Trump Offered NASA Unlimited Funding To Put People on Mars by 2020, Report Says (nymag.com)

From a report, based on a book by Cliff Sims, who worked as a communications official for Trump on his presidential campaign and in the West Wing: As the clock ticked down, Trump "suddenly turned toward the NASA administrator." He asked: "What's our plan for Mars?" Lightfoot explained to the president -- who, again, had recently signed a bill containing a plan for Mars -- that NASA planned to send a rover to Mars in 2020 and, by the 2030s, would attempt a manned spaceflight. "Trump bristled," according to Sims. He asked, "But is there any way we could do it by the end of my first term?"

Sims described the uncomfortable exchange that followed the question, with Lightfoot shifting and placing his hand on his chin, hesitating politely and attempting to let Trump down easily, emphasizing the logistical challenges involving "distance, fuel capacity, etc. Also the fact that we hadn't landed an American anywhere remotely close to Mars ever." Sims himself was "getting antsy" by this point. With a number of points left to go over with the president, "all I could think about was that we had to be on camera in three minutes .. And yet we're in here casually chatting about shaving a full decade off NASA's timetable for sending a manned flight to Mars. And seemingly out of nowhere."

Comments

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

He lies 16.8 times per day, nobody cares anymore what he says all day long.

Re:Who cares?

[jellomizer]

Also, constitutionally he doesn't have the rights to do this. This is why there is a government shutdown right now. He wants to pay for the wall, an other part of the government doesn't. The House of Representatives has the power of the purse strings, so they will not fund this wall. So the president will not approve any budget without such funding.
If he had the ability to unlimited fund NASA, why doesn't he have the ability to fund for his wall.

Also of note even with unlimited funding, putting a Man on Mars by 2020 is impossible. To perform such a project new technologies need to be made and the mythical man month is in play. There is only so much the everyone can do at once until they start stepping on each others feet.

Re:Who cares?

[sexconker]

Of course he has the right to do this. All he has to is claim that it's needed for national security, and to declare a national emergency about it.
Remember all those emergency powers you granted past Presidents?

Trump does have exactly this ability with regards to the wall, and people have been expecting him to go that route. He's stated unequivocally that he has the power to do so (and he's 100% correct), but that he would prefer for an actual bill to get passed. It's effectively his nuclear option, and it would start a whole new level of shitstorm that no one is prepared for.

As for Mars, if a President really wanted to get it done and had an unlimited budget to do so, they'd tap the military to do it under the guise of NASA breakthroughs, ingenuity, and gumption. I have no doubt in my mind we can get someone there in a couple of years. The military has propulsion, guidance, and control systems at least 2 generations ahead of what's available publicly. But it would be a huge fucking waste.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

No new technologies need to be made. All you need is a ship, food and water, and someone willing to go. That's it.

Re:Who cares?

[Locke2005]

They have not yet solved the problem of humans surviving several months of radiation in space yet -- I'd call that a "new technology that needs to be made", although I suppose 100 tons of lead shielding would probably do the job...

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Realistically speaking if he wants re-election fodder, he doesnâ(TM)t need to put a person on mars by 2020, he just needs a departure for mars. Donâ(TM)t underestimate the value of leaving for mars

Re: Who cares?

[Type44Q]

It's been good not seeing you around; what happened??

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just really can't believe, that the US president can just declare national emergency on just any damn cause he wants to. There must be some rules to that too, aren't there?

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't realize 438 days was less than "several months". Perhaps you meant several years?

Re:Who cares?

[gtall]

No, you do not understand TrumpWorld. He isn't really interested about getting a man there and back again. If he gets marooned, Trump would be okay with that. If NASA claims they haven't solved the technological hurdles just yet, Trump will declare that no one knows more about interplanetary travel than he, and outline all the shortcuts (safety, coming back, etc.) that would be made to make it so.

Of course, most of NASA would leave for the private sector before poor suckers are launched at Mars, thereby dooming the endeavor. Trump would then declare it was diabolical plot by Hillary and Obama to make him look bad. FOX News would declare that it was a victory for the Deep State.

One of the aspects of having private sector space programs is that NASA employees have somewhere else to go. On the one hand, Republicans would cheer as they hand out the contracts to companies in their districts. On the other hand, they'd lament the fact that they cannot now claim intrepid victories for government under their watch. I think the former would win out since in their view government's job is to hand out contracts to companies in their districts, the people be damned.

Re:Who cares?

[Joce640k]

No new technologies need to be made. All you need is a ship, food and water, and someone willing to go. That's it.

They could easily use the space shuttle to fly there, I don't know why they haven't done it yet.

Re:Who cares?

[Joce640k]

Graphene works as a shield and is very lightweight.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

He'd have to demonstrate that the wall is needed due to an actual emergency. Having dead-eyed racist Stephen Miller claim that having our produce picked by cheap labor has been an emergency for decades is not going to cut it.

Re:Who cares?

[squiggleslash]

Or just a Tesla. They can launch a Tesla into space with four space suited astronauts (two in the front, two in the back.) Easy-peasy.

Re:Who cares?

[DickBreath]

Is it lies or is it delusions of adequacy?

Re:Who cares?

[Shotgun]

The last President did claim that all he needed was a pen and a phone and the knowledge of how to use them.

Re:Who cares?

[balbeir]

Also of note even with unlimited funding, putting a Man on Mars by 2020 is impossible. To perform such a project new technologies need to be made and the mythical man month is in play. There is only so much the everyone can do at once until they start stepping on each others feet.

Well, it's not totally impossible to put a man on mars by 2020. He may not be alive though.

Re:Who cares?

[painandgreed]

The shielding needed for a deep space habitat will need to be a composite due to the different types of radiation and the weight limits that could be allocated to shielding. There is EM radiation such as x-rays, charged particles coming from the sun, and cosmic rays in high energy neutrons coming from deep space which are all blocked in different amounts by different materials. It's going to require different materials together to provide the lightest form of shielding. This will hopefully be able to include the storage of water, fuel, and other materials in order to save weight and space. How much of the craft they'll need to shield will depend on how much space the crew will generally need, which might mean some areas where less time is spent might have less or no shielding. All of this is going to require testing which will also be dependent on things such as the food and water reclaimation systems which have also not been built yet to be as efficient and reliable as needed for a two year mission.

Re:Who cares?

[CohibaVancouver]

No new technologies need to be made.

They haven't yet figured out how to safely land several tons of humans and descent craft on Mars.

Machines? Yes, some, but not all, of the time.

But they don't know how to safely land people.

Re:Who cares?

[Immerman]

Where are you getting 438 days? Every proposal I've seen for sending humans to Mars has transit times in the range of a few months to a few weeks,depending on payload. Assuming we sent a SpaceX Starship carrying only a few people and only enough supplies to reach Mars (having sent the rest of the supplies ahead of time) you could cut the transit time way down.

And once you're on Mars (or the Moon), radiation pretty much stops being an issue unless you're stupid about it. A few meters of rock or twice that of sand offers as much radiation protection as the Earth's atmosphere, and we don't actually need that much to be reasonably safe.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Earth and Mars are between 50 and 400 million miles or so apart. Currently they are 150,000,000 miles apart.

So no, this is not a good window to get someone there, even if you are ok with launching tonight, going fast and not slowing down on the way down.

Because unlike faith, science doesn't need you to believe to affect your life. See gravity.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do all areas need to be protected? Can humans stay in their shielded sleeping pods enough of the day to make it easy?

Re:Who cares?

[WhiplashII]

OK, but he could say "there is a caravan of people coming, which amounts to an army threatening invasion, and the easiest way to deal with it is a wall."

That would be within his purview and emergency powers, at least close enough that it would likely pass supreme court review (in the current court, of course).

Just because you don't want something to happen doesn't mean it won't.

Re:Who cares?

[HornWumpus]

Low energy transfer orbit times are always about the half the average of the two bodies years. As the ratios change, 'half the average' breaks, but for earth and mars, close enough.

Re:Who cares?

[lgw]

Also, constitutionally he doesn't have the rights to do this.

He certainly has the right to champion it, and when the GOP controlled both houses he had a lot of effective power over the budget. Still not enough to get his wall, of course, but that's only because most Republicans opposed the wall (judge politicians by their actions, not their words: they had 2 years to fund it if they actually wanted it).

Re:Who cares?

[djinn6]

Safely is the key word. With unlimited funding and an unhealthy disregard for human lives, we can build and send millions of these crafts. At least a few people will survive the landing.

Re:Who cares?

[lgw]

Of course he has the right to do this. All he has to is claim that it's needed for national security, and to declare a national emergency about it.
Remember all those emergency powers you granted past Presidents?

He might eventually do that for the wall, though clearly he enjoys the current situation. But for increased NASA funding? That would be a heck of a story even for Trump!

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

He still has the power of the military. The military should be on the border laying landmines and setting up a free fire zone. Walls have historically not worked. We do not need a 10 billion dollar structure barrier. We need hard men to fight the invasion of equally hard men that are destroying the American way of life.

It is all about societal evolution. The strong society displaces the weak society. Decades of prosperity have created a pathological condition whereby soft people think it is virtuous to allow their house be invaded, their wives ravaged, and their children sold into the slavery of drug addiction. The Mexicans have know decades of hardship and have become a strong united force that is invading the Disunited States. Eventually the situation will correct itself. It might take a long long time though.

It does not take money. It takes strength and courage.

"The civilized virtues are useless you maintain contact with the Barbaric virtues"
-President Obama

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well then use the shielding already present. Send a team to turn an asteroid into a spaceship and send it to mars orbit. That would be exciting. The thing might even have fuel.

Re:Who cares?

[lgw]

They have not yet solved the problem of humans surviving several months of radiation in space yet -- I'd call that a "new technology that needs to be made", although I suppose 100 tons of lead shielding would probably do the job...

Not quite true. Your thinking in terms of getting to Mars and returning safely. Just not dying of radiation poisoning before you land? Much easier problem. More reasonably, there is some good lightweight shielding, as sibling post pointed out, which is good enough that you'd find plenty of people willing to take the risk. I believe radiation is just not the worst problem with long-term zero-g space flight - you can at least shield against radiation; bone loss is a much harder problem.

The big problem is just the massive delta-v needed for a manned Mars mission (with return), and the tyranny of the rocket equation. We simply can't build a rocket big enough to have that sort of delta-v budget (it's the stuff of "works in Kerbal Space Program", but not so much with real material limits). SpaceX imagines multiple launches, with several parts docked in orbit and many fuel launches.

We do have the tech to do that today, if cost were no issue, but the logistics just don't work. We have the tech to design the components, but not actual tested components, and that's many years of work. Then of course there's the multi-year wait for the launch window, then the travel time itself.

Re:Who cares?

[lgw]

Woah now, slow down with that wild optimism. It's only been proven that we can launch a 2-seater Tesla into space.

Re:Who cares?

[djinn6]

even with unlimited funding, putting a Man on Mars by 2020 is impossible.

Do you think the answer would be different if something twice the size of the Chicxulub asteroid was discovered heading towards Earth?

Would you like it to be?

To perform such a project new technologies need to be made

No. We know how to create artificial gravity, and we know how to protect ourselves from radiation. Supplying food, water and oxygen is already a solved problem. As is landing something the size of an SUV on Mars.

the mythical man month is in play. There is only so much the everyone can do at once until they start stepping on each others feet

The mythical man month only applies to individual projects. Not everyone needs to be on the same project. There could be thousands of separate efforts, delivering different parts of what's necessary. You can have a dozen entirely separate launches devoted to putting enough water in space, a dozen more for putting it on Mars, a few hundred for delivering people. At least a few of them will make it.

Re:Who cares?

[lgw]

Of course, most of NASA would leave for the private sector before poor suckers are launched at Mars

Most of NASA is the private sector. Very few people actually work directly for NASA, mostly project managers and administrators these days. The guys who build NASA rockets work for ULA, mostly, since the shuttle program ended.

It is great that the New Space Race is on, though, I agree with you there, but it has always been "private sector" doing most of the work, even in the 60s with the original Space Race. New Glenn vs Starship, place your bets (betting tip: New Shepard had a good launch today, while Star Hopper ... didn't).

Re:Who cares?

[Immerman]

Absolutely - but nobody is proposing low energy transfer orbits to get to Mars. You might send cargo that way, but even if the crew survived their health would be permanently devastated. Plus you'd need a lot more supplies and possibly a recycling system on board, which would slow things down dramatically. Take the same rocket with just the crew and minimal supplies and you'd get there a lot faster.

Re:Who cares?

[Shaitan]

At no point in the TFA does it say anything about unlimited funding the submitter added that.

Also with money as no object and a rocket city rednecks attitude they could certainly get there faster than 10 years.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the difference is that for the Apollo missions there was a hunger to do it, and for Mars it's just padding estimates because there's no sense of urgency whatsoever?

Re:Who cares?

[Kjella]

They have not yet solved the problem of humans surviving several months of radiation in space yet -- I'd call that a "new technology that needs to be made", although I suppose 100 tons of lead shielding would probably do the job...

Actually it's not that bad. Current estimates are that a Mars round trip will take about 60% of an astronaut's career limit and that below 16 feet of Martian soil radiation will be Earth level. With a reasonable surface budget you're straddling the career limits, but note that they mean +3% chance of dying from cancer, it's not like a lethal dose or anything. The biggest dynamic is solar flares which are fairly low power and also directional so possible to shield against. Most think there'll be an emergency shelter inside the water tank, because water is quite effective at those energy levels. There's also the galactic cosmic rays (GCRs) that you can't shield much against, but they aren't a blocker for an exploration mission. They'd make it really hard to make any kind of permanent settlement though.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure you understand the problems.

