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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.
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!
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.
It's not stupid when you just HAVE to go.
*** Don't be dull.***
...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...
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.
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
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.
"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.)
In the US national anthem "Land of the free and the home of the brave" While commonly used to express military braveness in the face of guns and cannons firing around you. But the quality of our freedom is based on how brave we are as a society.
The Space Race which sent a man from the moon, was also being brave enough to allow former enemy Germans into our nation who during the work were world experts in rocketry. We bravely put aside our past history and worked together for greatness.
Today the terrorist won. We no longer want Others into our country where we can learn from them, and they can learn from us. We are too afraid of them, we as a population doesn't want to go further into space we want a well defined borders, and rules on who is the good guy and who are the bad guys. We pine for a simpler time where everything was given to us, and our futures seemed so bright, but we are too afraid to try to make the change.
We have became cowards, afraid of Others, afraid of our neighbor, afraid of the world. This fear causes us to be more oppressed. Either with more laws to make us Safe, or harsher punishment for those who break it. Problems are ignored because it would break our fragile peace with the scary other people.
This isn't just a recent problem under Trump, this was slowly evolving for over a generations. With the end of the cold war, we lost our unified bad guy. Today's bad guys are now complex. As we had spread the US culture to other worlds, they have also shared their cultures with us, this has made everyone unhappy, because of the feeling of general pollution of culture, while it is just growth and understanding. We are too afraid of change, and not willing to stand up and face it, solve the problems rationally. But fight against it, and not think of their side at all.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I don't get it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
I wish I had mod points right now. It's something I have noticed slowly rising over the years, Americans went from super optimistic and "we can do anything" to totally defeated and all ideas are bad ideas, unless they're for dumb ass apps or social media then they're all genius ideas.
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.
...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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Television personalities are useful to shape kids. He used to shape them into liking exploration and scientific progress. Now he shapes them into people who see science only as a tool for social "progress".
Today the terrorist won. We no longer want Others into our country where we can learn from them, and they can learn from us.
Rather, we don't want poor uneducated peasants coming to the US.
A rotating habitat connected with a tether to a counterweight.
The wealthy want nothing more than to protect their wealth. The LAST thing they want is for anything to change.. if things changed they might lose their cushy position.
And the non-wealthy have no voice, no power to change anything.
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.
Makes sense. The only roadblock to living on Venus (in a floating station) is anti-corrosive materials. Once we have those, we will be living on Venus (actually floating on the atmosphere). We will need some basic heaters too, for extra comfort.
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.
Exactly. It read it in a blog. Should work.
Oh, so all the problems of living in a floating city in Venus have been solved. You have tried it here on Earth and simulated it and have a floating station here to demonstrate. You just need money and the ability to build it (on Venus). I'll let Musk know you are ready to launch.
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.
What do you mean "it could be"? You have a prototype built already and tested, right? Let me know, I need to know if I need to send Musk a Twitter message or not.
No, just common sense. This isn't a space elevator. Spin it and it will create centripetal force, at levels well below what can be handled with a low weight tether.
It's less space, weight and cost efficient than just letting their muscles and bones atrophy for the moment ... so we don't do it. If we had to do it, there's nothing really stopping us. Just throw engineers and money at it.
1 Who do we send to Mars?
2) Where do we send our astronauts?
And this too is something a robotic ship could do without the need for life support systems. One could have a mission that does high-resolution mapping of the surface, for example.
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.
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.”
Rather, we don't want poor uneducated peasants coming to the US.
No, you don't want whatever the leaders in your political tribe have told you to not want. Immigration of even low skilled laborers has extreme economic benefit to this country. There is certainly a point where incoming immigration becomes too excessive, but we are tens of millions of migrants away from that.
Securing our borders in a PR gimmick targeted at uneducated conservatives (don't worry, there are plenty of PR gimmicks targeted at uneducated liberals).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
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 :)
What are the odds that the first thing that will be transmitted back from Mars, if we manage to land Humans there, will be "Ack Ack-Ack-Ack-Ack-Ack!"
This space unintentionally left blank.
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.
