NASA: We're Not Racing SpaceX To Mars (seeker.com)

astroengine writes: According to NASA's new science chief Thomas Zurbuchen, the U.S. space agency doesn't see SpaceX as a competitor in a race to Mars and that if any private company gets there before NASA, it will be cause for celebration and a huge science boon. "If Elon Musk brought the samples in the door right now I'd throw him a party out of my own money," Zurbuchen told reporters on Monday. He also said that polarizing topics, including science issues, need to be tackled with empathy for and patience with people who have opposing viewpoints. "Just because somebody doesn't agree with us the first time we open our mouths doesn't mean that they're stupid, or we're smart, or the other way around. I think it's really important to create, bring some empathy to the table," he told Seeker. "There's a lot of stuff that can be learned by just talking to people." The report adds: "Before joining NASA, Zurbuchen was a professor of space science and aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His areas of expertise include solar and heliospheric physics, experimental space research, innovation and entrepreneurship, NASA said in a statement."

Comments

Good attitude

[Camembert]

I like his humble, collaborative attitude, befitting a true scientist. I expect that, in practice getting there in a repeatable way will be the result of various international cooperations where different organisations will bring their own skills. Empahy and dialogue can only accelerate the process.

Re: Good attitude

[WarJolt]

Ever hear the story the tortoise and the hare? In this version the hare blows up. It's really not that hard to be humble.

Re: Good attitude

[rtb61]

Priorities also count. So race to Mars or race to build a city on the Moon. You might find that the city on the moon is far more capable of supporting Mars exploration, than trying to do it from earth (less gravity and no atmosphere). So should NASA focus on the bleeding edge always or should they also start to focus more on building the infrastructure to give others the opportunities to make the most of that space infrastructure that NASA builds, say a landing and launch facility on the moon, Mars ship assembly, fuel generation etc.

Look at it this way, people say we can't afford, too much debt but you build space infrastructure and you add new assets to offset debts, like the entire surface of the moon or the entire planet Mars and of course a whole bunch of major asteroids and shit we ain't even out of the solar system yet, they can dump debt on all the new planets we find, those colonists will be born in hock up to their eyeballs but they will be out there exploring the galaxy.

Settling space means creating trillions in new assets and the value of those assets would be bound to the cost of getting there, that exclusivity value and only the best going means the best have something to aim for. Are you good enough to set foot on another world or not?

Re: Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

"Are you good enough to set foot on another world or not?"

That depends:- Is Cohaagen going to charge me for air or not?

Re: Good attitude

[Rei]

The hare should have been more realistic about the tech readiness level of submerging his carbon-fiber COPVs in sub-cooled liquid oxygen.

Re: Good attitude

[khallow]

You might find that the city on the moon is far more capable of supporting Mars exploration, than trying to do it from earth

The city on the Moon has to exist first. And IMHO it's not much harder to start doing stuff on Mars than to start doing stuff on the Moon. By the time, you have a city on the Moon, you'll have the means to similarly settle Mars.

A lunar colony does have two big things in its favor, it's only a few days shipping distance from Earth. And economically, it's that and a few seconds delay from Earth. There's a more economically, one can do on the Moon that's not going to be similarly feasible on Mars.

Re: Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's really not that hard to be humble.

Tell *that* to Keith Alexander.

Re:Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

I like his humble, collaborative attitude, befitting a true scientist.
I expect that, in practice getting there in a repeatable way will be the result of various international cooperations where different organisations will bring their own skills. Empahy and dialogue can only accelerate the process.

Looking across the last few thousand years of evidence, I'd say one of the last concepts we humans have allowed or embraced in this bloody capitalistic world is empathy and dialogue. We're far too busy killing each other over which religious belief should dominate the planet, and blood diamonds on Mars are no different than blood diamonds on Earth.

It's a cute picture though. Just not realistic.

Re: Good attitude

[drinkypoo]

You might find that the city on the moon is far more capable of supporting Mars exploration, than trying to do it from earth (less gravity and no atmosphere).

It is my understanding that there is not an astounding energy difference between a moon landing and a mars landing. The big difference is time. As such, the moon is unlikely to be useful here. It might be useful for learning more about habitations and dust (fines.) The moon has sharper dust, and on Mars it goes sideways much of the year, so the challenges are different but still related. It might be a useful place to practice growing plants in low-G with low light (which can be controlled down to Mars standard.) But it's not going to help us get to Mars unless we figure out how to make both the heavy parts of the craft and the fuel on the moon.

Re: Good attitude

[Rei]

The short distance matters a lot in terms of:

1) The amount of shielding and supplies needed in-transit
2) Ability of Earth to assist, via low-delay communications, and via emergency shipments (requires a lunar-landing-capable rocket be left available for launch with little advance notice).

The moon also has lower delta-V requirements for return (arrival is surprisingly similar, though, thanks to aerobraking at Mars, and can even be less with direct aerocapture)

The moon's surface, however, leaves a great deal to be desired as a habitation location versus Mars.