A. The space shuttle isn't that sturdy. It doesn't have the radiation shielding, to start. You could accelerate a little toward mars but it would have to turn belly-toward the sun for most of the trip and survival is doubtful. You really don't want that out in space for a couple months. It falls apart every time it lands.
B. It can't land and take off and land again (on Earth). So it's a one-way trip. As stated, you can put people on Mars by 2020, but they probably won't be alive. Leaving, once you get there on the Shuttle is a non-starter.
C. Not enough supplies. Half of the trip to Mars, which takes a few months, assumes that it is accelerating during the first half. The last half is deceleration. Then you somehow land and take off, then do it again? There's not enough O2, Food, Water, Fuel, etc without elongating the windows by large margins. You could pack it full of supplies, but that just makes everything harder to move, which takes more fuel and the optimal configuration doesn't get you to Mars and back.

I'm sure there's more, but that's just what is obvious.

Re:Who cares?

[Dan East]

You may be onto something here. The gyroscopic effect of the wheels, which can each be rotated individually, could be used to orient the vehicle. It already has climate control, slots for drink stowage, and a box for storing spacesuit gloves. Outgassing by cracking a window could be used to provide thrust if maneuvering was required.

Re:Who cares?

[Kaenneth]

How about we send Trump himself?

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, knowledge is 1000x more than Trump ever had.

Re:Who cares?

[mark_reh]

Declaring an emergency and then fighting about it in court is nuclear? Compared to laying off 800k government workers?

What's wrong with you?

Re:Who cares?

[uncqual]

The President typically proposes a budget and makes aspiration speeches about what he thinks the country should focus on and accomplish. Each year he can propose a budget with whatever funds for NASA they request so that is, in a sense, unlimited. I think it's reasonable to look at this through that lens. For example when JFK said "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...", he hadn't gotten approval in the budget for all funds necessary to do so.

As well, the NASA administrator was incorrect in, apparently, claiming that it wouldn't be possible to attempt a manned space flight to Mars by 2020. First, an "attempt" is only that -- I can "attempt" to fly to Mars by flapping my arms very fast (and I'll happily take the contract to perform that attempt - for a mere $100M). Second, I didn't see any requirement that a "manned" space flight to Mars even required that the person survive past launch - in fact, I'll bet you could find some rich terminally ill person who would happily pay to launch on a flight to Mars with just ten days of supplies (O2, food, water) and a "sleepy pill" (or helium or nitrogen -- whatever works best) to use just before the O2 ran out. Given the way Trump makes deals (even when in the rare instances where he keeps his side of the bargain), one should just ask what fine print is in the agreement before claiming attempting such a mission by 2020 is not possible.

Re:Who cares?

[ceoyoyo]

You can't do it in a few weeks. Well, you can, but it would require an insane amount of delta-v.

Transit times to Mars fall roughly around 600-800 days and 150-250 days.

Re:Who cares?

[skam240]

I think that would be a long shot even with our current Supreme Court. Those people in the caravan aren't armed to any real degree. Without that it's beyond a stretch to call them an invading army. I'm fairly certain at least a few of the conservative justices would balk at setting legal precedence giving the position of the president that much more power.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love this comment.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you not heard of the international space station? Itâ(TM)s going to blow your mind.

Re:Who cares?

[Immerman]

As you say, you can make the trip as short as you want, you just need to reduce the payload. And while hundreds of days is perfectly acceptable for hardware, it's not for humans, so we wouldn't do it that way.

The alternative to getting there fast, is radiation shielding, which basically means at least a few pounds per square inch of surface, and preferably several. 14.7psi will get you Earth-atmosphere class radiation shielding, since radiation shielding effectiveness is directly proportional to mass, and only lightly affected by density, but that translates to a shell of rock 3.9 meters thick. As a back-of-the-napkin calculation: The SpaceX Starship has a pressurized volume of ~1000m^3, which if it were a minimum-surface sphere would be 483 m^2, or 749,000in^2 . For convenience lets call it an even million square inches for the definitely-not-spherical rocket. That means a million pounds for each 1psi of radiation shielding - or ~5x the payload to orbit. Put enough shielding on the thing to keep people safe, and you'll never get off the ground, so you'd have to install it in orbit, and even than would make the delta-V to reach Mars outrageous.

So instead we have to go light. Not much shielding, not much payload, and fly like the devil himself is on your heels.

Re:Who cares?

[amicusNYCL]

What exactly is the difference in the landing vehicle? We've plopped a 900kg machine on the surface is gently as we could, why does it matter if that 900kg is full of metal or people?

Re:Who cares?

[amicusNYCL]

there is a caravan of people coming, which amounts to an army threatening invasion

Huh? A bunch of hungry migrants looking for a better life is akin to a professional armed military force trying to overthrow the government? How do you figure?

Re:Who cares?

[ceoyoyo]

It's not quite that simple. To go fast you need greater delta-v; because of orbital mechanics, to go more than a little bit faster you need a LOT more delta-v. Because of the need to carry fuel, the rocket equation tells us that our maximum delta-v is related to the specific impulse of our engine. It's a bit counter intuitive, but chemical engines can only let you go so fast. Making the non-fuel payload lighter helps, but it very quickly becomes an insignificant factor compared to the fuel mass. As long as you're using chemical rockets, launch windows, and the transit times they imply, are very much windows, with brick walls in between.

You could make a fast transit to Mars using ion or nuclear engines, but that's not off the shelf technology so it's not going to happen in the next two years.

Re:Who cares?

[CohibaVancouver]

We've plopped a 900kg machine on the surface is gently as we could, why does it matter if that 900kg is full of metal or people?

The Apollo LEM had a mass of 34,000 Kg, plus two astronauts, and that only supported the astronauts for 75 hours.

Even if you put the Mars habitation modules, food, rovers, ascent fuel and everything else down in separate landers (difficult in itself as it's all got to land together) you've still likely got 100 tons of lander and astronauts you have to safely put down in gravity twice that of the moon.

We haven't yet figured out how to do it.

Re:Who cares?

[UncleTogie]

a Mars round trip will take about 60% of an astronaut's career limit and that below 16 feet of Martian soil radiation will be Earth level.

We'd need to send a metric buttload of drones to prep the site first. Otherwise, the astronauts doing it when they got there would require some heavy digging tools in case they run into rock a few feet down, which would *dramatically* increase launch weight.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh, he's saying that's what Trump would say. Obviously it isnt true. Anyway the first thing any justice should ask is if they are such a threat, what idiot would build a wall instead of sending in the Army to defend the damn border with violence. But they're not the enemy and shame on us for even thinking that way when this entire country is built by immigrants. Even the "natives" migrated here from another continent long ago.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't believe Trump even asks this question. Can it happen in his term? The guy who was going to clean up DC is one of the WORST to have ever inhabited the white house. I think the answer is YES, but don't expect to get those people back here. He can blame their deaths on the fact that his stupid wall wasn't funded. His followers will believe anything apparently.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a screaming horde of violent criminals, waving flags of another country, throwing rocks, and trying to break into our country to steal welfare benefits is literally a fucking invasion, you absolute fucking moron.

Re:Who cares?

[amicusNYCL]

The Apollo LEM had a mass of 34,000 Kg, plus two astronauts, and that only supported the astronauts for 75 hours.

Ooohhhhhh.

I mean, just scale up the Curiosity retro-rockets, right? The retro-rockets just need to be, what, 6 times bigger? Plus fuel? And a giant sky crane?

Re: Who cares?

[triffid_98]

Unless they are contract workers (not paid directly by the government) don't these people get paid regardless? The shutdown may indeed delay payment but they're still getting paid.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's at least as threatening to the US as people trying to subvert democracy in Zimbabwe.

Go look up our current, massive and asinine list of national emergencies.

We warned you during Clinton's admin; we warned you during Dubya; we did Italian hands while trying to get it through your fucking heads with Obama.

Those who sow the wind, motherfuckers.

Re: Who cares?

[amicusNYCL]

Whoosh, he's saying that's what Trump would say. Obviously it isnt true.

Yeah, right. So, then is the Supreme Court going to back him up like he asserts? I don't think so. Therefore, I don't think it's an option for Trump.

Whoosh.

Re: Who cares?

[amicusNYCL]

Well, tough guy, don't let me stop you from showing pictures of this "screaming horde of violent criminals, waving flags of another country, throwing rocks, and trying to break into our country." Make sure they're actually violent criminals and that they actually have flags and are throwing rocks. I wouldn't want you to change the goalposts if you're going to throw out a bunch of hyperbolic bullshit.

Next, explain the logic behind a violent criminal who decides to sneak into another country, and decides to bring his giant flag to wave along the way. Because there's no better way to be stealthy than screaming while waving your foreign flag, right?

So, go ahead, show your evidence that the situation that you have been frightened into believing and that you shit your pants over daily is actually happening. Or, you know, shut the fuck up.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the jews have been proven to be so hard to eradicate like cockroaches, just send them all off to Mars' direction, the few that will get there might have a better chance of colonizing. Science done, Jews gone, win win

Re: Who cares?

[sg_oneill]

Yes but there's all sorts of flow on effects to the delay. Peoples insurances are lapsing. Rents are going overdue. Medical expenses are being unpaid for. Kids school fees. All of this over the Christmas /new year which is notoriously the worst time to be poor

Re:Who cares?

[Immerman]

Actually there is no maximum delta-V implied - delta-V increases with the logarithm of the fuel mass, and the logarithm increases increasingly slowly, but without any upper bound. In practical terms though the exponential increase in fuel requirements makes the diminishing returns unlikely to be worth it beyond some point.

You are right that we probably couldn't realistically make the trip in a few weeks with current technology though.

However, the typical Mars mission takes only ~150-300 days to reach Mars, and that's in a craft that launched directly from Earth's surface. Stop to completely refuel in high Earth orbit instead, as is a common feature of proposed crewed Mars missions, and your available delta-V increases dramatically.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ. Space nutters

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

So glad this is the first visible post.

Trump still thinks he's king. He isn't. There are two other branches of government.

Every time he tries pinning the shutdown on the Democrats, I remember that this shutdown started when the Republicans controlled the house, the Senate, and the executive. He couldn't get his own party to pay for it, now he's pretending it's someone else's fault for his screw-up.

The Left's Jimmy Carter. One term, and this is going to to hurt the Republicans.

Re:Who cares?

[Socguy]

Hello?! Trump doesn't need Congress because Mars is going to pay for it!

Re: Who cares?

[Thomas Charron]

They have the ability to override his veto, he's not "doing it".

Re:Who cares?

[brantondaveperson]

The military has propulsion, guidance, and control systems at least 2 generations ahead of what's available publicly.

They really don't.

Re:Who cares?

[quantaman]

OK, but he could say "there is a caravan of people coming, which amounts to an army threatening invasion, and the easiest way to deal with it is a wall."

That would be within his purview and emergency powers, at least close enough that it would likely pass supreme court review (in the current court, of course).

Just because you don't want something to happen doesn't mean it won't.

I doubt that even this court would buy it. It's just too obvious a ploy to get the money congress is refusing to allocate him. Which, is the entire point of the divided government in the US constitution.

I think the actual plan would be to declare an emergency as a way to justify ending the shutdown. I don't know if Trump thinks it would work but the administration basically expects it to fail, the plan there is to reopen the government and give Trump the SCOTUS to tweet at instead.

Re:Who cares?

[murdocj]

The last President actually had a clue.

Re:Who cares?

[murdocj]

The only problem is that it isn't true. Not that that stops trump. He doesn't even understand the concept that some things are "true".

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

But all these clowns are hypocrites who simply cant stand the fact for all trumps faults he is a better person than they are

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only absolute idiots without a functioning brain think the situation at the border isnt a security crisis

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha classic liberal trash logic, if i didnt see the pictures its fake! Bwahahaha i cant wait for 2020!!!

Re:Who cares?

[makerfixer]

"Remember when I told you this was a slippery slope when you cheered your guy doing it?" "Sure, but this is so much worse" "Yeah, that's how slopes work...." (heard it on Instapundit today...) I still want him to apply the DACA philosophy to gun laws... Executive order directing ATF to ignore all law violations... If for no other reason then to go to a direct path in the courts to eliminate those executive powers for all time.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many refugees live at _your_ apartment, shyster?

Re:Who cares?

[ceoyoyo]

I probably should have said a *practical* maximum delta-v. The point remains, you cannot just go as fast as you want, as asserted by the OP.

If you look at the dv required it costs a lot to make the transit much shorter. For the window in 2019 it looks like you might actually better off waiting until 2020. In that window, 150 days is about the optimal. If you want to make that 100 days you pretty much double the dv required, and that's close to the rule-of-thumb limit of twice your exhaust velocity. You could trim that down to 80 days if you really, really wanted to go all out, but that's about it.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. 800k isnâ(TM)t nearly enough. Maybe we could stop paying the freeloaders overseas too. College tuition or paycheck: pickone.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

"dead-eyed racist"

Wait - President Trump hired a Progressive??!!

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Smug, half-educated, freedom-hating shysters sure do hate the idea of America retaking the lead in space exploration.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

r[ap]efugees

Re: Who cares?

[reanjr]

There were. Congress has slowly - through precedent - eroded its own powers of oversight.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember a bunch of hypocrites whining and moaning about a certain dictator president named Obama for 8 straight years.

It's so predictable Trumps nonsense is completely excused. It's like being in a cult.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Extra judicial killing of American citizens.
Classy.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

The right : illegal immigration is full of crazy criminal rapists and "some" good people

The left : illegal immigration is full of brown women and children who have been oppressed and just want a better life.

Both are fantasy.

If it's anything like Europe it's largely economic migrants, largely men*, and there is a significant minority (Way above the demographic average) who are criminal and looking for opportunities to exploit or fleeing crime elsewhere.

Forcing everyone to pass through the same door so you know who they are and can have a process is simplistic, yet reasonable and effective.

Re: Who cares?

[c6gunner]

Earth and Mars are between 50 and 400 million miles or so apart. Currently they are 150,000,000 miles apart.

So no, this is not a good window to get someone there, even if you are ok with launching tonight, going fast and not slowing down on the way down.

The distance fluctuates on a more or less annual basis. No, tonight wouldn't be a good time to launch, but Trump didn't ask his question yesterday; he asked in early 2017. That means that between the time he asked his question, and the end of his hypothetical second term, there would be some 6 or 7 ideal launch windows. Between time he asked his question and new years 2020 there would be at least 3 or 4.