No problem. We will build the prototype on Venus itself then. I'll let Musk know that you are ready with your design.
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 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.
There has always been an issue with ILLEGAL Immigrants. Even when this nation put forth plans to make the ILLEGAL Immigrants legal citizens, there was always considerations on how to stop the flood of ILLEGAL Immigrants.
Funny how the people that don't want to enforce EXISTING LAWS on the books for decades. Passed by both parties never discuss what Naturalized Citizens think about ILLEGAL Immigrants.
Think about this, Naturalized citizens know more about the history of this nation and the government structure more then most citizens do. What do they think about illegals that come across the border and just meld into the general population? When Naturalized Citizens have spent years and thousands of dollars(too much in my mind) to become citizens.
I'm sorry, but I do not think everyone seeking asylum in this nation deserves that. You are naive if you think they do.
I know or have met too many individuals that are CITIZENS or here legally, from various other nations that both know and love this country. Asian, Eastern Europe, African, North(Canada) South America to be against LEGAL Immigration. They worked hard to be legal citizens, and they are proud of that accomplishment.
They can be fully active in politics and their communities without worry. Nobody wishes them to give up their heritage, religious beliefs(or nonreligious beliefs.
I advocate for LEGAL Immigrants. I think the process of becoming a citizen should be cheaper and not take so long. But ILLEGALS, ship them home and make them pay for the ride.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
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 wish I could edit my post here, I always see mistakes after I hit enter.
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Sentence corrections.
Think about this, Naturalized citizens know more about the history of this nation and the government structure more then most citizens do. What do they think about illegals that come across the border and just meld into the general population?
I know or have met too many individuals that are NATURALIZED CITIZENS or here LEGALLY, from various other nations that both know and love this country. Don't care what nation they come from. They worked hard to be legal citizens, and they are proud of that accomplishment.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
People that do "stupid" things where they are aware of the risks and only risk themselves also have the chance of doing great things.
Be it the first Atlantic crossing or leaving Africa doesn't matter. Humanity need to move on and discover outside the planet to survive in the long run.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Today the terrorist won. We no longer want Others into our country where we can learn from them,
Oh B.S. We're still letting in ONE MILLION legal immigrants per year. Are you one of those people who equates a rising irritation with the vast levels of illegal immigrants that we have with a general opposition to immigration in general?
When the population of the US hits 1/2 billion, will you equate a resistance against even more immigration with some sort of xenophobia?
Do you not get it that some people are okay with legal immigration but are tired of the vast quantaties of social services being used to house/feed illegals?
Do you not get it that some people are okay with immigration as long as it is in sustainable numbers?
Do you not get it that some people don't want to see immigration levels that are going to turn us into a crowded shithole like China and India?
Yes but those Germans were white nationalists...
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..
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.
Did I say "per year"? I'm saying that we have plenty of room for more bodies..
Do you know what the percentage of developed land in the US is? I do.. It's 5%. Yeah.. 5 fucking percent.
The US, population-wise, is on the decline when only births are factored in. If it wasn't for immigration our population would be SHRINKING. i.e. without immigration, of some number, we'd have a net loss of people every year. Reproduction rates for the US are currently at 1.9. That's 1.9 replacement bodies for every 2 existing bodies.. That's a loss.
I'm not saying we should bring in a flood of people. I am saying there is ROOM for more.. The pace should be determined by people with access to better information than you or I have. Maybe 1 million/year is a good number.. Maybe it should be 500,000/year.. Fuck, maybe it should be 5,000/year. I don't know. I just know that it will be a long time before we're as crowded as China..
Let me get this straight.... One million per year is tens of millions from being too excessive? We don't have enough housing for our current citizens (thanks to liberal NIMBYs). And you think that we have the resources / infrastructure for tens of millions more?
