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'Sending Astronauts To Mars Would be Stupid' (bbc.com)
One of the first men to orbit the Moon has told BBC Radio 5 Live that it's "stupid" to plan human missions to Mars. Bill Anders, lunar module pilot of Apollo 8, the first human spaceflight to leave Earth's orbit, said sending crews to Mars was "almost ridiculous". From a report: NASA is currently planning new human missions to the Moon. It wants to learn the skills and develop the technology to enable a future human landing on Mars. NASA was approached for a response to Anders' comments, but hasn't responded.
Anders, 85, said he's a "big supporter" of the "remarkable" unmanned programmes, "mainly because they're much cheaper". But he says the public support simply isn't there to fund vastly more expensive human missions. "What's the imperative? What's pushing us to go to Mars?" he said, adding "I don't think the public is that interested". Meanwhile, robotic probes are still exploring Mars. Last month, the InSight lander, which will sample the planet's interior, successfully touched down at Elysium Planitia. Further reading: Bill Nye: We Are Not Going To Live on Mars, Let Alone Turn It Into Earth.
Anders, 85, said he's a "big supporter" of the "remarkable" unmanned programmes, "mainly because they're much cheaper". But he says the public support simply isn't there to fund vastly more expensive human missions. "What's the imperative? What's pushing us to go to Mars?" he said, adding "I don't think the public is that interested". Meanwhile, robotic probes are still exploring Mars. Last month, the InSight lander, which will sample the planet's interior, successfully touched down at Elysium Planitia. Further reading: Bill Nye: We Are Not Going To Live on Mars, Let Alone Turn It Into Earth.
Leaders lead, sheep follow.
Communications to Mars have stupid high latency. 4 to 24 minutes depending on where Mars happens to be.
As a result, the robots have to be incredibly paranoid and drive at a snail's pace. Put some people there and with good equipment they could get stuff done 20 times faster, not to mention doing things the robots aren't equipped for.
Put a small fabrication shop on Mars, and they'll be able to craft whatever tool's needed for the job on the spot if anything unexpected comes up.
Did somebody put something in the entire western world's drinking water, or why is everyone so ridiculously overly cautious and scared of literally everything nowadays?
Seriously, not trolling or anything... Hasn't anybody else noticed this trend?
Where's the spirit of "Worth it!"? ;)
I won't impose my maybe crass view on anyone, but IMHO a bit of pain or even dying isn't *that* bad, compared to never having actually lived at all. It's not like we are bad at making even more humans until we die in our own waste.
I'd rather live suicidal 40 years, than boring 120.
Things that were funded without public support: Bank Bailouts while ignoring illegal foreclosures Endless bombing of the Middle East and Africa Logistics support for Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen Ever increasing military budgets ...
was the reason for climbing Everest and is a good enough reason for going to Mars.
We also need to get off this planet before we are wiped out by an asteroid or something. Doing that in large numbers and creating a self sufficient colony on some other rock (preferably circling another star) will be very hard, a toe hold on Mars would be a great start.
Sounds like a jaded old guy repeating all the excuses given to him throughout his life for why he couldn't go back to space.
We're doing it because it's there and because we want to!
It's important to have the ability to do it, actually doing it is dumb
All our missions to space aren't really the mission. The mission is really just an extension of what humans have always done, explored new places, learn stuff and then settle them. Going to mars doesn't have lots of value but developing all the technology to keep humans alive far from Earth for an extended period is part of our great mission. Humanity is pushing the limits of what is humanly possible so that we can later push even further. We're colonizing the solar system, the galaxy and then the universe while learning about it every step of the way. FTL travel seems unlikely and our bodies are weak but it's still not going to stop us for we will adapt to overcome these obstacles.
Besides, if we don't go to space, how are we ever going to find out what happens when we throw Alice into a black hole? ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
... the first human spaceflight to leave Earth's orbit...
Maybe the author meant to leave low Earth orbit?
Thank you, Mr. Anders. We already have a monumntal task of fixing our infratructure and cities here on Earth. There is no coin in the coffer for woolgathering on Mars.
It's not stupid when you just HAVE to go.
*** Don't be dull.***
Because we have no way to sustain life on Mars at this point, I agree that its a suicide mission to send humans to Mars. I think the unmanned missions have given us pause to even consider Mars a supportive planet for humans.
Don't you know? This is a corporate state! Corporations are people, and citizens, and voters. Humans aren't any of those. They are merely the cells of the corporate organisms.