As a matter of fact the closest approach will occur this year, so if NASA could somehow have put together a mission in 2 years, the alignment would have been ideal to do it a couple months from now.

Because unlike faith, science doesn't need you to believe to affect your life. See gravity.

The problem is that you're hiding the science behind your politics.

Re: Who cares?

[c6gunner]

Did my math wrong; the closest approach was in 2018. There will be another one in 2020 that's just about as good. After that the closest approach starts to get further away for the next decade or so.

Doesn't change anything, just correcting the details.

Re: Who cares?

[c6gunner]

Well then use the shielding already present. Send a team to turn an asteroid into a spaceship and send it to mars orbit.

And how do you plan to shield that team? I guess if you use Mexican miners you don't have to worry about it?

Re: Who cares?

[c6gunner]

You could just look for caves. We already know of a few on Mars, so just land close to it.

Or old Lava tubes. We know about a few of those also.

Why dig when nature already did it for you? Build a base in an existing hole, then operate out of those if/when you decide to go construct habitats elsewhere.

Re: Who cares?

[c6gunner]

No, you do not understand TrumpWorld. He isn't really interested about getting a man there and back again. If he gets marooned, Trump would be okay with that.

Lots of us are ok with that. The astronauts of Apollo 8 figured they had about a 50/50 chance of coming home alive, and they were willing to take that chance. I'm sure I'm not exactly a prime astronaut candidate, but if NASA offered me the opportunity to go to Mars with those odds, I'd take them up on it.

Life without risk is pretty fucking boring. I'd much rather die doing something amazing than live to be 100 by avoiding all risk.

Re: Who cares?

[c6gunner]

Perfect; then he goes down in the history books as the first man to Tweet from the surface of Mars.

Re: Who cares?

[c6gunner]

The military should be on the border laying landmines and setting up a free fire zone. Walls have historically not worked.

Historically, the times when walls haven't worked, militaries haven't either.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

true, there is a security crisis: a bunch of heavily armed pricks keep on harrassing immigrants. they ought to be taken off the government payroll, disarmed, and sent off someplace where they won't constitute such a menace to the general public

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

And with that clue, he abandoned Iraq to ISIS, increased health care premiums 40% across the board, doubled the national debt, and increased racial tensions to levels not seen since the 60s. Trump is a genius at uniting the country in comparison.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Faith also doesn't need you to believe to affect your life. Just wait and see.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

And when that _ACTUALLY_ happens we can send a platoon to deal with it. Till then, go back on your meds, and put down the pipe.

Also, stop being such a scared shitless pussy. Roaches are braver than you people.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true either. Their criminal element isn't above average... usually less. And yes, it usually is people looking for a better life.

And coming across the boarder to look for criminal opportunities has a very low ROI. Its actually FAR easier to fly in on tourist visas, disappear, and just stay. Why are there so many people who don't know this simple shit?

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the list of security issues... it's really really far down. A very small percentage of illegals walk across the boarder. You want to tackle illegal immigration, go round up all the people who overstayed (~75%) their legal visas. Or do better background checks at the ports where the vast majority of illegals come in... airports.

Obama and Bush actually held back and deported more illegals than Trump has in the same time. Trump has a long way to go to catch up. But then again, he is just all talk, Twitter, and tantrums. No actual progress.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Filipinos, Indonesiams, and Nepalese built the middle east. And they have worse safety standards than Mezican miners. Expand your world view a bit!

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man, way too many comments to read. I think trump should merely ask for the most reasonable plan from NASA without worrying about a budget, ask them to choose a version that includes a lift off before end of 2020, and the story will tell itself. Imagine trump telling the story over the next six years and not having to ask for the story from somewhere else. Seriously what could be more literally exciting than a play by play on the journey to mars from the orange man himself?

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes the caravan has been mostly fighting age males with few women and children. This is FN PRECISELY WHAT YOU EXPECT DURING AN FN INVASION YOU FN FOOLS!!!

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too busy looking at the pictures of children in cages taken in 2014 and 2015.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You are lying.

The criminal rate amongst immigrants is lower than the general population.

The criminal rate amongst illegal immigrants, ignoring that they are all technically criminals, is between 3x and 5x higher than the general population.

You purposefully conflate the distinction, knowing that you are lying. We understand that you have no actual rebuttal, and accept your tacit defeat.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are breathtakingly wrong.

Sex trafficking across the border is not a Republican fabrication. It is a major crisis that impacts the most vulnerable women and children on earth, and is aided dramatically by an open border.

Forcing migrants to cross at a port of entry will save the lives of thousands of people whom you ostensibly pretend to want to help.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's estimated that over 2,000 people cross illegally every day. Literally millions of people per year. This is not a "minor issue" in any capacity. Not even the Democrats are making this argument.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

The distance fluctuates on a more or less annual basis.

Actually, the harmonic between the two orbits is about 781 days. Plus, the closest approach distance isn't the same on every orbit, it's getting bigger at the moment and will continue to do so for many years (I can't do the maths for that one as quickly though)

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

More than twice that daily number is needed to make âliterally millionsâ ...

Re: Who cares?

[amicusNYCL]

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Re:Who cares?

[whitroth]

Well, yes. He does have six months to come to Congress, and explain why it should go on longer.

On the other hand, there is NO minimum time... meaning, as the papers have pointed out, he can sign it, and the Speaker of the House can call for a vote then and there to end it.

Re: Who cares?

[Locke2005]

The ISS is within Earth's Thermosphere, and still protected by Earth's magnetic field. Granted, human habitation on Mars would be in caves, which would effectively block cosmic radiation, so the transit flight is the only problem./

Re:Who cares?

[Immerman]

Agreed. However, the practical maximum is a LOT faster than needed for a Hohmann transfer orbit. And as an added bonus the faster you go, the less distance you have to travel, since you don't have to travel nearly as far around the sun. (even as measured from the rotating Earth's-orbit frame we start in)

Besides which I've not heard any of the experts challenge Musk's claim that a 60-90 day transit time is practical to achieve. That tells me it's not even getting severely close to the practical limits for a rocket of that size. Heck, past Mars missions fall in the range of 158 to 333 days to make the trip, and they've all been flights directly from the Earth's surface, with no orbital refueling and all the much more drastic limitations that puts on the mission profile.

Re:Who cares?

[ceoyoyo]

Musk's 2016 proposal was 80-150 days using a 6 km/s interplanetary orbit injection delta-v. That follows the rule of thumb that (for a single stage) you can practically get dv equal to about twice your exhaust velocity. His plan is to burn pretty much ALL his dv on that transfer insertion and enter Mars' atmosphere at interplanetary speeds. The spaceship would then either stay there (as a habitat), or refuel at Mars for the return.

Refuelling at the destination (or not coming back) definitely lets you go faster. But since we're considering what might be close to possible on Trump's timeline, I don't think refuelling at Mars is in the cards.

Musk also said the transit time might go as low as 30 days in the distant future, but for that he must be imagining some new type of engine.

Re:Who cares?

[Immerman]

Ah, yes. If you're planning to carry enough fuel for the return trip, that does alter the picture quite dramatically. Though even without fuel manufacturing on Mars, there is the option of sending one or more fuel tanker rockets ahead on a much more fuel-efficient trajectory, so that you can refuel in Mars orbit, both before landing and again before returning to Earth. You can even still use the atmosphere for braking to orbital speeds.

Re: Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol retard

Re:Who cares?

[ceoyoyo]

Definitely. Unfortunately there's only one viable launch window (in 2020) so you'd have to send your tanker and your crewed ship at about the same time. That more or less doubles the chance of failure, since two ships have to work correctly instead of just one, and it probably wouldn't be worth the week or so you could save in transit.

For a sane plan, not tied to the US election schedule, you'd send the tankers (or fuel production facilities) ahead of time, make sure they were working correctly, then launch the crew in a subsequent window. Most of the Mars plans through the years have included something like that.

Re:Who cares?

[brantondaveperson]

Eventually the situation will correct itself

Yes, it will. America will collapse.

He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[nospam007]

What makes you think this will be different?

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[GameboyRMH]

Well he could try the same tactic: Explicitly lay out a plan on how the Martians will pay for it, and then act like he never did so and shut down the government until taxpayers pay for it (or more likely, until he gets bored, or people get so tired of his BS that they're ready for a political impeachment).

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

They do have a honking big diamond.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

If Trump said he wanted to go to Mars, all the liberals who complained for DECADES about low NASA funding and lack of manned exploration of other planetary bodies turn on a dime and suddenly demand an end to the manned space program.

You people are like robots built by the retarded.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

That's true, most in congress cannot tell the difference a wall and a monumental project like this. Besides, the democrat will go to great length to sabotage the project and argue helping the needy is far more important, or climate change.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[DickBreath]

Trump has a plan to get his stupid wall, and it might work.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Space Nutters exist in large quantities. Wall Nutters are rarer.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats a bunch of BS. The tax payers can afford to fund 5 billion dollars. Hell its a rounding error for most federal projects.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[GameboyRMH]

True, but such amounts are rarely spent on something so useless or pointlessly ecologically destructive.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the complete destruction of our culture? It's happening! If you don't stop the illegals from entering. Something has to be done.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't. Democrats don't fund anything worthwhile. It takes away from bribing potential new voters with other people's money.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

So Pelosi willl crush going to mars also. Nice, dems, just nice.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[sjames]

If only he could get the stupid Mongorians to stop breaking down his shitty wall.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[lgw]

True, but such amounts are rarely spent on something so useless or pointlessly ecologically destructive.

You clearly know nothing of federal budgets! Expensive and pointlessly destructive is 90% of government.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[lgw]

Best comment today. As I keep saying, there's just no way the Democrats are going to win this contest of toddler petulance. Some Dems still have a little dignity, after all: they'll never beat Trump's perfectly-optimized build of 100% ego, 0% dignity.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between someone saying in an informal discussion "Hey, if you had unlimited money could you get to Mars by 2020?" and an actual policy decision to offer unlimited money to attain a goal. This is nothing.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[farble1670]

Thats a bunch of BS. The tax payers can afford to fund 5 billion dollars. Hell its a rounding error for most federal projects.

I wonder why the wall didn't get funded when Trump had both houses in his back pocket. Hmmm. What could it be?

Trump doesn't want the wall. What he wants is to further polarize his base. He wants to be able to say "I tried to give to safety but they voted against it". Polarization is great for politicians. They can get away with anything because whatever terrible thing they do, it's better than the other side.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha.

Trump should sell arms to Iran, and use the proceeds to build the wall.

The same way Reagan did when Congress refused to fund the Contras:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[serviscope_minor]

You haven't seen Trump's approval ratings. They've been dropping steadily since the whole thing started. That means the Democrats have already won. The only question left is by how much.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Dems are winning so far, it's just hard to predict the future to when / how it will end.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[lgw]

They're still more then double congress's approval rating. Anyway, Trump DGAF about approval ratings, as that would require a bit of dignity.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[serviscope_minor]

They're still more then double congress's approval rating.

So? You were referring to the president, not congress. And besides, the congress approval ratings have been in the toilet for ages.

Anyway, Trump DGAF about approval ratings, as that would require a bit of dignity.

Well, at least we agree he has none of that.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[HornWumpus]

Iran was in danger of losing to Iraq at that point.

The stalemate had to be maintained.

That was Sunni/Shia war #175, they are on #176 in Syria/Yemen/Iraq right now. But good news, we've got a very experienced crew at maintaining that stalemate.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[tquasar]

Thanks for that image, now I'm blind.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[GameboyRMH]

Yawn, ethno-nationalism is for dimwits.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you telling us for? We're not paying for it, Mexico is.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Political impeachment? At this point the only political thing going on here is NOT impeaching him. The man has confessed to obstruction of justice, threatened a witnesses in a federal investigation, and subverted our national security to our most aggressive adversaries, all in public on live TV!

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[subie]

Seriously, have you bothered to read the actually sampling data for those polls? They "ALL" have more democrats and independents than republicans responding to their polls. you can't trust any of them. BTW, before you go there, I'm a democrat.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[subie]

no they aren't, in fact there you are starting to see democrat congress members asking Pelosi to negotiate with the President.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you talking about with destruction of our culture? A wall isn't going to keep Republicans out, you know. They're already here, and over half of them are even legal.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[subie]

Trump never at any point said Mexico was going to cut a check to pay for the wall. What he meant is that because of the trade agreements, Mexico will pay for it one way or another. Why can't my fellow democrats do a little research??

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

Combine the ideas! Maybe now he wants to build a Martian Wall. It might even be more useful than one on Earth, just as some sort of art piece.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

That is literally white supremacism. Every ethnicity except whites widely engages in ethno-nationalism. You just called them all "dimwits".

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[quenda]

How about the complete destruction of our culture? It's happening! If you don't stop the illegals from entering. Something has to be done.

That may be a valid, if overstated, argument, but a wall is not the answer.

Walls did not keep the Mongol hordes out of China, or the Britons out of Roman England.
They did not keep the zombi^Wwhite walkers out of the Seven Kingdoms, and they sure ain't going to keep illegal immigrants from the US.

There are better solutions, and first we need to deal with the dependence on low-cost undocumented labor for the agricultural sector in the US.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Insanity Defense]

If Trump said he wanted to go to Mars,

If Trump said that, the Democrats (and lots of Republicans) would fall all over themselves to get the funding.

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for small government and fiscal conservatism, money no object so long as its not the Dems spending it?

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

What a joke. There is no greater petulance than Mitch McConnell, Republicans can never criticize their own it's absolutely cult like.

The right can't police their own but expect other far right social conservatives like muslims to do so. They aren't an example for anything but childish behavior

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[DeVilla]

You aren't thinking big picture. Consider how the Democrats view him as the ultimate in naive, inept corruption. And consider how they will automatically consider a manned trip to Mars to be fatally impossible as long as Trump is in the White House.

And then consider how Trump likes hotels. If we have a chance to get people to Mars, they might be able to convince him to forgo a second term in the hopes of building the first Martian Hotel and declare himself Martian Dictator.

How could the Dems pass that up?