You must not know that the number of illegal immigrations has been decreasing for a decade. I'm not sure where you are getting your figure of a million more migrants per year from, but it is probably just a lack of knowledge on the subject. This is common, almost required, for someone to fall for the rhetoric that excessive immigration is a problem for the US.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"Oldest human fossils are found in Asia not Africa"
You should alert Google, National Geographic, and the rest of the scientific world so they can be as smart as you! (https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGRV_enUS751US751&ei=6sojXJ3fIuHH_QbwkoywBg&q=oldest+human+fossil+location&oq=oldest+human+fossil+location)
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
"We are too afraid of them, we as a population doesn't want to go further into space"
We aren't afraid to explore Mars. We just don't have any reason to that makes financial sense beyond what we are doing now. With that logic you could argue we are afraid to do anything we aren't doing like...
Explore the center of the Earth
Explore Pluto
Landing a manned mission on the Sun
Creating habitats on the bottom of the ocean
Building mobile cities
Creating nuclear powered PlayStations
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
"Humanity need to move on and discover outside the planet to survive in the long run."
This is true on a billion year time scale. The sun will eventually kill all life on Earth. Does that mean we need to do anything about it now?
A level 5 hurricane will hit every metropolitan area on the Atlantic before we need to be on Mars, but practically no one seems to think we need to worry about that.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
A million LEGAL immigrants per year. That is what I said. I said we take in "1 million legal immigrants per year". You having a hard time with reading comprehension?
A million LEGAL immigrants per year. That is what I said. I said we take in "1 million legal immigrants per year". You having a hard time with reading comprehension?
You never said the word "legal" in your earlier post, so calm down there. Learn to write before accusing others of not reading your vague comments. You were replying to a post which had quoted someone talking about "poor uneducated peasants coming to the US". Considering legal immigrants are more educated on average than US native citizens, it would have been silly of me to assume you were talking about legal immigration in your comments.
We are still bringing in legal immigrants with higher average level of education, higher level of entrepreneurship, and who are overall more beneficial to our economy than your average native citizen. When that is no longer the case we could talk about levels of legal immigration being too high.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I have no problem with that. I'm quite "pro immigration" as long as it's legal, sustainable, and most importantly, needed. I do, personally, think 1M a year might be a bit on the high side because, as you pointed out, we do have an employment issue at the moment (it's getting better) but dumping 1M bodies a year into the pool is depressing wages.. I don't know what the proper number is.. but maybe we cut it in 1/2 and see how that goes.. Unfortunately, I don't think Congress has any connection with the public and reality so I don't have much hope of that..
I do have serious issues with this idea that our government has that the child of an illegal is somehow legal. I've read the constitution and that's not how I interpret it. I can't think of a single other country that would declare the child, of someone who has snuck in, to be a full citizen. It's asinine.
Nevertheless, while illegal immigration might be declining (I'll take your word for it) we are still at around 10% illegal out of the entire population of the US. That's CRAZY. One out of every 10 people you see (statistically) is here illegally. (based on estimates of 30M illegal people in the US out of 300 million total population). I highly doubt that any other western nation even comes close to those numbers.
That's 10% of the population with a fake SSN or who don't have a SSN and are paid under the table. Either way someone is getting fucked.
dumping 1M bodies a year into the pool is depressing wages
This is simply not true. Economists are very clear on the fact that "the benefits that immigration brings to society far outweigh their costs". It is our poor immigration policies and lack of economic assistance to displaced and otherwise low income workers in the US which is suppressing wages, not immigrants. It is true that most economic benefit of immigrants is going to the wealthy, but that is only because of our government policies which do not redistribute that wealth at an appropriate level (what is appropriate is up for debate, but there is no honest debate of whether wealth inequality is rising at an unhealthy rate: it is).
I do have serious issues with this idea that our government has that the child of an illegal is somehow legal. I've read the constitution and that's not how I interpret it. I can't think of a single other country that would declare the child, of someone who has snuck in, to be a full citizen. It's asinine.
This practice made its way into our laws from English common law. Known as jus soli (Latin for "right of the soil"), birthright citizenship is guaranteed in about 30 other countries. Some countries do put limits, such as France requiring an additional 5 year residency condition (a pretty light restriction). It should always be remembered that no matter what law the parents may have broken, the child has done absolutely nothing wrong. That child has done nothing different than any child born to native parents.