And everything you mentioned got wide "public" support. While suggesting advancing humanity, to corporate organisms, is like suggesting advancing the expansion of bacterial films is to us humans.
I wish I was purely sarcastic, but this is actually a topic of research.
...now IN SPACE!
Ezekiel 23:20
His big justification for calling what would be humanity's greatest achievement "stupid" is that he doesn't see the imperative and doesn't think the public backs the idea sufficiently? Genius...
Can't do research into ridiculous moonshot crackpot theories like light-emitting "diodes" now!
The oil will run out, and better oil lamps are in desperately needed! /s
Obviously, "worth it" iterally means it was *worth it*. Aka all-in-all advantageous..
If land is ruined, it was, by definition, not worth it.
You seem to have taken your definition from the big corporate version of Jackass.
This is no different from any endeavor that is on the edge of what our abilities and technology allow. It can seem silly and fraught with far more risk than benefit. This is because the end benefit lies beyond our vision. Just like it did for the Wright brothers and those (and this wasn't a fringe minority) that felt, even after their success, that manned flight was dumb and too risky and provided little benefit.
One of human's worst traits is that we head in a direction before we're smart and/or wise enough to know the end result.
One of human's best traits is that we head in a direction before we're smart and/or wise enough to know the end result.
For better or worse, it's going to happen. It's going to happen because technology will make it possible. Right now technology is only in reach of governments and billionaires. And they are already talking about it and making not unserious plans. Once the technology threshold lowers, it's inevitable.
I suspect neither Bill (Anders or Nye) can understand that end point for the same reason that baby boomers have a hard time understanding millennials. Who in their right mind will live with their nose in their phone their entire life? Bill Bye thinks that living in domes and spacesuits makes living on Mars not worth it. For a lot of millenials today, that would hardly require a change in behaviour. There are a lot of people who would unquestionably go today. No, the end result is inevitable. Manned exploration will happen. Colonization will happen.
Other countries that don't feel the need to waste insane amounts on blowing up the Middle East will travel to Mars.
Smart people tend to be able to think of a lot more ways things could go bad.
Dumb people can't see them, and just go ahead.
(Even )smart(er?) people tend to also know solutions to everything. So this alone can't be the problem.
I think it is also the environment we are brought up in. An environment of little problem solving training (like our memorization robot breeding education system) and a big sue-happy entitlement attitude (like expecting to be told that coffee is hot) doesn't exactly foster a confident problem-handling skillset for those minds that can think of all the horrors.
Bill Anders ..."What's the imperative? What's pushing us to go to Mars?" he said, adding "I don't think the public is that interested".
I have to agree that right now, Mars seems like a desolate hole with little attraction apart from overcoming the difficulty in getting there and the intellectual challenge of exploring and "solving" the remote environment.
And as such, there are plenty of desolate holes on Earth that are nearly as difficult to get to and survive in. Whether Antarctica or ocean depths. Or the inner recesses of the human mind.
However if one of our probes was to discover life on Mars, then there could be a good case to send people to research it, in situ.
The only other reason that I can think of for wanting to settle the place is the same as the first European arrivals in the americas: for tax purposes!
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Homo "sapiens" invaded America and Europe, and should go back to Africa where it came from.
Especially you!
Like complaining about what scientists wear when guiding interplanetary missions. Thats where real human achievement will occur.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
One class wants to take risks, go out and explore the universe even if it means stepping on native species. There is another genius of humans that believe the 'responsible thing' is to stay at home, have small carbon footprint, not breed, or explore, and criticize those that do.
I think we should divide the nation up along those lines, rather than the arbitrary lines of democratic and republican.
I love humanity in all its faults and want to see it spreading its disease to every part of the universe.
Go Humans. Take over Mars.
Now get off my lawn.
At least then they will be useful for something. Helping actual humans learn how to survive the trip. And we don't have to worry about loss of human life in the process.
"Mars must be one of the most inhospitable places on Earth." BBC Radio Leeds Presenter
I agree on this part, but have you ever heard the good bit of advice about not putting all your eggs in one basket?
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
I don't blame anyone. Very often, things emerge from the dynamic itself.
My ex has this "everybody is a winner" attitude too. And her reason is simply that she does not want to devalue and hurt anyone. Which we can all agree is generally a good goal. How it is applied just seems distorted.
E.g. why would I feel inferior because somebody else won a trophy?
Isn't that only an act of appreciation, for him?
To me, that means that he is +5 while I am e.g. +1 or 0. But she acts like I am -5 from my p.o.v., just because I'm 5 less than that winner's "0".
