Slashdot Mirror
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.
And we'll have the best space program in the world.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Folks, the little data we have (compared to those who have all the data), it was becoming obvious. Only recently it was revealed that Mars' surface has a cocktail of substances that would "wipe out living organisms" (see this link https://www.theguardian.com/sc... ). The length of time, the sending of supplies, and trying to terraform, it's undertaking that would take an incredible amount of resources. And that is assuming the first manned mission even got there (which is question). I think many, many people questioned whether we would actually go to Mars in spite of all the hype. Funny enough the hype have information suggesting more and more that this is harder than anybody thought. So...we'd better start taking better care of our planet because it all likelihood, we aren't going anywhere. Perhaps like the North American expedition, someone will hock "The Queen's jewels", but save a few insanely rich tycoons sending a bunch of "serfs" on a possibly doomed test mission, this Mars dream, I suspect will postponed for a LONG time.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Considering NASA costs next to nothing (about 0.5% of the US govt's total budget), and the studies I've seen referenced show its return on investment to be about $10 for every $1 used (granted, it's a difficult figure to calculate, but even if assuming a huge error margin that's still great ROI), it's no wonder you chose to post that anonymously.
1. Tell Trump there's coal on Mars - jobs for coal miners!
2. Start a rumour that Mars has no vaccination regulations - kills 2 birds with one stone as all the antivaxxers pour their money into a modern version of the B Ark.
3. Flatly declare that it is impossible. Someone will come along to prove you wrong
4. Tell the MRAs about the martian slave women. Then tell the SJWs about the MRAs wanting the martian slave women. See who gets to Mars first.
5. Tell the Christian and Muslim Taliban about the martian slave women walking around "all bare neked".
6. Tell the GOP that Martian women have multiple pussies to grab.
7. Tell the states that have passed bathroom bills that there is no such thing as a Martian male, so there's no such thing as a martian transsexual wanting to pee in their women's toilets.
8. "Gotta build a wall on Mars to keep the illegal aliens at bay."
9. Get Alex Jones and Breitbart to say that NASA doesn't lobby for enough money because Mars is full of Republican martians and refusing to go to Mars is a democratic plot to suppress voters.
10. "Russia and China and even India are all going. There's going to be a "planet gap" between the US and those countries that makes the missile gap look like a blip in history."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The stupidity of the U.S. populace is astounding. It is self funded by tax dollars. The ROI is generated by all American businesses who use NASA's technology for free to create all kinds of things that enhance our economy which in turn creates taxes which then go back into the agency. NASA technological developments and spin offs are probably creating enough of a tax base to actually fund the whole military.
The failure in this case isn't science. There is no scientific question about getting to Mars with SLS and Orion. The failure here is engineering.
Cost is an integral part of engineering. Many, many unfeasible engineering projects are physically possible. The art of engineering is finding approaches to achieve goals given the resources available, counting time as a resource of course.
So what they've been doing, while technically impressive, is just bad engineering: spending resources on an approach which won't achieve the objective within the given constraints, based on the wishful thinking that people will suddenly want to spend lots more money on the project in the future.
Sometimes when you can't achieve an objective, the smart thing is to find an alternative objective that's worth doing in itself and also leaves you better positioned to work on the original objective.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But there was the Orion program. Sure, he talked a lot about it but he also tried to accomplish the rhetoric and directed NASA toward it. You can argue it was the wrong way for NASA or w/e but to say Bush didn't do anything to try and get NASA further along is wrong. Orion was cancelled by Obama.
It was all just smoke and mirrors. There may have been projects, but even if Orion was a realistic proejct, there was never been any realistic funding. It's pretty much always been like this since Apollo funding was axed, which is why TFA is here, NASA is finally admitting to things we all already knew. Nasa's budget barely does some research, sends a few probes every decade, and keeps the lights on. A Mars mission at best is projected to cost $200 billion and probably two or three times that. Unless Nasa starts getting an additional $20 billion a year, any talk of a Mars mission is just vapor and even then, it won't happen for another decade and we'll see it coming as that decade will be spent actually building stuff. Still, more realistically, we're looking at an additional $20 billion a year and three decades if the government ever wants Nasa to be serious about going to Mars.