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[cyn1c77]

Well he could try the same tactic: Explicitly lay out a plan on how the Martians will pay for it, and then act like he never did so and shut down the government until taxpayers pay for it (or more likely, until he gets bored, or people get so tired of his BS that they're ready for a political impeachment).

No, not the Martians... the (illegal) aliens will pay for it!

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[GameboyRMH]

Most countries don't engage in ethno-nationalism to any great extent - the US is one of the worse offenders right now. Stupidity knows no color. But if you want to argue that it does, better check what your house is made of before you throw stones...

Re:He can't even get the money for his stupid wall

[Anonymous Coward]

If they build wall high enough, then it would reach Mars, so effectively, anyone who ties to climb the all, will end up on Mars instead. This solves so many problems, that it must be no-brainer to just go out and do it!

Just realised...

[YuppieScum]

...that he reminds me of Verruca Salt - "I want it NOW!"

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of a cross between her and the chubby motormouth kid who can't stop talking or stealing and turns into a blueberry and gets rolled the fuck out.

Re:Just realised...

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

He needs the same answer: "Little girl, don't touch that squirrel's nuts!"

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that he reminds me of Verruca Salt - "I want it NOW!"

So, send him to Mars, NOW! He can start work on Trump Tower Elysium adn be there to shake Elon Musk's hand whenever he gets there. Hell of a photo op, and a win, win, win in everyone's book.

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he asked, didn't he? Isn't that what a leader is supposed to do? How is a real estate developer supposed to know the intricacies of space travel?

I mean, Obama didn't know jack about health care, so he went to the insurance lobby for help. And you guys LOVE that.

Re:Just realised...

[Jason Levine]

He's all of the "bad kids" in Wonka combined. He wants everything for himself (NOW) like Veruca, he watches TV like Mike, he eats like Augustus, and while he doesn't chew gum like Violet (that I know of), substitute Twitter and you have the final piece in place. Someone get Trump a "golden ticket" and a tour of Willy Wonka's factory.

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

if he had offered Elon unlimited funding to get to mars by 2020 on the day of his inauguration, I bet it would be achieved.

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you imagine the ratings for The Amazing Race: Mars with NASA and SpaceX, both launching their respective astronuts to see who gets there first?

The advertising dollars would more than pay for the unlimited funding.

"...4, 3, 2, 1, Rocket...YOU"RE FIRED!"

Re:Just realised...

[squiggleslash]

Well, kinda. Elon would have said "I'll do it by 2018!" and then in 2020 he'd have landed a "craft", probably a Tesla Model X, in New Jersey, and everyone would clap and say "Hooray for Elon Musk, he did it!" and would have forgotten the original promise was to fly a spaceship to Mars.

Re:Just realised...

[YuppieScum]

Bloody hell, you're right... except that he's already got his Golden Ticket thanks to gullible Americans and scheming Russians.

Now, if only Wonka would come along, lock him in a glass box and fire him through the roof...

Re:Just realised...

[balbeir]

Bloody hell, you're right... except that he's already got his Golden Ticket thanks to gullible Americans and scheming Russians.

Now, if only Wonka would come along, lock him in a glass box and fire him through the roof...

All the way to mars. Hmm....

Re:Just realised...

[turbidostato]

"Can you imagine the ratings for The Amazing Race: Mars with NASA and SpaceX, both launching their respective astronuts to see who gets there first?"

The point is not going there, but going there are return -safe.

[The US] "should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is not going there, but going there are return -safe.

Who the fuck is going to pay to bring Trump or Musk back from Mars?!?

That "whoosh" noise wasn't a Mars rocket.

Re:Just realised...

[lgw]

Can you imagine the ratings for The Amazing Race: Mars with NASA and SpaceX, both launching their respective astronuts to see who gets there first?

NASA doesn't build rockets, the private sector does. What's left of the old school is now ULA, which still launches most NASA stuff, but NASA has used SpaceX as well. AFAIK, Virgin Galactic is the only company with its own astronauts (assuming we count 80 km for astronaut wings, as was the tradition).

The New Space Race is currently between Blue Origin (New Glenn) and SpaceX (Starship). Virgin Galactic is also doing exciting stuff, but they're aiming lower.

Re:Just realised...

[epine]

... and while he doesn't chew gum like Violet ...

No, I think you nailed it: Trump's Twitter feed is imbued with an unmistakable, charismatic cud-like mass grass-roots mastication on a truly mastodonian scale.

Tremendously territorial animal. Terribly near-sighted. Engage cautiously. Walk tall, and carry a huge shovel.

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey old man, the phrase you were looking for was Golden Shower. Easy to grammatically confuse, but you'll definitely realize a real-life confusion!

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww...

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Kennedy reading out a speech written by someone else. Inspirational.

Trump says to (without a pre-written speech) NASA "get to the moon in 2 years and I'll give you an unlimited budget to do it."

And you get an "orange man bad" reaction from this nerd site. That's leftist wankery politics taking over this site.

The correct answer is - "Sir, given all the complexities we'd have to overcome I'm honestly not sure we could get to Mars in such a tight time frame without huge risks and disastrous outcomes along the way... but NASA is full of people who who would jump at the chance to make history again, just like 1969. I'd personally work myself to death for the opportunity."

Re: Just realised...

[c6gunner]

SpaceX has it's own astronauts too ... they just haven't flown yet!

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, Obama didn't know jack about health care, so he went to the insurance lobby for help. And you guys LOVE that.

He took Mitt Romney's plan.

Re:Just realised...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, except him sacrificing his own money and time to help the citizens of USA. So its EXACTLY like the bad kids in Wonka, except the complete opposite... I guess I will never understand the double-think required to hate Trumph.

Re:Just realised...

[q4Fry]

The point is not going there, but going there are return -safe.

I don't completely agree with you. Just landing a (still-) living human on Mars would be an incredible feat. Practical? Maybe not. But still incredible, given the track record of things sent to the surface of Mars.

HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

And if any Democrat President had offered unlimited funding to get a human mars landing in 4 years we'd be applauding the progressive actions to move technology and human progress forward.
Or have we forgotten that Obama shut down the space program altogether?

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already forgotten Barak the magic negro completely.
How young do you have to be to believe one sack of shit is better than any other.

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Zero__Kelvin]

When creating your false narrative you should try to choose something at least conceivable. Nobody else, Republican or Democrat would ever suggest such a ridiculous and obviously ego catering idea. Indeed, if "Obama" did this the only question anyone would be asking is "where did Trump get the Obama suit?"

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[ShanghaiBill]

Nobody else, Republican or Democrat would ever suggest such a ridiculous and obviously ego catering idea.

Sure they would. They just wouldn't do it publicly.

With Trump, there is no filter. What he says in private is what he has in public. This is what his supporters love, and his detractors hate.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[KixWooder]

Or have we forgotten that Obama shut down the space program altogether?

https://www.nasa.gov/

Seems to be working for me?

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

SPACE FORCE!! to MARS! and BEYOND!

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[ClickOnThis]

And if any Democrat President had offered unlimited funding to get a human mars landing in 4 years we'd be applauding the progressive actions to move technology and human progress forward.

Or have we forgotten that Obama shut down the space program altogether?

Nice troll.

TL/DR? Okay, here you go:

The Space Shuttle program was extended several times beyond its originally envisioned 15-year life span because of the delays in building the United States space station in low Earth orbit—a project which eventually evolved into the International Space Station. It was formally scheduled for mandatory retirement in 2010 in accord with the directives President George W. Bush issued on January 14, 2004 in his Vision for Space Exploration.[

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Opportunist]

Nah. We'd also call him desperate to pull a publicity stunt because he feels like his approval ratings are sliding.

To Mars in 4 years. From what is essentially standstill. Keep on dreaming.

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Zero__Kelvin]

No they wouldn't, because they aren't so stupid and uneducated that they would think it was possible. And Trump didn't do this in public dumbshit. He did it in a private meeting, and it was so fucking stupid that they couldn't stop talking about it.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice sig.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Locke2005]

Pay attention, please! The Democrats are now the party of fiscal conservative (See the Pay-Go resolution in the House). As far as I can tell, racism is the only thing the Republicans still have going for them... BUILD THAT WALL!

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[penandpaper]

shuttle program != space program

The shuttle program is one aspect of the space program. You do not need to conflate things like that in order to disprove the AC.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[jellomizer]

This isn't democrats vs republicans. It is that Trump is an Insane Idiot, not fit to be president. With perhaps the exception of Ted Cruse, any of the other people who ran for president under the Republican Ticket, would had done a much better job running the country. Sure the Democrats would still reject most of his policies, but there would be a degree of civility with it.

Obama didn't shut down the space program, he did reduce it. Mostly because the Shuttle fleet is aged and dangerous, limited exploration with NASA based craft and the rise of SpaceX and Privately funded space craft, means that space flight doesn't need to be run by the government as much as it did before.

The biggest thing, was after the Moon landings, we have more or less stuck to low earth orbit. Carter, Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama never did much to go past earth orbit. the ISS was the only big thing in terms of manned space flights.

Trump doesn't care about politics, or practicality, He just wants a monument to his Ego. While to be president you need a big Ego, however their Ego boost is attempted to be under the good that they do, not with what they could get away with.

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

Also.. he didn't demand it. He asked a question.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3520...

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[ClickOnThis]

The point is that Obama did not "shut down the space program altogether". He did cancel the Constellation program because, in his words, it was "over budget, behind schedule, and lacking in innovation." He and other officials subsequently restored development of the Orion capsule, along with the Ares I lift stage and a Heavy Launch Vehicle stage to replace Ares V.

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Zero__Kelvin]

You are the only one I can see using the word demand. It's build your own straw man day!!!

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

HA! You have a much more rosy image of our retard lawmakers than most. It isn't just Trump. They're all dull knives.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[squiggleslash]

The very reason why we consider Obama a better President is that he wouldn't promise unlimited funding for someone so unnecessary. Hell, he didn't even promise unlimited funding for infrastructure, and that's still urgently needed.

It's bad enough when Trump defenders come up with "Oh, so it's bad when Trump does it but I don't hear any complaints when Obama did something that's not actually the same thing at all and was widely criticized at the time by the left", but "Oh, you'd support something completely stupid and reckless if it were proposed by someone you support precisely because he wouldn't do anything stupid and reckless" line is a whole new level of stupid.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Sarten-X]

This isn't democrats vs republicans. It is that Trump is an Insane Idiot, not fit to be president.

Precisely.

My thoughts while reading TFS were "Unlimited funding sounds silly", then "Mars by 2020... that's ridiculously aggressive..." and I started thinking about the planetary motions involved, and current launch capabilities (for humanity, not just NASA), and started constructing a timetable in my head. They'd need to launch by early 2020, with supplies for a year, and we'd still need some way to get them home... it just isn't going to happen.

None of that has anything to do with who's in the White House. Even with unlimited funding, there is reality to be dealt with. Space is big. Rocket science is hard. Humankind has not yet built a spacecraft that is capable of landing humans on another planet (with planet-scale gravity) and taking off again, let alone actually returning them to Earth. If we don't return them to Earth, human society has not reached a point where it's generally acceptable to send people to their certain death.

"But is there any way we could do it by the end of my first term?"

Again, my thought: "Oh, of course. That's why it's a ridiculous date. He wants a headline."

Past presidents had reasons for their decisions, however they affected NASA's funding. I may not agree with those reasons or their priorities, but at least they had American societal interests in mind. Trump is only interested in his own brand.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

Your reply only pertains to OP's second paragraph.

Love the smell of conflation in the morning.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad enough when Obama defenders whine "well he wuz a smarter president because he wuz fiscally responsible" when he WASN'T as the budget and deficit skyrocketed while he was in office but then frothingly attack Trump for asking a question in a private meeting about moving the space program forward (which Obama was ADAMANTLY AND PROVABLY against) and which NEVER ended up happening anyway as stupid and reckless.
So was going to the Moon in 8 years - but we managed to pull that off.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[ClickOnThis]

See my reply to penandpaper above.

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Zero__Kelvin]

Many are indeed "dull knives" while some are very smart, but Trump is the only one cutting his shitty steaks with a spoon.

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump has a lot of filters. That's why he won't talk to Mueller or answer questions under oath. He is a feckless, cowardly blow hard. He knows better than the generals, has a secret plan to defeat isis, and yet his crippling bone spurs in the foot that he cant even remember which side it was, let him be a draft dodger five times. He was for the war before he was against it.

Trump is not honest and open, he is stupid and careless. That's why he says there are good people on both sides of a klan rally.

He is also a terrible business man with a half dozen bankruptcies, who would have done better if he put his daddies money into the S&P 500. Probably wouldn't be in debt to Russian controlled bankers either then. Too bad we can't see his taxes. There's another filter...

Go ahead and shift goal posts now.

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad, sad state of affairs when not one person sticking up for trump, is logged in. 99% of the trump dick riding is from troll ACs. The other 1% are true trump supporters.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[djinn6]

There's no funding available. Nor is there political will to provide it. That's the real impossibility here.

A lot of the other "impossible" things would suddenly become possible if the deadline was a huge asteroid coming our way. For one, we would probably restart Project Orion and stop worrying about launch windows.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[lgw]

What does a wall have to do with racism? It won't affect legal immigration. The voters in a democracy benefit from the ability to control immigration. The richest 100 families are the ones who will be hurt by the ability to control immigration - gotta keep labor costs down. This is why neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want the wall: it would hurt those actually in power.

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Darth]

Trump is the only one cutting his shitty steaks with a spoon.

in his defense, all of the forks and knives were dirty because he used them to eat a pizza.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

> human society has not reached a point where it's generally acceptable to send people to their certain death.

I'm happy that humanity has reached a point where it's NO LONGER acceptable to send people to their certain or likely deaths. In the olden days and in certain states this was certainly acceptable.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't liberals post anything that isn't deceitful in some way? Apparently not.

You forgot to continue your TL;DR, so let's finish it for you:

Although the retirement was planned and roughly in line with what was expected out of STS without further upgrades, the planned replacement for the STS, the Constellation program was cancelled the year before STS concluded.