Re: Good attitude

[NotAPK]

"The moon's surface, however, leaves a great deal to be desired as a habitation location versus Mars."

Rei, I like your posts and you are well read/educated in rocketry and planetary science. But what are you basing this on? The 6 mbar CO2 atmosphere on Mars may as well be hard vacuum. Exposure to cosmic rays will be similar in either location. And it's a tough call between the abrasive dust on the moon and the perchlorate-laced soil on Mars. Neither is going to grow you some potatoes. No actual hard evidence for water has been discovered in either place, and until a robotic rover actually picks up a chunk of ice and melts it into water, no one in their right mind is going to travel there on the assumption that they can find water and use it in some way. OK, I'll concede, the gravity on Mars will feel more normal for the astronauts.

The moon is closer, which makes it much easier to get to.

Re: Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Its the moon's 15 days of constant sunlight, at obscenely high temps, followed by 15 days of darkness, at obscenely low temps.

There is a reason there is a Mars rover working years and years past expectation, and you have yet to see a moon rover working even a few months. Its nearly impossible to engineer for both moon climates, and solar won't work because of the long darkness.

I'm just giving you an FYI I've heard from a NASA engineer working on lunar rover designs a few years ago. I thought the same before she told me differently.

Re: Good attitude

[cjameshuff]

The need for huge energy storage systems or nuclear power from the very start is a significant problem for the moon. The game-breaker though is ISRU propellant production. Getting enough water on the moon to supply return craft will require large scale mining and regolith processing facilities...meaning any return propellant will have to be imported until the colony is well established. On Mars, it should involve little more than drilling into a glacier and lowering a heat source to sublime the ice, which makes it a lot easier to get your spacecraft back so you can use it on another trip. The relative ease of delivering mass to Mars and greater proportion of the delivered mass that can be productive colony hardware can do a lot to compensate for the greater distance and travel time.

Re: Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

"figure out how to make both the heavy parts of the craft and the fuel on the moon" The first step towards easier space exploration is creating an orbital station capable of providing maintenance, fueling, and possibly construction services for space craft. We need to eliminate the expense and danger of getting space assets out of Earths gravity well. We have proven we can create and live for extended periods of time in space stations. We have collected physiology data on how the human body reacts to extended periods of low gravity and elevated levels of radiation exposure. We have extensive experience of actually constructing and maintaining space stations. These efforts have also been a collaboration of international space agencies. A manned trip to Mars right now is a vanity project. The US manned mission to the Moon would most likely never have happened if it wasn't for the Cold War between the US and the USSR. It was a bold and very risky undertaking that did result in technology advances but other than planting a flag on the Moon there was really nothing else we could do at the time and even now the only reason to go back to the moon would be building some sort of base but we are still missing some key pieces of life support technology.

Re:Good attitude

[currently_awake]

SpaceX has a budget to go to Mars, NASA does not. So they are NOT competing to get to Mars.

Re: Good attitude

[currently_awake]

The reasons to go to the moon are currently limited to: Astronomy, power generation (direct or satellite), chip fabs (low gravity increases yields).

Re: Good attitude

[cjameshuff]

It's enough atmosphere to be a substantial assist in landing mass on the surface, and actually does provide significant radiation protection while also moderating temperatures. The perchlorate issue is massively overstated: they are not that toxic, and are easy to remove, and there's entire glaciers of water on Mars.

Re: Good attitude

[Rei]

Indeed. And that's just one reason. Here's a few more.

  * We don't know at what gravity levels negative health consequences will occur and at what rate. But the moon's significantly lower gravity will certainly compare poorly to Mars in this regard, regardless of how Mars fares.

  * Mars's atmosphere may be thin, but when it comes to radiation, it's a big help. Radiation levels on the surface of Mars are fairly similar to those aboard the ISS, and much lower than on the moon.

  * For long-term sustainability, Mars has a much more diverse surface mineral distribution. The moon's surface is certainly not uniform, but it's been altered by notably fewer and less diverse processes than Mars. It's also relatively depleted in volatiles (aka, elements that tend to be important for life) and low in heavy metals and dense minerals (often important to industry).

  * Attempts to work around the problems tend to butt up against each other. For example, "peaks of eternal light" (questionable how "eternal" they are - SELENE suggests no more than 89%) where you can get more steady temperatures and light levels, are tiny and scarce, while areas with a significant hydrogen signature (water or hydrogen-bearing minerals) are very unevenly spread (aka, not particularly likely to be associated with a particular peak's permanently-shadowed adjacent crater floors), and even if so would require long transports to and from the peak. The only real hope for that appears to be Peary Crater, which has "eternal light" peaks on its northern rim, and some indication of hydrogen enhancement, mainly in craterlets in its southeast. But it's 79km across.

  * Having hydrogen alone isn't enough - you also need nitrogen, carbon, and other compounds that the moon is extremely depleted in. If they can't be found on the surface, another prospect might be drilling for trapped volcanic gases. But that's speculative, and the technological challenges in doing so render it anything but near-term.