Besides: I don't need to be better than anyone. I just want to be good at what I like. And that is only between me and nature.
I guess she compares herself to others in thi gs that should not matter to her, cares about the appreciation by people who sbe should not care about, and falsely makes the appreciation of others about her.
IMHO it's just that women (and young people in general) severely lack confidence. And they are raised like that too.
While we now grown men have often been raised to think we are awesome by default. (Which can also be a problem. Because it is OK, not to be awesome all the time.)
...people think that just because we can, that we should. That human exploration and our innate fear of destroying ourselves/going extinct are the main forces behind this lunacy. We destroy this planet, already have our trash on another planet, and want to further "expand" ourselves - mostly because of the former. We're dumb apes, expecting to save ourselves while everything else can go to you know where. The truth is that we want to exploit Mars just as we do this planet. To somehow save ourselves from our inevitable extinction.
Protip: it will happen a lot sooner than later. Stop trying. Humans are not meant to survive beyond this planet. Stop grasping at straws and wasting money that could be better put elsewhere. There's a reason why no one lives in Antarctica except scientists.
Since when is Bill Nye a good source for anything?
... I'm for putting lead back into everything.
Just the right amount.
No, those are not habitable places.
Actually, barely anything but Kenyan savannahs is habitable to natural (nude) humans.
But we made it our home anyway.
Mars is definitely doable.
And so is the athmosphere above Venus, by the way. (See: Isaac Arthur's episode.)
In 50 million years Phobos (moon) will crash into it.
Humans evolved on a planet with a robust atmosphere and a magnetosphere. Some estimate we actually have the atmosphere we have because of the magnetosphere that earth possesses. The Martian magnetosphere is just too weak to protect the planet, and anything crawling on it, from the many forms of radiation that humans cannot tolerate. Underground dwellings just may do it, but expect that to be of limited benefit in the end. First, create a robust magnetosphere, and then we'll see what happens.
So the Apollo 8 astronaut doesn't know why the Apollo program existed?
Aside from the main reason of allowing the US to show of it's rocket and missile tech to the Russians without directly and obviously pushing the arms race, it got the entire country behind NASA. At it's peak in the 60's, NASA was drawing about 10% of the country's entire GDP and the public was still happy with it. Now with unmanned probes, the public for the most part doesn't know or care what NASA is up do. The budget is a tiny shadow of what it used to be and still draws public outrage.
A manned Mars mission is something that might once again unite people behind space exploration. It's worth it for the societal reasons alone if not for any scientific or technical ones. The 60's and 70's were a generation of hope and wonder partly fueled by "space age" excitement. We now live in tired and cynical times where society is falling apart.
It's sad that an Apollo astronaut doesn't get all that, but it's a sign of the times we live in today.
Send stupid astronauts. That would be sensible, because the two stupids cancel each other out. Or something like that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
and our wealthy and ruling class are no longer terrified of the Russians. That's really what drove the space race.
History is basically the working class trying, and usually failing, to pry some money out of the hands out of the ruling class. For a brief period of time post-WWII they did that very well. Factories stayed in America because the rulers feared they'd be seized by the commie, resulting in Unions that got better pay and wages. Massive public works projects and good government pay for them further increased wages. And a massive tech boom driven largely by discoveries made at Public Universities helped too (Internet anyone?).
We've swung back the other way and the rich are closing their wallets. If we had more of an appetite for prying those wallets open by force we could do stuff like a trip to Mars. But dat'd be stealing, and stealin's bad, M'Kay. I learned that from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the multi-billion dollar Propaganda machine ^X^X^X^X Nightly news.
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to climb Everest. There's your problem right there.
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Victorians used to believe that you couldn't travel faster than about 30-40 mph without suffocating. And we could.
Man would never fly, until we did.
If you don't try something, you'll never work out how to achieve it. Is it going to be tough, sure. Will people literally die for it? Most likely. Exploration isn't safe, especially at the cutting edge.
The first people to get to Mars are quite likely to die for it. Then it'll be easier for the ones who come afterwards. And easier again for the next.. Until one day, it's commonplace.
It's almost certain not to have a habitat in my lifetime. Maybe not in the generations that are alive now. But in a couple more.. I don't see any reason why not, if the effort is put into it.
The crux is, that a planet has one shot at a technological society, as that one will consume all the easily available resources. You need the technology to reach the harder to acquire ones afterwards. Should something happen (plague, meteor, etc. etc.) on a planetary scale, having populations elsewhere is just a species survival strategy, no matter how hard the living is.