Who killed the replacement for the Space Shuttle? Barack Obama himself.

on February 1, 2010, President Barack Obama announced a proposal to cancel the program, effective with the passage of the U.S. 2011 fiscal year budget ... Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 on October 11, which shelved the program.

So there it is, asshole. Bush set a program in place to replace the Space Shuttle with a newer, better system and Obama killed it. So try and stop with the fake news you fucking dishonest piece of shit.

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Locke2005]

Google "Florida Secretary of State Michael Ertel resigns after blackface images emerge". I'll wait. The (R), it doesn't just stand for Republican!

Re:HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[lgw]

Which has what to do with the wall? I mean, I'd support a wall to keep Florida Man inside Florida, but ...

Re: HURR DURR TRUMP DUM

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama and other officials subsequently restored development of the Orion capsule, the Ares I lift stage, and a heavy launch vehicle to replace the planned Ares V.

The manned space program may have been delayed, but it's totally wrong to claim that Obama shut down the space program altogether.

It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like someone is not used to having a boss. Managers ask unknowingly ridiculous things all the time. It is called having a job.

J

Re:It is called a boss

[jwymanm]

Exactly. It could've even just been a fun quick question to ask. Everyone is on red alert for Trump to do or say something wrong. He does that anyway but how many damn hit pieces do you need for one person?

Re: It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

One of Trump's biggest weaknesses is not having a large enough pool of qualified following. What needed to happen on day 1 after the inauguration is replace 100% of Obama's appointees.

Re:It is called a boss

[bob4u2c]

Exactly.

Bosses sometimes ask this to see what the bottleneck is. Sometimes you cite things they can control; like I would need about $1Mil to get the equipment for just testing that idea, or I would need at least a team of 12 people for a year to finalize the plan. Those are things a boss can effect if they see the project as worthwhile to them.

Now if you come back and say, if we launched today all the supplies and a person. To get them there by that date they would need to travel at a speed that would kill them. The earliest we could do it without killing that person would be 2025 and even that would be putting the person at risk of dying. Then the boss knows its not a resource problem.

Don't go into technical details. Just clarify what their goals are and why one or more of those goals can not be achieved (ie the person would be dead on arrival due to the speed needed to reach mars by 2020). You talk details, their eyes glaze over and they stop listening. Sometime a "sure we can, if you don't care if they are alive when they get there", is enough.

Re:It is called a boss

[Narcocide]

All the companies I worked for where the bosses were that stupid are out of business now. Most of them didn't even make it 4 years.

Re: It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, dingus, but the NASA Administrator at issue was actually installed into the position ON day one, namely January 20, 2017.

One of Trump's biggest weaknesses is being an idiot. It seems Mr. Lightfoot's shortcoming was not realizing he was dealing with an idiot.

Re:It is called a boss

[zerocommazero]

I wonder if you would have said this during Obama's service?

Re: It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

And now you know why the spoils system was killed!

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Obama was a fucking know it all. His questions were much more focused on how it would poll.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Try to ignore the TDS. That can't help it. it's a disease.

Re: It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

One of Trump's biggest weaknesses is not having a large enough pool of functioning brain cells.

FTFY.

Re: It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a multibillionaire president of the United States of America.

What is your excuse for your sad, shitty life?

Re:It is called a boss

[gtall]

Yes well, Trump's exposure to the business world was through the Mom and Pop operation he was running. No board of directors, no public books. He could be as stupid as he liked because he was always able to shift financing to another group of marks. This shows up in The Grifter's 4-7 bankruptcies, depending upon how you count them.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, how many stupid fucking things can one person do that deserve "hit pieces" written about them?

Re:It is called a boss

[im_thatoneguy]

You're bending over backward though to assign sane and skilled leadership skills to someone who does not have them. I will illustrate it with two different questions.

Can we get someone to Mars before the end of my first term with infinite money?

With infinite money, how soon could we get someone to mars?

They're subtly different but one question is an intelligent question that identifies bottlenecks. The other is a vanity request.

Re:It is called a boss

[cascadingstylesheet]

Everyone is on red alert for Trump to do or say something wrong. He does that anyway but how many damn hit pieces do you need for one person?

Since this is Slashdot, about five or six per day.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think asking questions is stupid, then I think you probably have more to do with the failure of those companies than you think.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

how many damn hit pieces do you need for one person?

If that person happens to be President of the United States of America you need every fucking one! History won't give a shit what the "framing" was, just that for better or worse the most powerful person in the world (arguably) made many of his decisions in the same way you decide when to pause your channel surfing.

Re:It is called a boss

[hey!]

Yes, bosses do come up with schemes that only a non-engineer would think possible. But they shouldn't come up with schemes a competent manager would know is impossible. That's not to say bosses that bad don't exist, but usually their careers stall in middle management.

What we are looking at is something Europe grappled with in the 1840s: the incompetency of hereditary aristocrats. The only new wrinkle here is the use of electronic media to construct a more flattering public image.

Re:It is called a boss

[ljw1004]

Q1. "Can we get someone to Mars before the end of my first term with infinite money?"
Q2. "With infinite money, how soon could we get someone to mars?"

They're subtly different but one question is an intelligent question that identifies bottlenecks. The other is a vanity request.

I agree that they're subtly different. The first one has a concrete goal, one that's not achievable but also still admits reasoned answer as to why it's not achievable. Therefore it's more effective in identifying bottlenecks. The second one seems more likely to lead to answers that use more money than necessary. But I'm not understanding how Q2 would be a vanity request?

(I'm being obtuse. You of course meant to imply that Q1 is the worse request. I'm disagreeing with your assessment of the questions.)

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Mueller et al. better produce some beefy scalps after this multi-year hype game.

Dems need it bad; othewise, why listen to a team that lost to an idiot?

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

It may be a "concrete goal", but the reason for that goal is not in line with the reasons for going to Mars.

Scenario 1: Earth is about be hit by a planet killer asteroid in 2021 and we need to get some humans to another planet to avoid destruction of the human race. Can we do this before the end of my first term?

Scenario 2: I'm in desperate need of popularity points. Can we do this be the end of my first term so that I can say we'll do it and then be able to campaign on the fact that we accomplished something I said we should do.

We're not in Scenario 1. We're in Scenario 2. Setting an artificially strict timeline for a fucking dangerous process is negligent. Yes, it would be awesome to go to Mars... but we need to TAKE OUR TIME and do it right.

Get your head out of your ass and stop apologizing for his bad leadership.

Re: It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump was not a multibillionaire the day he was elected. If he released his taxes to the public, instead of some bullshit declaration, you would know that. He did worse than just putting his daddies money in an index fund for the S&P. Some businessman.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's phenomenally stupid??? My wife knows little of space, rocketry etc and even she knows getting a man on Mars in 2 years is impossible. It's a question a child would ask.

Re:It is called a boss

[Narcocide]

Asking the right question even when you don't want to is as important as being able to hear the right answer even when you don't like it. Technically, I was also partially responsible for the death of every single one of those companies, but not in the way you're implying. Also, your obvious projection airs you out as one of the aforementioned incompetent managers. Consider perhaps for a moment that you came here to learn not to teach, and just can't admit it to yourself yet.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty sad, actually. Old /. would have had a decent discussion about the logistics of putting a man on Mars in any given timeframe; these days it's endless squealing about Orange Man Bad, and any actual criticism of any actual policy gets drowned out by the far-left loons shrieking about their hurt feelings. I don't know where all these brainless tarts came from, but I suspect it's related to the "science is kewl, I'm so nerdy lol" cringe that's been plaguing the Internet in general for the last 10+ years.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have worked for a rare company with good upper management.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Setting an artificially strict timeline for a fucking dangerous process is negligent. Yes, it would be awesome to go to Mars... but we need to TAKE OUR TIME and do it right.

Get your head out of your ass and stop apologizing for his bad leadership.

He didn't push him to do it, he asked if it were possible. The answer was no and that was that. Don't give yourself a hernia over it.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

They demand detail. Contrary to the crude desires they're unaware of, yes, but their words insist on it. "It's impossible" "Explain it [details] to me"

"When final stage of thing?"

"Between two weeks and two years"

"Why can't it be narrower"

"I can do that, with X money and Y time I will analyze"

"Why does it take money"

"Because details"

*eyes glaze*

A week later "Isn't that thing I want done yet?"

Almost every instance of "When" is (a) gimmie the thing (b) fine when will thing be guaranteed

Re:It is called a boss

[lgw]

That makes no sense. Obviously dumb managers routinely propose ideas that smart managers know aren't possible. And it's not like we choose politicians based on intelligence!

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

The projects were financed, as they alwys are. Like hell no one from the outside got to look into the books for the project. Like hell he moved cash from one project to another at his whim.

A lot of people seem to have plenty to say about how business happens without having any fucking clue about how business happens.

Re:It is called a boss

[greythax]

Yeah, Trump is famous for his wit. I would say that the factual reporting, er, I'm sorry "hit pieces", should probably keep coming until people stop defending the stupid shit he does.

Re:It is called a boss

[Dan East]

They're subtly different but one question is an intelligent question that identifies bottlenecks. The other is a vanity request.

Isn't that why we raced Russia to the moon and won? For vanity? To be first?

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep moving those goal posts...

Re:It is called a boss

[thegarbz]

It could've even just been a fun quick question to ask.

It could have been. Given the benefit of doubt it could have been. Actions however go a great way to reduce doubt.

He does that anyway but how many damn hit pieces do you need for one person?

Depends, do you have an estimate for how many more times he will say something to embarrass the nation for electing him?

Re: It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

My daddy wasn't a rich real estate tycoon. What's your excuse for being so braindead?

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

You're bending over backward though to assign sane and skilled leadership skills to someone who does not have them. I will illustrate it with two different questions.

Can we get someone to Mars before the end of my first term with infinite money?

With infinite money, how soon could we get someone to mars?

They're subtly different but one question is an intelligent question that identifies bottlenecks. The other is a vanity request.

Either are stupid because "infinite money" is not worth the paper it is printed on. It's basically confiscating everyone's possessions through inflation. Look how this works in Venezuela. Too bad Trump is too stupid to understand that.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Q1. "Can we get someone to Mars before the end of my first term with infinite money?"
Q2. "With infinite money, how soon could we get someone to mars?"

They're subtly different but one question is an intelligent question that identifies bottlenecks. The other is a vanity request.

I agree that they're subtly different. The first one has a concrete goal, one that's not achievable but also still admits reasoned answer as to why it's not achievable. Therefore it's more effective in identifying bottlenecks. The second one seems more likely to lead to answers that use more money than necessary. But I'm not understanding how Q2 would be a vanity request?

(I'm being obtuse. You of course meant to imply that Q1 is the worse request. I'm disagreeing with your assessment of the questions.)

A1. "No". "Why Not?" "Because even if we traveled faster than ever before we couldn't do it, any faster than that and everyone would die". End of discussion.

A2. "We could get someone to mars with infinite money within 10 years." "Why not sooner?" "Because of limitations involving the speeds that humans can survive at." "Well say 15 years then, how much money would that cost?" "40 Billion, I find it surprising you are being serious here, I just assumed you'd be all about vanity and not do the program unless it happened in your first term". "No way, what am I, some kind of Donald Trump? I want this done whether I get the credit for it or not."

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just reading "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman", the section where he's talking about needing the results of a computer calculation that normally takes a month, in a week. He asked his team "what if we did nothing else but work on this one problem?". It's the same "what if there were no resource limits" question.
It's the smart thing to ask. It gets straight to the heart of the problem.

Then again the Manhattan Project was closed down within 4 years too - so maybe you're on to something... LOL

Re:It is called a boss

[GonzoPhysicist]

But that was for America's vanity, not just the president's. Kennedy's deadline was the end of the decade, not the end of his term.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

That kind of pedantic hair splitting is one of the reasons trump was elected.

Keep doing it. no really. i mean that. you'll convince those trump people they're wrong yet!
Did you try calling them nazis? maybe attack some of their children? that's so hot right now.

Re: It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

He literally has a supermodel wife and a gold-plated apartment in the sky.

What's it like being a pathetic loser that chooses to do nothing with his life except nip at the heels of great men?

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're confusing motivation with skill or lack thereof. Both can be true. He could be challenging assumptions to find bottlenecks and still be motivated by vanity. I tend to agree with you that what we've seen from him indicates he's not capable of strong tactical or strategic thinking so probably it's just an "but I want it temper tantrum" that led to his question but I think your logic is faulty when you equate a bad motivation with lacking all managerial talent.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he did ask about manned flight to Mars, he didn't say anything about that they would have to be alive when they arrive. ;)

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was to have the ultimate High Ground.

Seriously. Keeping and maintaining Space Stations be hard yo, but the idea was the if we could get to the Moon, it would be possible to maintain a more semi-permanent presence, from which to throw rocks down the Gravity Well. Lift from the Moon is nothing compared the fuel required for Station Keeping operations, constant resupply, crew rotations, and the human cost of injury from atrophy in micro-gravity.

Complete unmanned operation of weapons platforms for the long-term simply wasn't a concept when the most powerfully small computer was what would become the DSKY on the Apollo capsule, there would be no way to have a unmanned Star Wars like orbital weapons platform, so if you need humans, need them for a long time, need it to be cheap, and need to be able to target anywhere on the Earth, the Moon is the place to do it from.

But the Cold War cooled down even more in the 70s so the need went on the back burner as Apollo winded down. By the time it heated up again in the 80s, automation made Unmanned Star Wars type orbital defense systems possible, kicking the need for the Moon Base back down the list to once again a vanity project.

I personally think it was a mistake and we should have focused on a Moon Base rather than ISS but whatever, it is what it is. Eventually we will do it, just like we have a permanent presence at the South Pole now. Arguably there is still more of a need for the Moon base than the South Pole base.

Re:It is called a boss

[Can'tNot]

The problem is less that the question was ridiculous from a technical standpoint, and more that the question was explicitly: "How can we redirect a fantastic amount of public funds, for no other purpose than to get me reelected?"