Re:Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

I like his humble, collaborative attitude, befitting a true scientist.
I expect that, in practice getting there in a repeatable way will be the result of various international cooperations where different organisations will bring their own skills. Empahy and dialogue can only accelerate the process.

If by "international" you mean "the US and Russia" then sure - if you mean "China or the ESA might be involved" you might as well just give up on the whole collaboration thing right now, least we all die in Hellfire induced from a failed attempt to build a planet-sized harpoon designed to reach Mars which misses then spontaneously explodes.

Re: Good attitude

[jellomizer]

Well there is a key different in culture between government and private industry.
Government: When you make a mistake and failed. You get punished. Successes are treated as minor rewards quickly forgotten.
Private Industry: When you make a mistake you get a minor punishment and it is quickly forgotten. While Successes are touted and reasons for promotion.

There is a good an bad for both methods. Government needs to error on the side of caution this means things will move slower... However there will be less collateral damage.
Private Industry you can get things out much faster. However mistakes on the way can have a large cumulative cost to them.
 

Re:Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX has a budget to go to Mars, NASA does not. So they are NOT competing to get to Mars.

They do?

I thought SpaceX largely existed because of their NASA contract.

Re:Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair I believe Congress has thrown some money at them to at least get the basic equipment necessary to get to Mars designed. And if they were turned loose and properly ran they would have more than enough money to get to Mars. The problem is that most every NASA endeavor is a web of political/pork strings and the management has a history of poor management (though at the moment they seem to be doing halfway decent). Maybe the whole cost plus/defense contractor system made sense a few decades ago, but its become quite obvious that space can be done for much cheaper and with more innovation if you open it up to fixed price contracts and don't micromanage your contractors. When you want to ship some large cargo somewhere you don't create your own shipping company, build your own vehicles, hire your own employees, & set up your own routing software. You put out a RFP with what you want to ship and where you want it shipped and you let companies bid for it.

Re: Good attitude

[WindBourne]

Really ?what resources has he stolen?

Re: Good attitude

[K. S. Kyosuke]

For any Mars-related endeavors, It seems much more meaningful to simply provide cislunar space with lunar oxygen than to build a city on the surface (what would its citizens be doing?). Even for methalox propulsion, this reduces fuel lifts from Earth by 77%.

Re:Good attitude

[K. S. Kyosuke]

For example, they're already investing money and R&D effort into Mars-suitable propulsion; NASA isn't.

Re:Good attitude

[Applehu Akbar]

The press, dominated as it is by a liberal arts culture that doesn't really get science, is trying to understand the whole Mars exploration effort as being analogous with the Cold War race for the Moon. Zurbuchen is just pointing out that that's not how this is going to work.

Re:Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, nasa couldn't race a snail to a corner store. They're a relic of a more progressive age when things actually got done.

Re: Good attitude

[Rei]

Indeed - if you can't get volatiles like hydrogen (water does appear to be available in some locations, but there are limits, and we really don't know how accessible it is), your options for propellant become extremely limited. Without H, He, C or N, your best propellant option would be something like extremely fine aluminum dust burned with oxygen in an extremely oxygen rich environment (would probably need a ceramic engine). It'd have to be oxygen rich because Al2O3 condenses out of the exhaust stream at very high temperatures and can thus no longer be put to work via expansion; it needs to transfer its heat to a working fluid, and you don't have a lot of options apart from oxygen. Another potential working gas would be metallic sodium (from sodium/aluminum powder fuel burned with O2, very fuel rich). The obvious downside is that your "gas" would condense out at 1156K, so you wouldn't be able to expand it as much as you'd like. But at least you'd get a good chunk of the energy, including the heat of condensation of the Al2O3 - and it's a lighter gas than O2, so that's an advantage.

In both cases you face a challenge of how to burn the fuel and oxidizer, since you don't have a binder for a traditional hybrid, nor a liquid to gel powders into. And you wouldn't want to have to keep aluminum in a molten state; that's totally impractical. Your best option is probably taking a cue from ALICE (aluminum-ice): they have the aluminum powder embedded in an ice matrix, burned as a solid rocket. In the case of LOX as the oxidizer (aka, you don't have ice), you could use solid oxygen as the binder. So, 54K or less. As a last option, I suppose you could try fluidizing the powder and spraying it into a combustion chamber along with turbopumped LOX... but I've never even heard of an attempt to make a rocket like that.

Lots of options open up when you have carbon and/or nitrogen even without a source of hydrogen (for example, on Mars without ice mining or Venus without acid harvesting), such as burning carbon monoxide or cyanogen. But without volatiles... rocketry is tricky.

Re: Good attitude

[khallow]

The 6 mbar CO2 atmosphere on Mars may as well be hard vacuum. Exposure to cosmic rays will be similar in either location.

Not really. The Martian atmosphere does provide significant protection. Mars also has a full spectrum of elements needed for plants and animals. The Moon is notably deficient in hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen.

Re: Good attitude

[khallow]

In both cases you face a challenge of how to burn the fuel and oxidizer, since you don't have a binder for a traditional hybrid, nor a liquid to gel powders into.