The gravity on the moon is way too low. The low gravity on Mars will weaken the human body but not nearly as much as the moon. Mars does have an atmosphere. So a rip in a suit isn't nearly as critical. Same goes for habitats.. they don't quite need the same structural requirements as one would in a vacuum.
Mars is dangerous and isolated. It should be seen as a one way mission. But necessity and autonomy will breed success. What mars has going for it is being a platform for mining. When mining is done one can easily construct a town on the same spot because on mars you want to be underground.There is limited water there to be found. Much more than on the moon. There is sunlight and lots of area so solar farms could be constructed though I much rather see nuclear. Hydroponics/aeroponics with led technology is a reality now. On mars a space elevator is easier to construct and you won't have people saying not in my backyard. Again Mars does have an atmosphere so some non delicate supplies (such as frozen pizza) should be easier to send. It's only hard to send people and equipment into space. If you take your time one can send supplies in space that could take a decade but wouldn't require as much fuel to send. You just have to plan ahead. Those supply missions we should be doing now instead of sending rovers. If people can survive the first 10 years they should become self sustaining.
I'm not saying a moon base wouldn't be nice but for near earth orbit it would be better to build a massive rotating space station at one of the lagrange points. Such a station would be easier and cheaper to build in mars orbit.
Space travel, not to mention actually spending time on Mars, will be low in gravity. We need gravity. Bad things happen to us without it. Did anyone get the gravity problem sorted yet? Have you seen the shape of astronauts when they return from space? Not so good.
What's pushing it are people like Elon Musk, and indeed, everything he conceives of is stupid.
...or Mount Everest. I think that this whole "live on Mars" thing is a bit more rushed that it probably needs to be, but it's not unlike having scientists at an Antarctica station in the winter, only they have to stay longer and it's farther away. While a lunar and a Martian base have a lot of differing situations (nasty static dust, long hot days/cold nights, zero atmosphere, takes a few days to get there, vs planet-wide dust storms, cold days/colder nights, takes six to eighteen months to get there or back), the thing they have in common is zero infrastructure. At least with a lunar base we can get an idea of the sorts of things they'll need, without being stuck months away from even Amazon Prime delivery. And we've also been doing this with remote stations on Earth to get ready for that.
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What? The NASA budget in the 1960s never exceeded 5% of the federal budget. It is much less than 1% now because the Federal budget is so big
...the people with all the money are happy with the status-quo.
And the people with no money have no voice.
When too many other pundits Appear to be on one side of an issue, take the exact opposite stance, publicity is guaranteed
everyone's got one. (or a colostomy stoma.) Getting a team of astronauts to Mars is estimated by the best people looking into it to be impossible with current technology. I would invite those people who disagree to put their money where their mouths are and fund such an engineering feat. All you have to do it find some country willing to host the launch. The fact is that we (as a society) have looked into getting people to Mars and It. Is. Not. Feasible. All the magical thinking in the world isn't going to change that. Well, actually, it could change that as long as the magical thinking results in a massive research & development effort, followed by the execution of a space program to get the equipment built and them launched. I'm confident I could do it for, say, $100 trillion. (My first step would be to locate an equatorial country (suitable for the launch pad) which had a legal system which would allow me to send a lot of volunteers to their deaths without me getting in trouble. Oh, and a crack security team to protect me from the friends and families of the deceased.) After that it would just be a matter of numbers. Hire the engineering infrastructure to build the various components. If I can't purchase the materials, build the factories to make them. Yup, I'm pretty sure that with $100 trillion and 20-30 years, I could do it...ah, if I only had 20 years....and the money too, of course.
You know what isn't stupid. Sending humans to a station in the upper atmosphere of Venus. The only roadblock is using anti-corrosive materials in its construction. On Venus you have none of the following that you do on Mars; 1. explosive decompression if a small hole appears in the habitat killing everyone (Venus: a slow leak that can be detected and patched, also increasing pressure slightly inside the habitat will force the leak to stop while you work to seal it), 2. unlivable extreme temperatures (Venus: in the upper atmosphere the temperature is livable and comfortable with a mere basic heater), 3. massive fuel costs due to the escape velocity being higher (Venus: you can float heavy structures on a platform filled with oxygen [in Venus' atmosphere it has a stronger lifting force than hydrogen does on Earth] at a point in the upper atmosphere where the escape velocity is negligible and requires little fuel to then arrive or depart, saving that fuel instead for the trip back and thereby requiring smaller craft and less cost), 4. the distance is further and the window of opportunity are years apart from Earth to Mars, (Venus: is very close and the windows of opportunity to depart happens very frequently multiple times a year, this means rescue operations are possible [on Mars we might have to leave you to die] and crew / resources can be swapped more frequently and sooner), 5. the radiation from the Sun is not blocked by Mars due to a lack of suitable atmosphere or magnetic field (Venus: the shield of the planet is stronger than Earth's while still allowing solar energy collection in the upper atmosphere), 6. meteor / comet / asteroid impacts are not blocked by Mars (Venus: the atmosphere and field block these incoming projectiles
There are probably more reasons I can't think of right now of.