Politicians always redirect funds, but the premise is that they're doing so for the benefit of their constituents. This is really what separates a populist from a demagogue.

Re:It is called a boss

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect, the first question is not that great at identifying bottlenecks. Q1 can be answered with a simple "No."

It's possible

[CrashPoint]

We could absolutely put people on Mars by 2020.

But if you want them to be alive when they get there, it'll take a bit longer.

Re:It's possible

[Anonymous Coward]

It's going to seat 535 from what I hear. And /. sucks.

Re:It's possible

[barc0001]

Actually, we could put live people on Mars by 2020 still. However the cost would be eye-watering. Good, cheap, fast. Pick any two.

Re:It's possible

[lexman098]

I don't even think it's possible with infinite funding. A lot of people working on each aspect would greatly speed the process, no doubt, but you have to hire and train all those people which takes time (not to mention growing a management structure to handle all the new resources). This shows what kind of business man Trump really is if he doesn't understand that.

Re:It's possible

[barc0001]

With literally infinite funding I think it would be easy. So much room there for overkill. You need a couple of vehicles for the transit to Mars? Why not build and launch a monstrosity that consists of 30x what the original plans called for? We've got infinite money so we can send up a new payload from every pad on the planet every week...

Re:It's possible

[ceoyoyo]

You'd have to work out the math, but it might be possible. Nothing really new is required to put a man on Mars. If you redirected the entire planet's rocket building and launch capabilities into putting hardware (and a massive amount of fuel) into orbit, you might be able to build a ship big enough to make it in the required time.

The orbital mechanics would probably still get you though.

Re:It's possible

[lexman098]

A monstrosity takes more time and people to build and those people need time to be trained. You can send a new payload every week but if you don't take some time with the first one at least then none of them will actually reach mars. My point is it's diminishing returns trying to pull in a schedule even with gobs more funding. There's a practical limit. This is something Trump should understand by now.

Re:It's possible

[NerdENerd]

Elon Musk said he would like to die on Mars, just not on impact.

Re:It's possible

[toddestan]

Actually, from what I can tell, Trump never said anything about getting people "on Mars", he said "to Mars". If you make it a fly-by that would be a hell of a lot easier. You basically need a way to keep people alive in space for an extended period of time, which we have experience with the ISS, and a way to get spacecraft to and back from Mars, which could be challenging due to the size and weight of the craft, but doesn't seem completely impossible. Though if I was to do a fly-by, I'd pick Venus just because the mission would be a few months, whereas Mars would easily be a year in space, probably closer to two.

It's also possible that the first manned mission to Mars might even be a fly-by, just like how we did a fly-by of the moon before landing on it too.

Trump is a fucking joke

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't care about science, or exploration, or doing things the right way.

He wants a JFK, "we're going to the Moon", but this time Mars, moment to win popularity points. Nothing else matters. He wants it for no other reason than to win a second term.

He needs to get the fuck out of here.

Re:Trump is a fucking joke

[ShanghaiBill]

He doesn't care about science, or exploration, or doing things the right way.

There is no scientific reason to send people to Mars. It is a political stunt. Every president is for it, but they all extend the schedule so the big spending will occur after they leave office.

Guess what? We aren't going to Mars by 2030. Here's the reason: National Debt Clock.

Re:Trump is a fucking joke

[penandpaper]

There is no scientific reason to send people to Mars. It is a political stunt.

I don't think any disagrees that it is a political stunt but so was the initial moon landing. There was no scientific reason to send people to the moon. Yet, that helped spur technological and scientific advancement. I think the same could happen with a manned mission to Mars. Is it worth it? I don't know.

Agree with the debt.

Re:Trump is a fucking joke

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't care about science, or exploration, or doing things the right way. He wants a JFK, "we're going to the Moon", but this time Mars,

JFK didn't care about science either.

Not that it wasn't awesome, but science had nothing to do with the directive.

Re:Trump is a fucking joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Any number of unknown asteroids on a collision course with Earth is a pretty scientific reason. so set your TDS aside and do some reading not on CNN.

Re:Trump is a fucking joke

[dryeo]

If Kennedy hadn't been shot, there's a good chance the Moon landing wouldn't have happened. Kennedy became a martyr and the Moon shot became a monument to him.

Re:Trump is a fucking joke

[ceoyoyo]

Are you suggesting someone needs to shoot a president so we can go to Mars?

Re:Trump is a fucking joke

[dryeo]

The suggestion did cross my mind.

Re:Trump is a fucking joke

[Anonymous Coward]

It was political, but as I said elsewhere, there was also a defensive reason to see if we could do it:

'it was to have the ultimate High Ground.

Seriously. Keeping and maintaining Space Stations be hard yo, but the idea was the if we could get to the Moon, it would be possible to maintain a more semi-permanent presence, from which to throw rocks down the Gravity Well. Lift from the Moon is nothing compared the fuel required for Station Keeping operations, constant resupply, crew rotations, and the human cost of injury from atrophy in micro-gravity.

Complete unmanned operation of weapons platforms for the long-term simply wasn't a concept when the most powerfully small computer was what would become the DSKY on the Apollo capsule, there would be no way to have a unmanned Star Wars like orbital weapons platform, so if you need humans, need them for a long time, need it to be cheap, and need to be able to target anywhere on the Earth, the Moon is the place to do it from.

But the Cold War cooled down even more in the 70s so the need went on the back burner as Apollo winded down. By the time it heated up again in the 80s, automation made Unmanned Star Wars type orbital defense systems possible, kicking the need for the Moon Base back down the list to once again a vanity project.

I personally think it was a mistake and we should have focused on a Moon Base rather than ISS but whatever, it is what it is. Eventually we will do it, just like we have a permanent presence at the South Pole now. Arguably there is still more of a need for the Moon base than the South Pole base.'

Trump and his vanity projects.

[Anonymous Coward]

No idea too dumb, no taxpayer bill too big.

All in service of stroking one ego.

Soviet America

[Anonymous Coward]

This time round America is the Soviet union, crumbling from within.
Unlike the moonlanding you really are going to have to fake it this time.

Thankfully everyone is now ideocracy tier retarded, so the fake footage won't need to be very sophisticated. Just use clips from The Martian.

Re:Soviet America

[GameboyRMH]

Yep, just paste Trump's face over Matt Damon's with MS Paint-level graphics work and his supporters will insist that it's absolutely real, infinity times more real than the moon landing...

Re:Soviet America

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully everyone is now ideocracy tier retarded

Everyone includes you. Judging by your comment you are correct. You are retarded.

Re:Soviet America

[Anonymous Coward]

Enjoy your crumbling turd-world shithole Amerilard.
Enjoy seeing fully automated Chinese factories on Mars, though your walmart telescope.

Re:Soviet America

[Anonymous Coward]

As are you, evidenced by your post. Judged.

like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

... casually chatting about ... seemingly out of nowhere.

This is how people with a very high IQ think and act. Almost like ADHD, except very focused.
This is just an observation, not an endorsement or denial of President Trump. I've worked w/people
like this. You look at their results, not the traveled path they took getting there 'cause chances
are you wouldn't understand it.

And you might see an easier way to their answer, but remember, you saw their answer and thus
were influenced by it.

CAP === 'ranked'

Re: like ADHD

[Opportunist]

I've seen Trump. Trust me. ADHD seems way more likely than high IQ.

Re: like ADHD

[Luckyo]

It's also a leadership methodology used by very experienced leaders. Of people involved in space programs, Korolev comes to mind. Get your engineering team, and then ask them to do the impossible. Offer them infinite support. Listen to them tell you it's impossible anyway. Ask for timetable with infinite resources.

You will very quickly see which engineers are good at their job, as they'll start thinking in ways they haven't thought when they were focused on getting budgetary acceptance. And that's how Korolev got Soviet space program to crush US one early on, and that's how US space program put the man on the moon first after Korolev died. You plant the necessary ideas in engineers' heads, then you take off the constraints and then you see which ones flake out because they can't handle it. Korolev was famous for even literally dumping all rocket scientists when they would tell him the project he proposed is impossible and go head hunting in other fields for talent that wouldn't be locked into preconceptions. That's how the engines that Lockheed Martin people flat out claimed to be impossible to make in 2000s were made in 1970s.

In this case, this report suggests that these two men flaked out. They couldn't start thinking beyond budget constraints and start thinking outside the familiar box when it was called for. Which is understandable, as NASA has been criminally underfunded for last two decades, to the point where if you aren't someone who's primary talent is in "meeting the budgetary needs", you probably quit long ago or were let go.

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

Having ADHD isn't an indicator of a high IQ. Bankrupted six businesses, constantly bailed out by his daddy's money, credit rating so bad that the only bank willing to lend him money is one connected to Russian oligarchs and constantly scrutinized as a money laundering operation. Yeah, I'm sure he's got a really high IQ

Re: like ADHD

[Jason Levine]

There's "impossible" that becomes possible when enough time and money is thrown at it and then there's impossible that is actually impossible. If you promise all the resources in the world to someone and they still say it's not possible, it doesn't mean they're bad at their job. It might just mean that it's actually impossible. If you promised me the entire world's resources devoted to sending a person back in time, I'd tell you it's impossible. Even if the entire world stopped what it was doing and devoted itself to this one task, we wouldn't be able to do it. I know that's an extreme example, but some things truly are impossible. Even if we gave NASA an unlimited budget, they couldn't safely send a man to Mars by 2020.

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no chance that Trump has a high-IQ. Everyone around him reports that he's very low-bandwidth, making it extremely hard to get him to take in new information.

Re: like ADHD

[Luckyo]

I literally cited you a historic example. Did you miss it?

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

There's "impossible" that becomes possible when enough time and money is thrown at it and then there's impossible that is actually impossible. If you promise all the resources in the world to someone and they still say it's not possible, it doesn't mean they're bad at their job. It might just mean that it's actually impossible. If you promised me the entire world's resources devoted to sending a person back in time, I'd tell you it's impossible. Even if the entire world stopped what it was doing and devoted itself to this one task, we wouldn't be able to do it. I know that's an extreme example, but some things truly are impossible. Even if we gave NASA an unlimited budget, they couldn't safely send a man to Mars by 2020.

Could they launch the rocket the day before the 2020 election day?

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

With the unlimited support of the whole world we could all just pretend it's the past and have a reasonable approximation of time travel within limited scopes.

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if we gave NASA an unlimited budget, they couldn't safely send a man to Mars by 2020.

Considering the rapid development of breakthrough technologies during large, important wars, something tells me it's possible, given ample resources and, more importantly, motivation.

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen Trump. Trust me. ADHD seems way more likely than high IQ.

Space gopher possession would be more likely.

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if we gave NASA an unlimited budget, they couldn't safely send a man to Mars by 2020.

Safely? Don't change the variables. It will probably count as success if their remains crash there and cause the first Terran contamination.

Re: like ADHD

[Falos]

"Get me engineers who don't give a fuck" is how we got the Juicero.

Yeah. They got it done. Congratulations.

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

All the money in the world will not put a man on Mars in two years. For fuck's sake, the launch windows only occur once every two years! The next one is too late in 2020 to make a landing in the same year even if we already had the hardware tested and ready to go right now. Which we don't.

Re: like ADHD

[CanadianMacFan]

First of all by 2020 implies by January 1, 2020.

It takes between 150 and 300 days to travel to Mars from Earth depending on the position of the two planets. If the planet orbits work that leaves you with the last departure date of August 3 (December 31 minus 150 days).

Between now and August third you have to assemble and test a whole new class of rocket, space module, habitat to live on Mars, landing system for Mars, launch system for Mars, suit for going about Mars, and lots of stuff I've forgotten. They might be able to use a rocket from SpaceX but everything else is new. I've assumed reusing existing launch capsules to get the astronauts into space.

Many of the items can be done in parallel. The rocket and Mars landing systems should be done first in order to start sending required supplies ahead to Mars. The first two items to be done would be selecting a site on Mars and choosing the crew.

However, it's still only at most a six month window, depending on the planets alignment. So while technically possible while throwing several aircraft carriers full of money at the problem it isn't practical. Even delaying it into 2020 doesn't add much to the practicality of the project. If it was to somehow save the planet then the effort would be worth it but definitely not to get someone re-elected.

Re: like ADHD

[Luckyo]

I see that you didn't.

Re: like ADHD

[Luckyo]

It's honestly fairly funny how many ACs are spamming "troll" and missing the message entirely on that post.

Re: like ADHD

[Luckyo]

It's also how we got the man on the Moon. But did that really happen? I guess not in your world. It's all Juiceros.

Re: like ADHD

[amicusNYCL]

First of all by 2020 implies by January 1, 2020.

No it doesn't. Trump will, in theory, be president for all of 2020. His term doesn't end in 2020, it ends in 2021. The election is in 2020. He was asking if it was possible to accomplish this during his first term, which is (again, in theory) through all of 2020 and into the next January.

Re: like ADHD

[Falos]

The entire point was that it's not all Juiceros. That there's a world of juicers that were accomplished without going into history as a lesson on stubborn tunnel vision and waste.

Re: like ADHD

[Luckyo]

I see that you do not understand what I was talking about, and aren't really interested in trying to.

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a seductive idea, to imagine that our president is hiding a brilliant intellect behind the public facade of a petulant child, and that he has some hidden agenda that he is working towards using subtle strategies to manipulate the powers that would oppose him.

Of course, if his intellect were so prodigious, then surely all of his business dealings would have succeeded, and he would have hired the best people and never have needed to fire them, and he'd have never needed to marry thrice. In fact, if he were smart, he'd never have run for president in the first place. Good heavens! He still thinks he won something.

No, the preponderance of evidence betrays the falsity of his purported brilliance. What we have is a man with little common sense caused by never having lived a common life, one who disdains to be well-informed, who has the social sensibility of a third-grader and whose aims rarely venture beyond his own aggrandizement. His highest aspiration is to have it all, have it gold-plated, and live with it behind a wall that none can breach.

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

he has early onset dementia.