Sulfur would work as a binder, assuming you need one.

Re:Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

"I thought SpaceX largely existed because of their NASA contract."

Then you might want to take a closer look at their launch manifest, a vast majority of their launches are private (Intelsat, EchoStar, Iridium, Etc). I'm sure they get a larger margin of profit from their government contracts, but the entire intent of their program appears to be to expand the private launch market.

Re: Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Get with the times - Cohaagen now sells super sex-bots to replace the girlfriend you left behind on Earth, or never had...

Re: Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree about building a moon city first, we have found water on Mars. There are frozen lakes we have found that can be melted to provide water for an encampment/base on mars.

For example see this picture
http://www.space.com/images/i/000/001/133/original/050729_mars_ice_02.jpg

And story
http://www.space.com/1371-ice-lake-mars.html

There are others if I recall correctly so the water is not a huge deal if we land near enough to one of them.

Re: Good attitude

[khallow]

The need for huge energy storage systems or nuclear power from the very start is a significant problem for the moon.

Also, there is geothermal power. That gives you the huge energy storage system and it works even better during night. As to the thermal transport fluid, oxygen is readily available anywhere on the Moon. Argon and CFCs may be available as well.

Re: Good attitude

[Rei]

Sulfur is rare in most lunar regolith, although it's fairly common in high-titanium lavas. Question as to whether the landing site would happen to have such a source near it yet still be able to meet other mission parameters - but it is a possibility. I've actually seen the possibility of sulfur-based lunar concrete discussed (although there's significant concerns about its durability under thermal cycling).

Sulfur can be used as a rocket binder for a hybrid rocket (aka, what you'd have to do, since no non-cryogenic volatile-free solid oxidizer is available). Mind you, sulfur isn't not exactly ideal due to its ignition sensitivity and strong pressure dependence of burn rate. I've never seen a hybrid use it, but sulfur-zinc used to be fairly common in hobby rocketry for solids. You had to compact it just right; if not tight enough, it'd burn too weakly, while if overcompacted it would explode. But of course, we're not talking hobby rocketry here...

Re: Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

The amounts of carbon and nitrogen that would be needed for a small colony/city are not a show stopper. The volume of carbon required ought to really be quite small and as far as nitrogen, if we supply solid ammonia, we ought to provide all of the nitrogen we need for respiration/farming and have nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria do the conversion from ammonia to nitrite (and free hydrogen) and then to nitrate to free nitrogen gas. The ammonia is really a two for one deal since we would be generating the extra hydrogen we could recombine with o2 if needed to form more water.

While I don't have hard numbers in front of me however from my limited experiences building closed ecosystems here on earth, if we provide 1.5x the estimated food needed for a years survival and force our people to eat slightly more calories than they need, then we can use our bodies to process and break down the wastes to grow other foods kickstarting the local farming, enough to last us for a few years. That initial food supply should provide us with almost all of the trace minerals and elements that we would need save the carbon and nitrogen.

It seems to me, building a bass ought to be done in a partially shaded cave with or close to ice with a nuclear reactor, like the one that used to power McMurdo Station, a PM-3A NNPU. With that you are going to generate all of the heat/energy you will need without having to worry about weeks of total darkness.

We would need to start with a small construction structure that can be used to melt ice. This water would then be separated in to two parts, a certain amount to be broken down to maintain a o2 atmosphere of the factory and the rest of the water to be mixed with the regolith to form lunar cement and concrete.

These blocks of concrete would then be used to build the structure for the mood base.

Once this structure is complete, we use the existing concrete/o2/water factory to make several large pools inside of the of the city structure, for the purposes of farming and o2 generation. By lifting the ammonia at the same time and using it to seed large tracts of regolith, we can generate all of the nitrogen we need for the atmosphere and farming.

At this point we could start construction of the habitation units, internal 'city' infrastructure, hydroponics and whatever other science stuff we wanted. We would still be depending on supplied lifted from earth, namely the several year food supply and a large amount of solid carbon to be used to mix with the regolith to form the basis of the soil.

I am assuming the danger to plants from the sharpness of the regolith will not be that bad, as since plants hardly move except with slow growth and light tracking, and the abrasive properties of the planting media/lunar potting soil will not be nearly as high as free regolith that gets in to a space suit and other devices because of the other elements and compounds we have seeded the soil with from our water + ammonia + carbon + poop enrichment.

I believe with such a plan it could be built in as little as five years with equipment lofted not much larger than a nuclear submarine to start. It might even be possible to fully automate the initial stages of construction and only send people if there is a problem until the robots and nasa controllers on the ground have built the dome/roof over the cave and have started enough of the atmosphere generation to support a small construction crew.

A similar plan could be used on Mars but I don't know what is required to separate the percolates from the soil. I assume their may be some enzyme or bacteria like nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter do for the hydrogen/nitrogen of the ammonia.

I don't expect to live to see it, but we could do it. We could have done it twenty years ago but never did and that is what is really sad.