By Anders logic, he shouldn't have gone to the moon. Why was he even in the program, much less a mission if he holds the beliefs he states? Humans tend to explore, they tend to solve difficult problems (some better than others). No one says it will be easy, no one says it will be safe. At one time going to California wasn't safe... Now we can do it in hours. As for Nye - we won't do anything we don't dream and try. He cannot know that we won't live on Mars - no more than people could have known about a million inventions. We may have to create an artificial magnetic core or similar to maintain an atmosphere - still it is possible. Just because we don't have a grasp of how at this time is frankly just a stumbling block to be overcome.
Agreed. At one time going to California wasn't safe...but now we can in hours. Plus my first computer had 64KB, now it has 64GB. Since one thing is possible, all things are possible. Anders just isn't being logical like us.
You forgot to mention the colonization of America. Also, my computer used to have 64KB. now it has 16GB too. Very disappointing. You need to understand: since one thing is possible, everything must be possible. Some things (other people of course) need to work on: food replicators and transporters like in Star Trek. Everything is possible, so get working on it! You are just wasting time.
Going to Mars is not something you wait for "the public" to be interested in. By the time they would be interested (let's say the world is on fire) it would be too late. I have no faith in "the public" to push space colonization forward. It's up to visionaries to do that. "If you build it, they will come" comes later.
Young people dont want to be governed by the ME generation, so fuck him and fuck anyone that doesnt want to go.
The only way people in the US are going to care is if Kim and Kanye or some other stupid famous person was the one going. Maybe they could get a real housewives group to go. Seriously, we are talking about the US of today, not the US of WWII. We have become the most self obsessed country in the world. How else can you explain Trump getting elected? We used to be a proud nation.
Or maybe he thought it through and came to a reasonable conclusion at this point in time and tech while you are off rubbing your two brain cells together to jerk off to an inane and insane idea.
Yes, putting people on Mars is hard but it is not stupid. 500 years ago putting people from Europe onto North America was hard although it was not solar radiation storms but just ordinary storms that people worried about.
Mars is a lot less hospitable than North America was back then but our science and technology is much better. As it improves it will get easier and easier to get to Mars, the Moon and elsewhere. Having humans on other planets living in self-sustaining colonies will massively improve the survival odds of our species and any we bring with us. I don't think that's stupid at all even if it may be another 500 years before travel to Mars becomes routine like air travel today.
85 years old is an age when cognitive decline starts. Sad but true.
1 Who do we send to Mars?
2) Where do we send our astronauts?
Sending people to Mars would be a technological challenge and a worthwhile feat to attempt. We'd likely learn something as well which would be our first step of Mankind actually exploring our solar system. I can't really agree with anyone living there thou. There's almost nothing on Mars that can be used as a resource which means it'd be too expensive to keep a colony there.
Going to Mars is a stupid idea, we are not going there to stay, ever, and the science we can accomplish with humans on the surface is more easy, cheaper and safer to do with robots.
HOWEVER, there ARE valid reasons to go. The striving would give a sens of accomplishment and purpose. The development of the technology we'd need would find use on Earth. Fusion power in a form we could land on Mars would be a great advancement on earth.
I'd say we should do it...With the down side being the inevitable loss of life, as rocket science is dangerous business.
At last, someone says something that makes sense about Mars. Mars is an inhospitable, freezing cold desert, with an unbreathable atmosphere. If there are any bacteria left there, however alien and exotic they may be, there is no need to send people over to examine them under the microscope. The quest for Mars comes out of the "need" to colonize whatever is not colonized yet. If we really want to search for life in the Sol system then we should send missions (i.e., robots) to Europa, Enceladus, or Titan instead.
What is really disturbing to me is not his anti-science response, it's that he would turn over research funds to only the most popular, instead of the best, ideas...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things (accomplishments and aspirations), not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
The fact that back then space exploration was a novelty that by now has worn off, might be a factor.
