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NASA Finally Admits It Doesn't Have the Funding To Land Humans on Mars (arstechnica.com)
For years, NASA has been chalking out and expanding its plans to go to Mars. The agency's Journey to Mars project aims to land humans on the red planet during the 2030s. For years, the agency has been reassuring us that it will be able to make do all those audacious projects within the budget it gets. Until now, that is. From a report: Now, finally, the agency appears to have bended toward reality. During a propulsion meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics on Wednesday, NASA's chief of human spaceflight acknowledged that the agency doesn't really have the funding it needs to reach Mars with the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft. These vehicles have cost too much to build, and too much to fly, and therefore NASA hasn't been able to begin designing vehicles to land on Mars or ascend from the surface. "I can't put a date on humans on Mars, and the reason really is the other piece is, at the budget levels we described, this roughly 2 percent increase, we don't have the surface systems available for Mars," said NASA's William H. Gerstenmaier, responding to a question about when NASA will send humans to the surface of Mars. "And that entry, descent and landing is a huge challenge for us for Mars." This seems like a fairly common sense statement, but it's something that NASA officials have largely glossed over -- at least in public -- during the agency's promotion of a Journey to Mars.
Another year of the orange moron making this planet a toxic wasteland, they will get all the funding they need when even the republicans realize that we need an exit strategy if impeachment fails...
(mod me whatever you like, but don't mod me funny - its really not...)
When you you watch a car race and a car pulls off to get the tires changed for the next leg of the race, you say the other divers on the road are better because the driver in the stopped car getting new tires isn't moving? At some point you have to reassess the tools and technology you are using. Yes, NASA could have been better at planning the retirement of the shuttle to not have a hiatus in manned flight missions but was continuing the space shuttle worth the money?
I mean, sure but you are using one unit of measure and saying that is the only thing that matters. Will NASA indefinitely not have that capability? Do you have other measures to determine a good space program?
This comment. On slashdot "news for nerds" everyone. I'd say "Fuck it, I'm out," but I'm more intrigued by the train wreck I'm witnessing. It's a nice distraction from the train wreck occurring at a national level being driven by the same types of douchebags.
Well, why do we want people on Mars?
1. Science - why not unmanned probes/rovers at 100x the current budget?
2. Colonization - Apollo proved man can live in a tin can in space, what's new?
3. Flag-planting - billions of dollars for chest-thumping, really?
I mean, look at the aftermath of the Apollo program. We put less than a dozen men on the moon, then we stopped for 45+ years and counting. The way NASA does Mars, if they managed to find the budget it'd probably be exactly the same. Bigger rocket, bigger rock, longer trip, been there done that, let's not do it again. I'm not sure if Musk is crazy or not. But I like the plans to actually bootstrap something on Mars, start a real outpost. NASA can't afford to even make dreams like that, because at their rates that would be a trillion dollar program. Which is why you end up with the SLS + an as-of-yet-unfunded chest thumping expedition. Which doesn't really contribute much of anything to anything, except people will feel Mars is checked off the bucket list.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
We don't even have a ship capable of putting a man in space anymore. So pretty much all of them.
We put a nuclear-power dune buggy on mars and it's still there driving around. We have another rover that's been active for 13+ years (planned operation was 90 days). Nobody has come close to that.
I want my tax dollars spent in a way that results in the most scientific and economic progress, not where it creates the most national pride.