Re: Good attitude

[k6mfw]

The city on the Moon has to exist first.

Yes, and books by Paul Spudis and Dennis Wingo go into great detail. However, when you talk of the Moon then you gotta come up with some money (lots of it) now for hardware. That's why everyone loves to talk about Mars because real money for real hardware (transfer stage, habitat, lander) can be deferred 20 years into the future for some other smucks to deal with that. Yes, Musk has plans to send something big in less time than 20 years but much of that is demonstration. Maybe he has grand plans but it seems much is missing from public view.

Re: Good attitude

[cjameshuff]

You could use a silicone binder. Primarily silicon and oxygen, neither of which is exactly scarce. Major downsides include being yet another fuel with solid combustion products (and a pretty terrible fuel apart from that), and requiring a rather complex chemical industry to produce.

And all of these options have the really major downsides of very poor performance, the complexities of producing large solid fuel cores, and inability to refuel the craft landing on the moon. If you want to reuse the same craft for multiple trips, your task is much, much easier on Mars.

Re: Good attitude

[cjameshuff]

Astronomy is better done away from the gravity, dust, and temperature extremes and without the obstruction of half the sky by a giant ball of rock. Power generation is better done in open space where you can have constant direct sunlight. And semiconductor fabrication can be done at whatever effective gravity you desire in orbit.

The biggest reason to go to the moon is to study the moon. When space infrastructure and technologies are more advanced, it'll be a useful source of raw materials in Earth orbit. But at the current early stages of actually developing that infrastructure and technologies, it's an expensive distraction.

Re: Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? What resources has he stolen?

The parent is just one of those people* who equate "paid for with tax dollars" to "paid for by money stolen from me when I was held up by an armed SWAT team".

*Or more likely just a troll. At least, I hope so; the idea that anyone could really be so simultaneously self-centred and dumb is just too terrifying.

Re:Good attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy to sound like that when you can steal resources from people at the point of a gun.

You're a member of some new world indigenous community, I assume? I'm guessing Native American?

Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they would say that. Whether Nasa gets there first or SpaceX it doesn't matter to them. SpaceX is American. The only thing the American people care about is getting there before China, India and Russia does. You don't think that America's renewed interest in getting to Mars wasn't spurred by China's announcement back them to explore Mars?

Re:Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

Key dates:

Nasa lander on Mars: 2018
SpaceX lander on Mars: 2018
Indian orbiter to Mars: 2020
UAE orbiter to Mars: 2020
Chinese orbiter, lander and rover on Mars: 2020

SpaceX crew on Mars: 2024
Chinese crew on Mars: 2040
Russian crew on Mars: 2040

Re:Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA had mars lander in 1976.

Re:Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX crew on Mars: 2024

You don't actually believe that nonsense do you? There's no way in hell SpaceX will land any person on Mars by 2024. It's a pipe dream. Or, if you're feeling generous and optimistic, it's "an aspirational goal".

Either way, there will be no human beings on Mars in 2024.

Re: Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

China is surpassing America pretty much everywhere. Surprised you Americans still think you have a chance.

Re:Of course they would say that

[HuguesT]

That does sound like a stretch goal.

Re: Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised you think China will somehow avoid the same logistic curve in their society. They've ramped up faster than the USA did simply because the hard work was already done and China just needed to copy and had plenty of land and people to do so.
They will overshoot and bottom out much harder as well.

Re:Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

*no live human beings

FTFY.

Re: Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the way your first paragraph has ended with a truth and then your second is a racist non sequitur.

Chinese brains are just the same as white brains. They're where you are now. There's no reason why they can't just march ahead of you too, while you are busy jacking off over Trump and military domination.

Re:Of course they would say that

[Oswald McWeany]

I'd be happy if India got there first. With China or Russia, their intentions may worry me, but I'll be happy for the fact we, as a species has got there.

Re: Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

Leon Miss, is that you?

Re:Of course they would say that

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whether Nasa gets there first or SpaceX it doesn't matter to them."

I wouldn't be quite so sure of that. The government, NASA & the defense industry have claimed for years that "space is hard" and access to it necessitated extreme expenditures over decades. It would be one heck of a bloody nose if a private company did it for them at 1/20th the cost they've been stating (several hundred billion dollars). Heck I believe it was pretty much illegal to even attempt an orbital launch without a government sponsor here in the US until a decade or so ago. While SpaceX still has quite a bit to prove (reusability, reliability, etc) they have proven one thing, that space access is no longer something that requires the resources of the government. They designed and built a (potentially) reusable launch system on less money than NASA spent sending two ATV sized rovers to Mars.

Puts on "Insanity Wolf" head

[DivineKnight]

Do It Anyways

Re:Puts on "Insanity Wolf" head

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck the false light(s)

Humility and Empathy

[_archangel]

"Just because somebody doesn't agree with us the first time we open our mouths doesn't mean that they're stupid, or we're smart, or the other way around. I think it's really important to create, bring some empathy to the table," I wish this was the de facto attitude people took when communicating about all aspects of life, not just science.