If we're talking space and other planets, get input from someone like Brian May. It's a hell of lot closer to his field of study than Bill's.
What's NASA's report card for these decades?
The unmanned stuff has been amazing. They have done some really neat stuff.
I also find the manned stuff amazing. Just not in a good way.
The progress in the 60's happened due to serendipity in vision of 2 men. One a President and one a Rocket Scientist.
This provided a steady focus on a useful goal. Amazing things happened.
This set a really high bar. One which hasn't been approached, except perhaps recently.
These anniversaries are a time to think about where we were and what we have accomplished since.
Since the moon landings, NASA has shown much motion and milestones accomplished.
In terms of milestones which strategically move mankind into space, not so much.
If anything, NASA's motions have left us behind where we were 50 years ago.
So how does one waste 50 years?
The classic answer is one day at a time.
In this case, it is easy to say it was one SLS, one Shuttle, one Station, or one other program without a strategic purpose other than keeping NASA alive.
This easy blame hides the reasons why.
So why did this happen?
I think it is a combination of three things.
The first is that we have been unable to duplicate the quality of vision since the late 60's.
The second is that without vision, focus on the work has degraded into one of self. (Career. profit, and work in my district.)
The third is that without vision and focus, funding is a fickle political process.
Definitely not the steady focus to a useful goal that made the 60's amazing.
So what to do?
Encourage what is working. That means continue the unmanned stuff and commercial space stuff.
Rethink what is not. That may be most of NASA's focus?
All is not lost because cash spent on space is still more useful than that spent on the military making things go boom.
If NASA is just a jobs program, separate out that part.
The funding needs to be more expecting of results.
NASA's recent success with commercial space seems more a low overhead DARPA-like funding model.
No matter the state for things now, let us not forget that what happened in the 60's was truly amazing.
Going at a snail's pace is not a problem. So what if it takes 20 or even a 1000x longer. It's still cheaper and doesn't risk human life. Robots are very patient.
I will agree there are tasks humans may be better at, but the opposite is also true. Robots can "see" in many more colors, for example.
Table-ized A.I.
We go put idiots on mars cause reasons :)
Where is the support for anybody putting their money where their big, fat mouth is? Who is going to pay for it and why would they?
For the fun of it?
I don't see any government supporting sending humans to visit or to stay on Mars. I don't see any of the "John Galts" doing so either.
Humanity is too busy building Caliphates and walls.
Showing off our tech was the only reason the Apollo Program existed.
A proposition often put forward by space nuts - with exactly zero support.
Sure, the public was happy with it - until about 32 picoseconds after Apollo 11 splashed down. Then they were done and ready to move on to the next thing. There were massive complaints when the networks pre-empted TV shows and sportsball games for broadcasts from Apollo 12. For Apollo 13, they didn't even try - NASA just recorded them and provided the recordings to the networks to excerpt for the evening news. (This is all in the historical record, you can look it up.) As far as the 70's being an era of wonder... the only I can ask is "what planet did you grow up on?" I lived through the 70's, and like virtually all who did I remember it as the era of growing disillusionment, the energy crisis, rampant inflation, and disco.
A true scientist would not outright say something is "stupid", but rather describe the trade-offs. Science cannot say what you should want, only the best way to get it. If you weigh the scientific value of data collected and put a monetary or even a public-relations value on human life, then robots would probably be the better choice.
But, there's also serendipity: a human mission may make discoveries about technology or human endurance in space that are useful but difficult to predict up front. When you do something that's never been done before, you often learn interesting things.
Robots also lack "glory" (to most people), and it's hard to weigh "glory". Science cannot say glory & inspiration is good or bad; ultimately that's a "gut" judgement society will have to make. It's not an open-and-shut case to weigh via accounting and known math. However, it's good to acknowledge the accounting and math angle before pressing "go".
Christopher Columbus was bold, skilled, stupid, and lucky. America often emulates him, for good or bad.
Table-ized A.I.
As far as the 70's being an era of wonder... the only I can ask is "what planet did you grow up on?" I lived through the 70's, and like virtually all who did I remember it as the era of growing disillusionment, the energy crisis, rampant inflation, and disco.