Re: like ADHD

[Littleman_TAMU]

Let's be realistic as well. NASA has some smart people, lots at JPL, but it's not the days of Gemini/Apollo (see: underfunding). You're only going to get the results you discuss when you have a program like SkunkWorks which attracts the very best of the best.

Re: like ADHD

[Jason Levine]

Fine, let's use January 19th 2021 (the last day of his first term before Inauguration Day). Let's also assume that planetary alignments work out perfectly and it would only take 150 days to get to Mars. That means we would need to launch on August 22nd, 2020. This gives us 19 months to come up with a launch/mission plan, design and build the rockets, select and train the astronauts, etc. It took much longer than that for the first Apollo moon landing to be planned out. Even selecting the landing site took over 2 years. (Choose the wrong spot and your landing vehicle will crash killing or stranding your astronauts.) Can it be done? Perhaps, but it's highly unlikely. The likeliest outcome of a rush job to get an astronaut on Mars by the end of Trump's first term would be the deaths of some astronauts in pursuit of a political stunt for Trump.

Re: like ADHD

[amicusNYCL]

OK, now revise your dates to consider that this request was asked 2 years ago, in 2017.

I'm not sure what the purpose of this exercise is. I mean, I agree it's not feasible, but beyond that I'm not sure what the point of discussion is. He was just asking, he doesn't know.

Re: like ADHD

[Anonymous Coward]

>i know u are but what am i

Re: like ADHD

[Luckyo]

Last sentence of my previous post demonstrates my full agreement with you.

Businessman

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Trump's one of those "businessmen" who think two women can bring a baby to term in 4 1/2 months.

Re: Businessman

[Anonymous Coward]

Smithers whonis that man?
I dont know sir
Oh OK carry on

Re:Businessman

[Anonymous Coward]

One of his wives claimed that to him, I bet, as she led a hot Russian agent into the bedroom.

Let's see the DNA test on the smartest "Trump" kid.

Re:Businessman

[shanen]

Regarding your sig, they are not Russian agents. They are just interns hoping to become Russian agents.

Actually, I don't care what motivates the trolls. I just wish Slashdot would help them render themselves invisible before I see them. And if I do see a troll, then I should be able to help the troll become less visible in the future. Ask me about MEPR. I dare ya.

Re:Businessman

[VeryFluffyBunny]

These days trolls & fake news = Anything you don't like or disagree with. More recently, anything billionaires & corporations don't like or disagree with & want to censor. "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words." -- Eric Arthur Blair

Re:Businessman

[shanen]

No.

If that is a request for clarification of MEPR, then it is insufficiently polite. However, just because you would go down on the politeness dimension, that is not a reason I would reduce your visibility. You apparently need to drop on the dimensions related to intelligence and logic. Can't yet decide which way you should go on the funny dimension, though it is a dimension that I would personally weigh heavily.

Can you convince me that this is an actual discussion?

Re:Businessman

[Anonymous Coward]

The mans a fucking genius business man he bankrupted 3 casinos, that take talent.

Re:Businessman

[VeryFluffyBunny]

No, it isn't.

First Term?

[Anonymous Coward]

He means first and only term.

Re:First Term?

[HornWumpus]

Cut up and down your arms, not across when he's re-elected.

Re:First Term?

[subie]

Unless my fellow democrats can come up with a better candidate than that total nut job Cortez or the fake native American, President Trump will win another term in office. As it stands right now, we simply don't have a viable candidate to oppose the President.

Re:First Term?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't need to , I don't live in the same country as the fuckwitted villiage idiots who vote for him.

Worth asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this different than any other business? A CTO with a million things on their plate may come to you and ask if you can speed up SAP deployment to a year.

It's a good question. If your constraint is funding or inter-company politics, a motivated CTO can fix that. There are limits to how fast you can speed up some projects, but what's the harm in asking?

Ditto for Mars. The President might have some interesting conversations if he made a phone call to Musk asking the same thing. Grant a contract or two, for half the cost of NASA, and see w hat magic Elon can pull out of his hat. (SpaceX will have landers on Mars before SLS does it's first launch anyway...)

Re:Worth asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the day we were able to do a complete SAP implementation (ERP and BI) start to finish in under a year. Cut all the bullshit and do things the way SAP intended and with a good team it's doable.

Re:Worth asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

> speed up SAP deployment to a year.

Not a fair comparison. Getting to Mars is less complicated.

Re:Worth asking...

[quantaman]

How is this different than any other business? A CTO with a million things on their plate may come to you and ask if you can speed up SAP deployment to a year.

It's a good question.

It's not a good question if you're about to give a presentation about the current deployment plan in 3 minutes and the CTO is suddenly acting pissed off and now wants it done before his contract re-negotiation.

1) If the CTO cared that much they could have asked the question before the big presentation.
2) The SAP deployment is for the company, not to pad the CTO's resume
3) It's your big moment, giving the presentation on all your hard work. Now the CTO is pissed off at you for no good reason and you're thinking about their unreasonable request.

You know I once saw a brilliant person taste a paint chip because they were curious about the taste.

Therefore if Trump starts eating paint he must be brilliant also!!!

Re:Worth asking...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ditto for Mars"

That's the stupid part. Let me be clear. STOOOPIIIID.

A person who does not already understand some of the fundamental aspects of sending people to Mars is properly referred to as a moronic ignoramus. GET IT? Actually I guess you don't. Mars is far away. It's in space. Musk has never been there and likely NEVER WILL. It's more than talk so ignorant idiot assess who deny climate change and think that things happen because someone has acted more and more like a spoiled child really are FUCKING IDIOTS.

Grade school kids can grasp how time is a requirement to plan and execute a manned Mars mission. Kids have even grasped the possible trajectories and their dependence upon propulsion tech. Kids can and have grasped how a Mars mission is further than 2 years away no matter what OTHER resources you throw at the task because TIME IS A RESOURCE.

STOOOOPIIIID

Dumb & Dumber

[Anonymous Coward]

& Trumpest

Send him there

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he should've made a proposal to the president himself on the first trip by 2020.

If he is ready to risk the lives of astronauts before any serious testing can be done, he must have absolute trust in NASA's abilities. Therefore he should be the first to go.

If he'd been really astute

[maroberts]

..he would have said "No, Mr President we can't get it done for 2020 but we can get it done for the end of your second term if you start the funding right now.!

Re: If he'd been really astute

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha haha NASA has this thing where they tell the truth lol instead of making up dates and hoping people wonâ(TM)t mind it when they are missed

Re: If he'd been really astute

[maroberts]

But he would have got 8 years of unlimited funding for the "Mars" project, and if they'd been really clever they would also have claimed they needed fusion energy for a successful project. NASA would have taken a giant leap forward under those conditions.

Re: If he'd been really astute

[Narcocide]

Well... either a great leap forward or a giant faceplant.

Re: If he'd been really astute

[Shotgun]

Citation needed.

NASA has a well earned reputation for low-balling costs to get a project approved and then having cost overruns. In fact, most government agencies have that reputation.

Re:If he'd been really astute

[Anonymous Coward]

..he would have said "No, Mr President we can't get it done for 2020 but we can get it done for the end of your second term if you start the funding right now.!

That won't help. He wants Pelosi on Mars in 2020.

Re: If he'd been really astute

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming the problem with fusion energy is lack of funding (it isn't).

Re:If he'd been really astute

[Solandri]

Actually, it's to Lightfoot's discredit that he didn't say that. The only way Trump's request was in any way feasible would've been for a landing in his second term (assuming re-election). The incident happened in April 2017. The next launch window for an Earth-to-Mars trip was mid-2018 (InSight was launched May 2018). The launch window after that will be in late-2020 (for a Mars landing in early-2021) So there was no feasible way to get a project of this scale completed in a year.

I'm not sure why Lightfoot is characterized as nervous and hesitating. This is a limitation imposed by time and physics, not his or NASA's fault. There's nothing to fear in telling your boss that what they're asking for is physically impossible. Unless he didn't know the launch windows, in which case the problem was his incompetence.

Re: If he'd been really astute

[djinn6]

We would learn a lot either way. It's not like the money is better spent otherwise, we're already overdue for another war.

Re:If he'd been really astute

[Anonymous Coward]

Or say "How about a moon colony? Newt Gingrich has been pushing for that, and I'm glad you share his vision!"

Re:If he'd been really astute

[maroberts]

I think you're missing the point here. It was unlikely or impossible to get to Mars by 2024 but by lying to the president and claiming it would be possible with "unlimited" funding, NASA could have massively advanced its progress in the following 8 years.

Who knows, they might even have made it.

The best person to deal with a dishonest man is another dishonest man. Lightfoot should have lied his ass off no matter what he believed. :)

Re: If he'd been really astute

[maroberts]

Actually funding is part of the problem.

It;s always claimed that fusion is 30 years away because of the technical problems but it would be get a damn sight closer if there was a crash program along the lines of development of the atomic bomb or getting to the moon.

I'll volunteer!! Give me a call NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

My life is a wreck. There is nothing left for me on earth so i'd gladly volunteer for a one way trip to mars if you'll take me.
To be one of the first humans to set foot on another planet would be an honour i'd gladly give my life for.

Re: I'll volunteer!! Give me a call NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get your hopes up.

The good news is that you could easily get a whole ton of weather balloons and a chair and then say you will prove whether the earth is flat or not.

A lot of people are getting tons of crowd funding for this now because flat earthing groups are trending globally lately.

Have a good trip.

Re:I'll volunteer!! Give me a call NASA

[LinuxIsGarbage]

My life is a wreck. There is nothing left for me on earth so i'd gladly volunteer for a one way trip to mars if you'll take me.
To be one of the first humans to set foot on another planet would be an honour i'd gladly give my life for.

Found the non-'Merican. Fake news. How can we MAGA by sending limeys or Canucks?

Not Really Wrong of Him to Try

[Ferretman]

I imagine he was rather disappointed with where our space program is at the moment though. Can't say as I blame him.

It'll happen eventually though.

Ferret

Re: Not Really Wrong of Him to Try

[Anonymous Coward]

2 decades of defunding under almost every president will do that.

Re:Not Really Wrong of Him to Try

[Powercntrl]

I imagine he was rather disappointed with where our space program is at the moment though. Can't say as I blame him.

The problem with space is that it would take far more resources and time to travel to another habitable planet (or render one of the closer planets habitable) than it would to simply un-fuckup our current planet, and we're not even doing a good job of that.

If humanity never makes it off this rock, it's probably just karma.

I wonder why

[TimothyHollins]

I'm guessing this was after he heard that Mars has no extradition treaty with the US.

Re:I wonder why

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing this was after he heard that Mars has no extradition treaty with the US.

Which is mostly dwarfed by the fact that we have no technology to get you there alive, or get you home again.

More importantly, can POTUS even offer unlimited funding? He's not the one who controls spending.

Re:I wonder why

[Narcocide]

He can offer unlimited funding for 90 days if he declares war on Mars.

Re:I wonder why

[Anonymous Coward]

He can offer unlimited funding for 90 days if he declares war on Mars.

Can he declare war on a dinner plate or a shoe? How about a banana?

What exactly is the latitude for POTUS to declare war on things and places which don't have inhabitants?

This politics stuff sure is confusing.

Re: I wonder why

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this made me think of question. What if someone committed a crime and was wanted by a specific country only, but then they fled to the moon. What country has legal authority on the moon to arrest him?

Re:I wonder why

[Narcocide]

I don't think anyone bothered to specify limitations on that part. It was never anticipated that this power would be given to a complete asshat.

Re:I wonder why

[TimothyHollins]

I don't see why not. The office has already declared war on drugs.

Re: I wonder why

[crunchygranola]

Maybe there is a space lawyer here (yes, the exist). But in the absence of one...

I think this is adequately covered by the Laws of the Sea. Every vessel on the ocean is under the jurisdiction of some nation, their "flag state". The space vessel that brought the guy to the Moon, and which he lives in (no, you can't set up homesteading in a vacuum), was made somewhere on Earth, was licensed to fly, is likely owned by someone there, so establishing the "flag state" of the vessel should be trivial. If an extradition treaty exists then the flag state (assuming it is not the one after him) can get him and turn him over, or grant the aggrieved party the right to make the arrest themselves. Since no one can do this yet, there is not much case law or special legislation about this, but there will be when the time is ripe.

Stepping Stones..

[lionchild]

While NASA is something that Democrats will likely be much more happy to fund, it would be interesting to see Republican response to such drive from the Administration.

Now, as for NASA's part... I'd say take the money and RUN! Pour as much money as you can get into the prep work. There's got to be unmanned missions that need to go before hand just to find the right site to land in. We'll have to deposit gear and supplies ahead of time, we'll have to have an orbital relay station in place most likely. While they realistically can't people there by 2020, they could make strides in that direction.

But, perhaps they can parlay it into something like establishing a working base on the moon, to make a shot at Mars have a higher chance of success, allowing NASA to hone their craft at building something for humans to live in on a remote world. While it might not be Mars, a working base on the Moon would be no small feat.

Re:Stepping Stones..

[Wolfrider]

> Now, as for NASA's part... I'd say take the money and RUN!

--That was my take on it as well (in fact I have that song in my head right now.)

--Unlimited funding for space? YES SIR, SIR

--By the time our long national nightmare is over, $NASA-admin should already have his exit strategy in place

Suspicious Urgency!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the billionaire, ostensibly human, leader of the free world offer unlimited funding to flee the Earth? Surely the reason must be much bigger than a pesky legal situation.

Re:Suspicious Urgency!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot another "ostensibly" on the other side of "billionaire."

Re:Suspicious Urgency!

[Ruede]

the poles are shifting rapidly.

we could be witness of what adam&eve or noah went through :)

Destination: Trumpistan

[Anonymous Coward]

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” -Greek Proverb

Donald Cuck otoh wants the rocket lettered with gaudy gold plated "TRUMP" sign gleaming setting off the orange in his fat smirk.

He asked the wrong guy

[crow]

If he asked the same question of Elon Musk, he would have had a yes. Of course, Elon has a long track record of missing deadlines, but if SpaceX didn't have to use profits from regular launches to fund their Starship program, they could probably move it forward faster.