Re:Humility and Empathy

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice if that were true. But most people really are idiots.
Praise Jesus, Allahu Akbar !

Re:Humility and Empathy

[CustomSolvers2]

What you describe is a quite standard behaviour among reasonable people and, presumably, scientists are reasonable. But one thing is being tolerant and understanding with a poorly-communicated sensible idea (or even with a not-that-sensible idea built over deep knowledge or perhaps just good faith or hard work); and a completely different story is being tolerant with a complete nonsense generated from a poor understanding (and, even worse, egoism and shortsightness).

NASA is very grateful for what SpaceX and people like Elon Musk can bring: fresh air and popular support to a field which is starting to find difficulties to justify their huge budgets. The recent Elon's claims have put them in a very delicate situation; they are a scientific and objective-correctness-driven organisation which cannot agree with impossible fantasies, but they also want all the associated support.

I have personally been very tolerant and understanding with people who throw a pure nonsense, want to be heard and, when all the results are wrong, don't want to take responsibility (or blame anything else). BTW, these people tend to misunderstand the word "empathy" as "I can do/say anything. Until proven wrong, I expect my opinion to be considered and to be part of all the important decisions. Once proven wrong, I expect my actions to be forgiven and forgotten because I didn’t know what I was doing or I was angry or I thought whatever, etc.", whose better definition would be "spoiled kid"; empathy means putting yourself in others’ shoes and, in that case, I would feel really ashamed, would expect to bear all the responsibility on my shoulders and would feel even bothered by anyone trying to unfairly reduce the impact of my actions. Note that these people tend to buy their way in and seem to be actually required, but this is only an illusion (precisely created by others like them). Engineering, science, objective-correctness should be exclusively managed by knowledgeable people; and big idea and money individuals should focus on what they are good at (enjoying their money and making more). If everyone focused on their specific field and, for anything outside it, relied on "I will let the experts there take care of everything, because I want to get a proper result", the world would be a much better place.

In summary, I don't think that NASA (or any other knowledge-prone organisation) should be tolerant or request some understanding for what doesn't make any sense. If NASA failed at anything, nobody (much less that kind of people; always asking for understanding, never delivering it) would be tolerant with them. If NASA started making shoes and they did a terrible job, everyone would merciless and rightfully attack them.

Re:Humility and Empathy

[Anonymous Coward]

What you describe is a quite standard behaviour among reasonable people and, presumably, scientists are reasonable

IME, yes and no, respectively.

Having the ability to reason and applying it to specific fields in controlled situations doesn't mean being reasonable in general.

Some of the worst people in the world were once fairly good at one thing.

Re:Humility and Empathy

[CustomSolvers2]

I stand corrected and do apologise for the generalisation (even positive generalisations aren't that good); for me, a properly-understanding-prone person, the aforementioned behaviour is quite logical.

By default, I do always try to adequately understand others by disregarding irrelevant side issues. But some bad past experiences have taught me that being over-understanding isn't the ideal proceeding when dealing with certain people, because they tend to misinterpret such a behaviour as a validation of their actions. On the other hand, being very clear about evident issues (e.g., I know that you are wrong and expect you to take responsibility for what you did) seems an excellent proceeding to avoid these problems.

Re:Humility and Empathy

[Anonymous Coward]

In the same news: government agency puts out press release suggesting people be civil when they don't get their way and the plebeians love the message.

Re:Humility and Empathy

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the empathy and humility the main mode of conversations here in Slashdot? We are so considering when it comes to the polar opposite opinions that it would warm a small city, on Mars.

Re:Humility and Empathy

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. You must be a Trump/Clinton* voter.

*reader to strike through least offensive option at own discretion.

of course it isnt' a race

[Anonymous Coward]

When NASA gets to Mars, SpaceX will happily welcome them in to see how the colony has been progressing and offer them some tea.
 

Re:of course it isnt' a race

[Anonymous Coward]

"When NASA gets to Mars, SpaceX will happily welcome them in to see how the colony has been progressing and offer them some tea." - Provided that the visitors pay their Air Tax.

Re:of course it isnt' a race

[KiloByte]

Because of the cold and dry, almost non-existent atmosphere, tea actually has a chance to stay unspoiled on the crash site.

Re:of course it isnt' a race

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to offer you some Haldol.

Re:of course it isnt' a race

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX is not going to Mars. Musk is using his pet project as an advertising medium to promote his obsolescence built-in battery tech and associated cars. The millions he spends on glorified toy rockets is a mere 5% of what the equivalent exposure would cost him had he have to pay for advertising coverage like other corporations. The man has brains, and is using the system for his own benefit. More power to him for doing the obvious.