The 70's was the decade of the microprocessor revolution and the first commercial video games, which was a direct result of the Apollo program (who was buying flip-flop ICs for $150 in the early 1960's besides NASA)? The 70's saw the intro of the 747 and the Concorde which was when mass travel became easily available to the masses, the opening of Disney World, the intro of Cable and HBO. MRI was invented in the 70's. I remember it as a decade of wonder. Compared to the 70's, what do we do today. They had the concorde, we have an incremental update to the iPhone. Wow.
Imagine the tech and innovation another space race for Mars could bring to the country.
As for the "energy crisis", it was political maneuvering when the muslims threatened to cut off oil to any country that supported Israel. It didn't amount to anything but a lot of hot air and meaningless newspaper headlines. As well as travel becoming much more readily available, the 70's also saw the opening of the trans-Alaskan oil pipeline. So what energy crisis? Detroit wouldn't have been so successful selling those huge cars into the mid 80's if there was a real energy crisis.
The mitochondrial work which hit the cover of Time as the complete validation of the Eve hypothesis was said the be an incorrect use of the mitochondrial change-tracking software by the company that MADE the software. (They said it years after the Time article was published so they could make money on their software for a while first.) The wave of migrating African homo sapiens CLEARLY bred with other human, or if you prefer, human-like species in some or all the places they went, which was just about everywhere (REALLY EVERYWHERE) but Australia. (But I'm sure we'll see later that even that is fuzzy/wrong.)
So it's a mess. Which means assholes can say just about anything they want and come up with some support for it. It's just not all cut and dried like the famous Eve idea would suggest.
The anti-colonists have missed one obvious fact.
Our species will die if we remain only on this rock.
Look at our neighbors if you don't believe it. Uranus was smacked so hard by a space rock that it rotated almost perpendicular to the Sun's accretion disk. Mars southern hemisphere took a hit so hard that it set of volcanoes on half the planet. Our own planet bears the scars of a mass extinction space rock impact, and our moon is a trophy of an even larger impact before that.
I mean no disrespect, but the Apollo guys were the face and leaders of NASA when the decisions were made that trapped us in LEO for two generations. They were there with the administrators. They were there talking to Congress and the Senate. They let the shuttle program become what it did. They failed us then, and they have no business getting in the way now.
At it's peak in the 60's, NASA was drawing about 10% of the country's entire GDP
Where'd you get your numbers? I thought it was much smaller. https://carriedaway.blogs.com/... is the best source I could find. Says it was 0.75%
I have a science (non-fiction) book about teleportation experiments under my bed, so indeed someone famous is working on it.
Besides we already have the tech to live on mars easily. Musk fanboys told me so.
They promised me a 3D printed house on mars and a auto fabbed Tesla.
Manned space programs are going private because any mission more adventurous than milkruns to LEO involves great personal risk to those on the mission. NASA should focus on the robotic missions it has become so good at, and let the personal risk be undertaken by entrepreneurs who are responsible to nothing and no one.
It's not complicated.
1. It's a worthy scientific endeavour.
2. We don't know how to make it work yet.
Both things are true, but some day (2) will cease to be true.
So let's
1. start the preliminary planning and research and enjoy the economic and technological spin-offs, but
2. not actually make the trip when we're so completely not ready.
Does he know his missions where just a test for Von Braun's dream to go to Mars? Von Braun's actual goal was Mars, not the Moon, and that's the reason why his rockets for the moon were highly overpowered. And his dream got squashed due to some bureaucrats who thought the space shuttles were a better option. Otherwise we would have been on Mars half way the 80's, because THAT'S what Von Braun was targetting..
They're idiots. People who say stuff like this are always wrong.
One-way? So be it. Our future as a species is not limited to this fishbowl, its up there among the stars.
What's the point of existence at all if we don't constantly push the bounds of human capability
Did no one here see the recent image of Korolev crater on Mars? It's filled with ice. 50mi diameter, several hundred feet deep. Ice is a great radiation shield, and the location minimizes the dust problem. Under-ice bases have been done before, search for 'greenland icecap base'. Put in airlocks and pressurize the base. Since it's near the Mars N.Pole, solar arrays on poles could provide some power constantly, barring duststorms.
Mr Anders, it's "almost ridiculous" to refer to yourself as a lunar module pilot when your trip to the moon left it behind completely.
In case we the tech here on earth... looks like we will....
[($)]
But it doesn't even HAVE to be NASA anymore. That's the real beauty of things. Every time Space-X launches another rocket, it helps emphasize that even space travel has become a technology that's not so difficult to manage, it requires government taking a big portion of the nation's taxes to fund it by mandate.
We're reaching the point where one of several private businesses might be the first to put people on Mars.