Nevertheless, while illegal immigration might be declining (I'll take your word for it) we are still at around 10% illegal out of the entire population of the US. That's CRAZY. One out of every 10 people you see (statistically) is here illegally. (based on estimates of 30M illegal people in the US out of 300 million total population). I highly doubt that any other western nation even comes close to those numbers.
The United States, as the most prosperous nation in the world, is certainly a primary destination for legal and illegal immigrants. In addition to our high level of prosperity, we are also considered a nation of immigrants and that image helps us attract more immigrants than most nations. But we don't have the highest total number of illegal immigrants (India) or highest percentage of illegal immigrants by population (Russia). It makes sense that two Asian nations have the highest levels of illegal immigration since Asia has by far the highest total population of any continent.
You have a valid viewpoint of there being too much illegal immigrants in the US. I assume we have very different viewpoints on how to fix this, and objectively there is no absolutely correct way to handle immigration so I cannot just say you are wrong. To me the illegal immigration problem is primarily caused by our country not having an appropriate policy to handle the number of immigrants willing to come to the US, and handle the number of jobs in our economy which require their labor. Nations with high levels of incoming migration will be best suited to deal with the world's aging population, and we are very lucky to have tens of millions of migrants in our country contributing to our economy. According to the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, second generation immigrants are among the strongest fiscal and economic contributors in the US, contributing 30% more to our economy per person than native citizens. First generation immigrants do contribute less, but without them we couldn't get the prime drivers of our economy (their children).
That's 10% of the population with a fake SSN or who don't have a SSN and are paid under the table. Either way someon
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
This is simply not true. Economists are very clear on the fact that "the benefits that immigration brings to society far outweigh their costs". It is our poor immigration policies and lack of economic assistance to displaced and otherwise low income workers in the US which is suppressing wages, not immigrants.
I don't buy it.. 1,470 economists is a lot but it's not all of them and truth does not require consensus. Truth stands on its own. It's going to take more than a short blurb to convince me that 1,000,000 bodies added to the labor pool is not depressing wages when I can see it happening with my own eyes.
This practice made its way into our laws from English common law. Known as jus soli (Latin for "right of the soil"), birthright citizenship is guaranteed in about 30 other countries. Some countries do put limits, such as France requiring an additional 5 year residency condition (a pretty light restriction). It should always be remembered that no matter what law the parents may have broken, the child has done absolutely nothing wrong. That child has done nothing different than any child born to native parents.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
I know the law and the bit "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is where I take issue with our current policy. An illegal is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. They are subject to the jurisdiction of whatever country they come from. Sometimes it helps to look at an extreme example to see the minor nuances.. If we were at war with another country.. say... Cuba, just as an example, and lets imagine things had gone bad.. We were being occupied... If a female Cuban soldier gave birth, on US soil, would her child automatically be a citizen? I think we'd both agree that "No, her child would not be a citizen". Why? War? Invasion? I know it's an extreme example, but it would be lunacy to think that a foreign army could be creating little US citizens while invading.
It doesn't matter to me that the child is innocent. I'm not proposing it be punished. But to reject automatic citizenship for the child is not a punishment. It's the denial of a reward. You're absolutely right that it has done nothing wrong, but it's done nothing right either. It's neutral. Our current policy of not separating the child from the mother ends up rewarding the MOTHER for an illegal act. It further encourages women to attempt to give birth on US soil in violation of the law. That's why they are known as Anchor Babies. I disagree with this policy and will continue to vote against any who support it as is my legal right.
To me the illegal immigration problem is primarily caused by our country not having an appropriate policy to handle the number of immigrants willing to come to the US, and handle the number of jobs in our economy which require their labor.
I typically reject the notion, outright, that we need more immigrants for labor. I'm sorry but my grandparents worked the strawberry fields of California during the dust bowl. They moved here from Oklahoma and did field work.. i.e. our current citizens will do the work if the wages are appropriate. During that era the numbers of illegals was much lower and farmers had to pay more reasonable wages for labor. I also reject the idea that 1M immigrants per year is not adequate. I'm sorry but not everybody who wants in gets to come in. To suggest otherwise is... unreasonable in my opinion.