Re:of course it isnt' a race

[Rei]

Ignoring the troll-baiting parts of your post: you have it backwards. SpaceX came first. While running SpaceX, Musk heard about the tzero electric sports car, which had really redefined what electric cars were capable of (from slow lumbering short-range things to sporty, much longer-range vehicles). He sought to get AC Propulsion (its inventor) to build him one, and was willing to pay a lot of money, but they had no interest - instead, they referred him to Martin Eberhard, who had already been working on the idea of commercializing the tzero, under the name Tesla. Eberhard needed money, so Musk invested in his company, gaining a majority stake. As time went on, it quickly became clear that Eberhard had grossly misstated the cost of building the vehicle, as well as getting the company embroiled in unfavorable arrangements with manufacturers that led to penalties, hiding information from the board, etc. Ultimately Musk had enough and booted him (creating a lot of upsets with Tesla fans, who were very loyal to Eberhard), thus taking a much more central role in the company himself.

Getting involved in an electric car company had not been his plan; he had wanted to dedicate his efforts to SpaceX. But he kind of just stumbled into it. You still see him regularly nearly-stumbling into new ventures but trying to resist, such as Hyperloop and electric airplanes ;) He's just that sort of person - "Oh, wouldn't it be AWESOME if I made X!!!"

Re:of course it isnt' a race

[MrLogic17]

That theory doesn't line up with the $4.2 billion in NASA contracts they have lined up. Plus tons (pardon the pun) of other launches lined up from non-NASA sources.

Nuts, a quick google shows that most financial experts say that SpaceX isn't just making money - they are likely making a whole lotta money. And will be likely raking in a 40% profit margin on future launches.

If Elon wants, Earth orbit launches could fund past Earth launches - until those start making a profit. Tell me that NASA wouldn't love to pay for payloads to Mars that get there faster & cheaper than in-house rockets.

Don't forget the hemp seeds!

[Anonymous Coward]

look what I can do!

Maybe so

[MrKaos]

However, is SpaceX is racing NASA to Mars?

Re:Maybe so

[MrLogic17]

This. When NASA gets to Mars, they will be going to visit SpaceX infrastructure to refuel.

SpaceX isn't going to Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Cold hard fact, Elon isn't putting anything on to Mars no matter how hard he and his exploding rockets try.

Re:SpaceX isn't going to Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

You wonder when people will start to tune out the blowhard Musk? That pad incident was an embarrassment. Imagine if NASA lost a shuttle during fueling?

Re:SpaceX isn't going to Mars

[MrLogic17]

You must be new to space news. NASA has blown up more rockets that SpaceX has ever built.

If you need a refresher:
https://www.google.com/webhp?q...

Physically

[Anonymous Coward]

Physically going to mars is just outright retarded, it's better to build a base on the moon first instead of sending people to their DOOM..

Re:Physically

[MrLogic17]

A lot of experts disagree with you.

In terms of Delta-V, Mars isn't that much further out than the moon. Most of the cost is getting into Earth orbit.

In terms of environment, moon dust is extremely hazardous, especially over the long term. Air-tight seals are going to be a serious problem on the moon. Mars, on the other hand, has some atmosphere, and dust there is nowhere near as abrasive.

If you want a good rabbit-hole, research how we got moon dust samples back from the Apollo missions. Many of the air-tight sample containers failed, due to the evil nature of moon dust. Look into how moon dust got deep under fingernails, and took weeks to grow back out. Moon dust is straight up evil-toxic-hazardous.

No, we're not racing...

[CanEHdian]

But if SpaceX gets humans (alive, that is) on Mars first, I'm sure at NASA you'll see the then-Director move his/her/it? gaze skyward and yell at the top of 'their' lungs: "MMMMUUUUUSSSSSKKKKKK!!!!!!!".

Re:No, we're not racing...

[painandgreed]

But if SpaceX gets humans (alive, that is) on Mars first, I'm sure at NASA you'll see the then-Director move his/her/it? gaze skyward and yell at the top of 'their' lungs: "MMMMUUUUUSSSSSKKKKKK!!!!!!!".

If SpaceX gets humans to Mars, they'll probably be NASA astronauts in a project that had funding help from NASA and uses lots of tech developed by NASA. That is, unless ULA/Blue Origin don't get their BE4 engine and accompanying rocket done and beat them using those same astronauts, funding and tech. However, I think ULA is more interested in commercial missions rather than grand stunts that might pay off. The way I bet this works out if it happens, is that SpaceX will land an unmanned mission on Mars that will confirm their ability to land and mine the atmosphere for rocket fuel, and use that to generate the interest and funding from government interests which will put NASA on the track of helping them get it done.

Good article in Nat Geo re SpaceX/NASA

[turp182]

The current issue of National Geographic has a good article which already explains that SpaceX and NASA are basically partners (SpaceX shares everything with NASA for instance).

It's paywalled, but here's the article (I read the tree based version):
http://www.nationalgeographic....

Anyway, nothing to see here, move along.

Either way we win

[110010001000]

Either way we win. I am sure we will have a Mars colony by 2027. And I will be one of the first, sipping wine looking out over the valleys of Mars.

connection between Mars and empathy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article does not explain it.

Maybe not wine

[Oswald McWeany]

Grapes won't grow on Mars, but if you substitute in a glass of recycled-water from urine, you'll be OK.