But overall, yeah -- people all know about NASA putting people on the moon back in the late 1960's and 70's -- so sending some unmanned probes out a little further isn't that amazing. It's going to take human beings making the trip to step things up past what was done previously.
We can send all the machines there we want, but it's still strictly experience-by-proxy until someone goes there, leaves some footprints and pees on a rock.
That may be how you remember it, but you're in a minority who've willingly and knowingly stuck their head in the sand. That's not a badge of honor.
And to answer your question - who was buying flip-flop IC's for $150 in the early 1960's besides NASA? The DoD mainly, who bought about a hundred such for every one that NASA bought. (For example, for every Apollo CSM guidance system that flew - there were roughly four SSBN's, each with sixteen missiles, each with a more sophisticated guidance system and a more powerful IC based guidance computer.)
They has an aircraft available only to the elite that was a commercial flop. We have a phone that's used by the masses for any number of useful things and is a howling commercial success. Wow indeed.
Considering how little tech and innovation the Apollo program generated... I'd imagine not very much. Few people who haven't actually studied the Apollo program grasp that they didn't invent or develop anything that they absolutely didn't have to. They didn't have to time, so a great deal of Apollo's "tech and innovation" is smoke and mirrors - tech they borrowed from elsewhere and adapted for Apollo. (Those CSM and LEM guidance computers are a prime example - they're based on SLBM guidance computers.)
Uh huh. And lots of lines at gas stations, and stations closed because they had no gas to sell. And gas prices that went soaring. (And as a result of transport prices going up, food prices shot up as well. Inflation was through the roof.)
Here on this planet, the energy crisis killed the muscle car and utterly altered the auto market forever. The compact emerged as a major segment, as did the Japanese imports. Those "huge cars" of the 80's got considerable more MPG than their counterparts of the 60's did.
Or, to put it another way, you're delusional and clueless.
So does he think that the substantial portion of GDP that was used to send him around the moon was a good idea, but spending a substantial portion of GDP to send someone to Mars is now a bad idea? Who the fuck does he think he is, anyway? If the people (who are paying) want it, there will for sure be no shortage of volunteers to go, no matter the dangers. So we will just let the taxpayers decide. Maybe he just fails to appreciate the many purposes of manned space programs...
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EPA assigned perchlorate a chronic oral reference dose (RfD) of 0.0007 milligrams per kilogram per day (mg/kg/day). The RfD is an estimate of a daily
exposure level that is likely to be without noncancer health effects over a lifetime (EPA IRIS 2005).
Assuming 80kg crew-members, the chronic oral dose would be 0.056mg/crew. Perchlorates are estimated at 0.5% of Mars dust by weight, so that dose would be the equivalent of injesting or breathing 10mg of Mars dust a day. Assuming indoor air and water filters keep dust exposure in the hab to 10% (conservatively) of that entering the hab, for a crew of 5 that'd mean 500mg of dust has to get into the hab each day. That's about 1/4 the weight of a 2L soda bottle cap - quite a bit if there are good counter-measures in place to keep the dust out in the first place. Simple things like blowing dust off 'outside' before entering the airlock, and putting on a clean suit liner inside the hab before entering a 'mud room' to put on a Mars suit, and taking that liner off only after removing and wet-cleaning the suit and the mud room before entering the Hab.
Also, a healthy human body clears perchlorates out of the bloodstream in about 10 minutes, so the amount in the bloodstream at any time should be about 1/144th of the daily dose - down in the parts per billion. It seems likely other components of the Mars dust might be more problematic than the perchlorates.
First of all, expending delta-V to leave the earth's gravity well only to fall down another is for losers. And there nothing that humans can do on Mars that robots cannot do. The gravity is wrong, Martians may end with floppy bones. The radiation is so intense, you have to live underground. There is plenty of material with the Moon and better yet, Near-Earth asteroid for building O'Neil colonies and spaceships with rotating habitats for human to thrive in space. First with a base on the Moon to build mass drivers to mine material for the first O'Neil. If that shall be attended, built a large, angled carousal underground to provide 1 g and safety from radiation. The key to planetary exploration is better robots and better AI. As for terraforming. HA! It is easier to building 1 g habitats in a Dyson swarm to provide a trillion homes than to terraform Mars. And much quicker.
Send all the Internet Trolls first as they will fuel the fire hear on Earth to get that public interest up! They will complain about their miserable lives and how harsh their "world" is, and certainly, then we will all actually care for the Trolls!
Trolls without borders, the only way to fly.