lacks water, which is the foremost thing you need, just for oxygen and propellants. Some of the Jovian and Saturnian moons are great, but they are so far away that getting there takes years, also solar power out there is sparse and radiation thick enough to kill you within hours. They are ignored for now with good reason.
http://www.space.com/18687-wat...
[...]
It's time to add Mercury to the list of worlds where you can go ice-skating. Confirming decades of suspicion, a NASA spacecraft has spotted vast deposits of water ice on the planet closest to the sun.
[...]
It would be nice if they'd just tell the truth about the Moon landing and admit openly that they never knew how to cross the Van Allen Belt. Of couse, we have come to expect consummate fraud from this government, so at least we should really expect this production to be top notch.
How many Africans will be working on this mission? (Since they lack the IQ to do anything useful...)
This happens every state of the union or other feel good speech and has nothing to do with actual goals or funding.
Elon Musk's new favorite song is going to be Sabatoge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5rRZdiu1UE
:T:R:A:N:S:
The real BS here is the 2030 target date, which gives almost certainty that other things will come up that need the money more and so any money already spent on a 2030 launch will be wasted, we have seen this over and over with government run projects.
Obama is already importing hundreds of thousands of Muslim refuges from Syria and other countries where they don't want to stay and correct the problems there but instead expect us to send in more American soldiers to clean up their mess. We already have hundreds of thousands of homeless American veterans, but Obama is more concerned about providing free homes for mid-east Muslims, many of whom have radical views against America or want to impose Sharia law on Americans, than he is for American veterans who have served this country.
The obvious solution here is to not wait until 2030 but to start sending these refugees to Mars right away. On Mars they can have their dream world with Sharia law. And if we are smart enough to not give them weapons that they can destroy us with from Mars (although I doubt that we are), this would silence all the alarmist wack jobs who think it is a bad idea to just open this countries boarders to our enemies. Some might say that Mars doesn't have the resources to support all these refugees, but I say "Allah will provide!"
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It won't matter, we'll all be dead before then. I'm hoping for a post apocalyptic scenario come 2017. I just don't know if I want a Fallout like world with Super Mutant Overlords, or a Mad Max like world with raging car battles.
would be like in the good old times, when criminals (and people considered inconvenient to have around for whatever other reason) were shipped from GB to Australia.
A giant leap to Mars will not happen without a giant leap in NASA's budget. As it stands now, NASA will never make it to Mars by themselves, although they may be able to do something in partnership with private industry or international partners.
"Mars, Bitches"!
We already have fairly capable robots on Mars. But 2030 they will be moderately intelligent, capable of working autonomously for periods of time.
Ask not whether there will be people on Mars in 2030. Instead, ask whether the robots will still want people to be on earth in 2200.
1. Republican president Eisenhower started NASA as a bi-partisan response to Sputnik with then-senator Lyndon Johnson (Democrat of Texas who became JFK's v.p. and then President). It was under Eisenhower that the Von Braun team began the Saturn launch vehicle program and let the first contracts for the F-1 engine development program. The activity was done under the auspices of the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency then located at the Redstone Arsenal and under several project names including Juno V. The Juno V became the Saturn as the project and the Von Braun team were transferred from the Army to the newly-formed civilian NASA. This is how Kennedy was able to come along only months after becoming president and announce the moon mission and was able to watch the first Saturn launch from Cape Canaveral during his first term (and, sadly, only) year in office. Saturn started under a REPUBLICAN and had bi-partisan support
2. LBJ started chopping money for Saturns in his 1966 budget and eventually cancelled the Saturn rocket production line, thereby ending Apollo. He could not afford his war in Vietnam, his "Great Society" social programs, AND the moon program. On the day that Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon 6 months into the Nixon administration, all Saturn production had already been halted (under LBJ's budgets the least of which was made law in October 1968 before Nixon was elected. At that point, the Apollo Applications program was already well-underway and looking for the best and most affordable uses for the limited number of Saturn launch vehicles which had been built and were in storage. They ended up not even using them all since Nixon got really gun-shy after Apollo 13 and did not want to be the president to be blamed for losing people in space.
3. Like it or not, Nixon green-lighted the shuttle program while John Young was hopping around on the moon - setting up decades of both Republicans and Democrats wrapping themselves in positive PR of the shuttles.
4. Republican Reagan preserved and extended the shuttle program post-Columbia by having NASA build a replacement orbiter rather than leading the nation in a long navel-gazing exercise and hiding under a rock. Democrats and Republicans post-Reagan then rode on the coat-tails of shuttle.
5. Obama has spent his entire 8 years trying to kill-off NASA manned spacecraft and NASA manned launch vehicles. Every NASA budget he has proposed has either eliminated or severely down-sized the funding for these and every time congress has overridden him. The bi-partisan congress (practically the only cross-the-aisle cooperation) has repeatedly fought him to force construction of SLS and Orion; if SLS and Orion ever help send man to Mars(and I'm not holding my breath on that) it will be IN SPITE OF Obama rather than because of it as he will someday pretend.
You could know all these FACTS if you bothered to look at them - NASA has the entire history of the Saturn rockets online etc.
Next time, try using facts before pushing a partisan political agenda. NASA and its projects have had supporters and opponents in BOTH parties. Obama simply has not been one of those supporters. He's great with a teleprompter and he has a snarky swagger that seems to engender fanboy worship of him, but that facts put him in Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter territory with regard to Space rather than in Eisenhower, Reagan, JFK, and LBJ territory.
Build a moon base first. We should've had at least one of these decades ago.
If we go to Mars it will be by private companies that aren't limited (yet) by bureaucratic inefficiency or an idiot at the helm. And note that he'll be long gone after doing NOTHING on his watch for 8 frickin' years. And this buffoon announces this? What a slimy PoS...
Humans should leave Mars alone
Casteism
America would never develop something like tsar-bomba
Yeah of course. They also would never develop technology to remotely kill anyone. Drones and other pilot-less flying devices will never have any military application.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Fine. Whatever. Let's militarize Mars. We can install a fuckin particle cannon on it. Now you have your reason to go.
Oh, and we could persuade the politician that there's also a lot of oil to annex... sorry... to bring democracy to on Mars !
That's also going to boost the space program.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
you miss the point. The Tsara is WAY TOO BIG. If you throw it and it fails, then you are in deep trouble.
Then go back in time, and explain to the military that they don't need a huge powerful launch platform, but multiple smaller one.
Then maybe by now, the most normal way to do exploration outside the LEO would be to assemble the translunar/martian/whatever vessel in space, instead of throwing it from earth...
More seriously : you missed the point of the whole nuclear deterrent / MAD (mutual assured destruction).
The point isn't strategic targeting using nuclear head and precise tactical strikes.
The point is, once you press the big red button, basically the whole planet is toasted. Because at that moment, every one is going to press their respective button in retaliation.
And therefore (went the logic behind MAD) nobody will dare to be the first to press their button.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If CNN says it, It must be true.