Re:Maybe not wine

[Rei]

"To Kaylee, and her inter-engine fermentation system!"

remember kids...

[Thud457]

first person that licks it, it's theirs.
It's the LAW

Yes, you are

[Bugler412]

Whether you acknowledge it or not, you ARE racing SpaceX and others. You might be cordial, collegial and supportive while doing it, but it's still a race and the first to achieve it will reap at least a large public relations reward, a place in history, and in business world a significant "first mover" advantage. Denying that the competition exists doesn't change the fact of whether a competition actually exists.

Re:Yes, you are

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether you acknowledge it or not, you ARE racing SpaceX and others. You might be cordial, collegial and supportive while doing it, but it's still a race and the first to achieve it will reap at least a large public relations reward, a place in history, and in business world a significant "first mover" advantage. Denying that the competition exists doesn't change the fact of whether a competition actually exists.

Don't be silly. SpaceX wouldn't exist without NASA and SpaceX doesn't have the resources to even contemplate colonizing Mars.

Re:Yes, you are

[Bugler412]

SpaceX not existing without NASA today means nothing, the can surpass them. And it doesn't have to be "colonization", first boots on the ground may be all that matters for what I describe.

Bummer

[Dishevel]

NASA did its best work when it was racing the competition.

No competition

[lapm]

Of course NASA is not competing.. NASA has too much politics and too many internal interest groups that wants their favorite technology included in trip to mars.... Only hope we have to go to mars is some private corporation to actually do it...

Re:No competition

[Anonymous Coward]

A space race requires a formidable opponent (both in space and on Earth), and one who could plausibly be hostile to the US. At this time only Russia and China fit the bill. India, Europe and Japan are long-term friends with the US so they can't be a trigger for a space race.

Great attitude. Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

I like his humble, collaborative attitude, befitting a true scientist. I expect that, in practice getting there in a repeatable way will be the result of various international cooperations where different organisations will bring their own skills. Empahy and dialogue can only accelerate the process.

I do to. It's refreshing to hear, and he's right.

Unfortunately the other side (on climate change in particular, but really these days, on just about any topic where a corporate interest has profits on the line) will NOT bring empathy to the table, and will instead engage in the kinds of misinformation and spin campaigns we've been seeing the last several months from the alt-right Trump campaign. Any empathy brought to the table must also include a mechanism for dealing with the very real prospect that the opposing viewpoint will bring absolutely NO empathy to the table, and instead will relentlessly push an agenda, facts be damned.

Good Scientist+Good Attitude != Good Bureaucrat

[rocket rancher]

I like his humble, collaborative attitude, befitting a true scientist. I expect that, in practice getting there in a repeatable way will be the result of various international cooperations where different organisations will bring their own skills. Empahy and dialogue can only accelerate the process.

He is no longer a scientist. He is a bureaucrat, now, so he is faced with problems where the scientific method and its associated toolbox are sub-optimal, as are his attitude of cooperation and collaboration. They are still useful, to be sure, but he will get more use out of a couple chapters of Machiavelli's The Prince than Newton's entire Principia.

The NASA director's primary challenge is to find compromises acceptable to groups of people who have divergent goals. Congress, DoD, private industry, various scientific orgs -- all of these have claims on, and thus have influence over, NASA's ability to function. Unfortunately for the director, their goals are not the same and are often opposed.

For example, the chair of the House sub-committee that controls NASA's budget, Representative Lamar Smith (R, Texas) denies the existence of AGW and has threatened to withhold funding from NASA if NASA continues to support projects that investigate it. Smith has already dismissed science-based reports on AGW as "biased" and has set up a committee funded by and staffed by the petroleum industry to "review" all AGW data before it is presented to Congress. In a bucket, if the man controlling your funding denies the very existence of what you are trying to investigate, then no amount of cooperation and collaboration on your part is going to produce anything but incredulity and anger on his part, so your funding will evaporate.

This is just one sample of some of the problems NASA's director faces. There are others, similar in scope and nature, including the conflict among scientists and engineers over manned vs unmanned exploration, and the re-emerging conflict over extraplanetary colonization now that Elon Musk has decided to colonize Mars. None of these problems are unsolvable, but they may not be amenable to collaboration or compromise, or yield to the scientific method. They may require a different set of tools and a different mind set, ones more often to be found in career civil servants, IMHO, than in scientists or engineers. It will be interesting to see whom he appoints to various roles in his administration; I'd wager it will be people more familiar with Machiavelli than with Newton... :)

nuts vs nuts

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA going to Mars (using people) is proof that government is nuts when it comes to where it spends money.

Musk going to Mars (using people) is proof that government's policies about accumulating wealth are nuts, and also, that Musk is nuts.

Spend money on technology that is actually useful to people, not on romantic nonsense.

You can't fart at NASA...

[downright]

without some director whipping out a credit card and throwing a party...

Spacex = private Greed only

[Anonymous Coward]

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/space-x-greed-makes-stupid/