Re:He asked the wrong guy

[bill_mcgonigle]

I commented publicly (here maybe) that Trump should pay Elon whatever he wants to start a moonbase during his first term. It was achievable then with Falcon Heavy but sadly for both they never read /.

Re:He asked the wrong guy

[Anonymous Coward]

True, Elon Musk has missed deadlines several times when implementing things that others have said to be impossible.

Re:He asked the wrong guy

[TimothyHollins]

Yeah but then you'd have to spend half the budget on developing a Jaws to go with that moonbase.

Re:He asked the wrong guy

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't any Jews there, the Nazis live on the darkside, remember?

Re:He asked the wrong guy

[Anonymous Coward]

I am reasonably certain that Trump is a regular commenter on /.

Didn't the SLS boondoggle teach anything?

[schwit1]

This would be little more than another pork trough for Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

How much time did Kennedy Give the people?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of a warning did Kennedy give people before his Rice University address? History books portray that we were floundering around and Kennedy put on his big-boy pants and declared we are going to the moon...then we went.

Re:How much time did Kennedy Give the people?

[Opportunist]

Yes, but at least with a halfway realistic time frame.

Flying to the moon is fairly easy. You're dealing with a body that has a fraction of the mass and thus gravity, and to return from it you basically fall back into Earth's gravity well after overcoming a fairly trivial one.

This is fundamentally different for a flight to another planet.

Re:How much time did Kennedy Give the people?

[Jason Levine]

I'm not sure when Kennedy told NASA to work on a moon landing, but he gave the speech in September 1962.and Apollo 11 launched in July 1969. If Trump gave a "we're going to Mars" speech today and expected the same turnaround, we'd launch in October 2026 - well after a theoretical second Trump term and MUCH later than his 2020 preference.

Re:How much time did Kennedy Give the people?

[ceoyoyo]

Flying to the moon is fairly easy because the minimum energy transfer orbit is a few days, and windows come along every day, or a couple times an hour if you're in orbit.

Flying to Mars is harder because the transfer orbit is 8.5 months long and a window opens once every two years.

The amount of energy (depth of gravity wells, etc.) isn't really much different, and is dwarfed by the energy required to get into Earth orbit in the first place.

Re:How much time did Kennedy Give the people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention it takes roughly 300 days to get to Mars. So landing on Mars by 2020 would be a mean feat.

Re:How much time did Kennedy Give the people?

[Opportunist]

Don't ignore that all the fuel that takes you to Mars and back is essentially dead weight on your ascent from Earth. Which means you need more fuel and bigger rockets. Which means that you have to haul more weight into orbit. Which means that you need... you get the idea.

The time necessary and the human factor (how do you keep them trained and sane in the long time in a confined space? Nobody likes to see the first step on the Mars be a stumble because the person taking it has no muscle mass left, with the rest of the astronauts laughing their asses off because they're at the point where they would very gladly leave him there after smelling his farts for about a year in transit) are something I didn't even touch. The engineering alone is already something you don't solve with the snap of a finger.

By 2020?

[OneHundredAndTen]

12/31/2020 is less than two years away. Methinks that the man-child in the White House has watched too many movies and has essentially no understanding whatsoever of the issues involved.

Re:By 2020?

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither did JFK and going to the moon within a decade when he challenged it was a much larger leap. But keep on with the derangement.

Re:By 2020?

[Opportunist]

Try to explain this to a spoiled brat that's used to getting what he wants if he only screams loud enough and holds his breath.

Re:By 2020?

[Anonymous Coward]

it was a much larger leap

Yes perhaps, in terms of basic technology but no in terms of cost and overhead which, if scaled linearly with distance (time) with manned missions, would be pretty steep.

Re:By 2020?

[tomhath]

RTFA. The question was asked almost two years ago.

And if you get past your derangement, it's a reasonable way to prod a bureaucrat into thinking big.

Re:By 2020?

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't enough room here to explain it to you. So keep on screaming.

Re: By 2020?

[Anonymous Coward]

? Going to the moon is much easier than mars. You trump supporters are spewing lies you keep hearing. No wonder all of you are AC trolls.

Re:By 2020?

[Anonymous Coward]

b-b-but orange man bad!

Re:By 2020?

[Anonymous Coward]

That bureaucrat already thinks big. As a matter of fact, unlike Trump and yourself that bureaucrat has the ability and discipline to actually grasp differences in big and describing those differences in numbers. That is only one tiny part of the capabilities of that bureaucrat that far exceed those of Trump and yourself.
Prodding is a big thing in Morocco. They prod donkeys to get them to move. Prodding is pretty much high tech for those who practice it. And Morocco is pretty much a great example of the results of prodding.

You really think that NASA hasn't contemplated a Mars trip? You really think this is the first time NASA has heard someone that has lost touch with reality and thinks he can do more than he can.

Trump is now pretty much a lame duck. His popularity has tanked, he lost the House and everyone in Washington despises him. He'll be lucky to last two more years.

Re:By 2020?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a reasonable way to prod a bureaucrat into thinking big.

Apparently not. It appears that it would be more difficult than getting a liberal to seek treatment for TDS.

Wait, so can we send Trump

[rsilvergun]

and maybe Mitch McConnell? Asking for a friend.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Opportunist]

Please don't forget to launch Pence too. I know it's easy to forget him (let's face it, he's the blandest VP since Quayle), but please, at least this one time, don't.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

Is your friend named "Lemania", or something like that?

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

A few others to add to the list:
Putin, Duterte, MBS, Bolsonaro, etc

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[gtall]

We'd need a power supply to keep him animated the entire trip since he wouldn't have a wall socket to plug into.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Known Nutter]

At least Quayle gave us "potatoe" -- so, there's that...

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Opportunist]

Explain why this is required.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Obfuscant]

At least Quayle gave us "potatoe" -- so, there's that...

"Potatoe" was a valid spelling alternative for "potato" a long time before Dan Quayle was born.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Mitch can survive the trip, he has a hard shell to retreat into

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

"Potatoe" was a valid spelling alternative for "potato" a long time before Dan Quayle was born.

Only if your going to follow it up with a final "s".

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[HornWumpus]

Der r kno envaled spelingz. U jst lak emagenation.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Known Nutter]

"Potatoe" was a valid spelling alternative for "potato" a long time before Dan Quayle was born.

Who gives a shit? The point was the amount of fun and fuckery Quayle afforded compared to Pence.who's about as interesting as a jello mold.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Trogre]

Sorry I didn't realise you needed your politicians to be interesting.

I would have thought in recent times you would be craving a bit of boredom in the political realm.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Known Nutter]

Perhaps "compelling" would have been a better word.

Re: Wait, so can we send Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

God help us all if Pelosi became president.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Obfuscant]

"Potatoe" was a valid spelling alternative for "potato" a long time before Dan Quayle was born.

Who gives a shit?

People who are literate and can recognize politically based bullshit when you write it. Quayle did not give us a word that was in the lexicon for a very very long time before he was even born. Your insult was based on your own ignorance, so of course you don't care.

Re:Wait, so can we send Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

A feat of misspelling that shocked the nation...

Unlike now when "hamberder" is only worth a passing glance after "covfefe"...

Of mice and men

[Ken_g6]

Whatever happened to that plan for a private company to send two people on a flyby of Mars? It probably couldn't happen by the end of 2020, though.

I think the best Nasa might be able to do by 2020 would be to send a small mammal, like a mouse, on a flyby of Mars. I'd say its chances of survival would be 50/50 at best, but it would give us a good idea of the danger involved. Landing it on Mars might also be possible, but launching it back to Earth after that probably wouldn't be. Which would turn it into the next Laika.

this is how to lead

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to find out if resources are holding things up, ask people how their estimates will change if they aren't a factor.

The premise here is just click bait.

Well, they can

[rsilvergun]

and they might even survive. Yeah, it's technically 4.83 months, but since when is any construction project on time?

That said, it's probably not a good idea if you value human life. And at any rate it's really just a distraction/vanity project. I'll believe Trump is concerned for our future when he makes good on his campaign promise of Universal Healthcare.

Re:Well, they can

[Anonymous Coward]

From the stand point of New York it isn't human until it leaves the womb.

Re:Well, they can

[Anonymous Coward]

So New York and the bible have something in common.

Re:Well, they can

[Powercntrl]

I'll believe Trump is concerned for our future when he makes good on his campaign promise of Universal Healthcare.

Holy Mandela effect Batman, he never made that promise. Trump promised he'd remove barriers preventing insurance companies from competing with each other, which he believed would result in lower prices for customers. It's kind of like thinking if you get all you friends to go see every movie released by Disney, then Disney might graciously grant you discounted admission to their theme parks. Yeah, fat chance of that.

Hillary was the one who picked up the mantle of universal healthcare, after she was worried the "Bernie or Bust" folks were gonna fuck her over in the election for being too moderate (and pro-big-business). Whether she would've actually made good on that promise is left to an alternate timeline.

Re:Well, they can

[Jeremi]

Holy Mandela effect Batman, he never made that promise.

Here is the video of Trump making that promise.

Re: Well, they can

[Powercntrl]

He never actually promised universal healthcare, those were the interviewer's words. At the time, Trump was laboring under the delusion that healthcare was far less complicated.

Re: Well, they can

[Jeremi]

"Everybody's gotta be covered... I am going to take care of everybody... everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now... [The uninsured person is] gonna be taken care of... The government's gonna pay for it". -- Donald Trump

Re: Well, they can

[Anonymous Coward]

He never actually promised universal healthcare, those were the interviewer's words.

Wow. Trump supporters don't even believe video evidence. The cognitive discord is just too hard.

At the time, Trump was laboring under the delusion that healthcare was far less complicated. ,

WTF? At the time of his election Trump had no clue how complicated anything was. How does that change shit?

Re: Well, they can

[Powercntrl]

Wow. Trump supporters don't even believe video evidence. The cognitive discord is just too hard.

It's "cognitive dissonance" - which means simultaneously holding two conflicting beliefs, such as assuming someone who calls Trump a "narcissist" is a Trump supporter.

Thanks for the laugh.

Re: Well, they can

[Powercntrl]

"Everybody's gotta be covered... I am going to take care of everybody... everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now... [The uninsured person is] gonna be taken care of... The government's gonna pay for it". -- Donald Trump

He didn't really have a plan for healthcare at that point. His line of thinking was likely that he* was going to come up with something so good, everyone would be able to afford healthcare. It was the proverbial "chicken in every pot" (which never actually implied that the government would be providing the chickens - you'd presumably be doing so well, you'd be able to buy your own chicken!).

Trump's actual plan for healthcare reform has fallen into the internet bit bucket. Thankfully, the Internet Archive picked up the slack. In a nutshell, it's what I previously wrote - Trump figured letting the market duke things out would make things better for consumers. Just like it has worked so well for cable companies. That was sarcasm, if you couldn't tell.

Point being, there was plenty of time before the election to realize Trump opposed universal healthcare, and it was very likely that protections for preexisting conditions were in jeopardy. Since winning the election, Trump has given no indication he wants to do anything other than dismantle the ACA and let those that have theirs, have theirs, and those that don't, do without.

* (more likely, he planned on asking someone to come up a great healthcare solution for him and then he'd take the credit)

Moonshot

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good thing JFK wasn't as hated as Trump or we'd have never made it to the moon. Seek help for the derangement syndrome already.

Re: Moonshot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea because flying to the moon and mars are the same exact thing asshole.

That's the problem with you trumptards. You think every problem you can just throw money at. Facts and people be damned. You are a giant fucking idiot.

How the mighty have fallen

[Bromancer]

I can't begin to describe how immensely sad this makes me at so many levels. At what point did the techies become such losers? I can remember a time, when we would examine the seemingly impossible, buck up, and meet the challenge. We have by no means met the edge of technology or solved all the problems we can solve. Like so much in life, it comes down to will, and you guys are a a complete bunch of pussies.

I want you to think about this. Really, truly, deeply think about this, and opportunity that was just lost. The space program has by and large been stalled. There is constant talk of going somewhere or doing something, sometime, which always seems to be 20 years away. Bureaucrats have been hired, who are more interested in job security than achieving. We have had a series of presidents, both republican and democrat, who have half assed the space program. We have lacked drive. We have lacked purpose. Now, an increasing number of people are losing interest that there is talk of far reducing funding or cancelling altogether. Why chase dreams when we can pay for more mundane practical stuff. It IS a good question.

So, along comes trump. You (likely) live in California, so you reflexively hate him, no matter what he says or does. So, when he asks if you want to chase your so called dreams, for real, you withered in the moment and said no. You disgust me. You should disgust yourself, and anyone else who loves epic science. The bell was rung, and you CHOSE to be tone deaf.

When Kennedy similarly rang the bell, better men than you rose and answered it. A whole host of knew technologies needed to be developed, but they new at its core, the moon shot was possible. Mars is the same. There are some issues to be solved, but they are not infinite. If Elon Musk offered a blank check for materials to have the best and brightest to work on this, you would faun over him, and maybe even be involved. But no, since you are small and petty, you mock and deride the effort because it was Trump.

You can say the timing was bad. You can claim it was unfair. But anyone who has ever chased a dream knows, you have to have your elevator speech ready. You never know who you bump into to make it happen. Instead of being snarky at Trump, you should save your Ire for the fucking NASA admin who was not prepared. He was asked, and he was not ready. Pathetic.

This was a moment in history lost. This was a moment for serious people with serious dreams. Instead, we got you. Instead of galvanizing expertise to figure out ways to meet the challenge, we will continue to support the nowhere scientists making nowhere plans for nobody. We will hand-wring and bitch that there is not money to test out solutions, since it is more fun to hand-wring and bitch than to actually tackle the problem. Again, you disgust me.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen! Not just at NASA is this a problem, either.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[jareth-0205]

I'm sure you know all about it, I mean it's not exactly rocket science is it.

The response to someone making impossible demands isn't OKAY LET'S FUCKING DO IT. Less than 2 years absolutely is impossible, of course it is. Hell it takes about 7 months to travel there. It's not a case of not being ambitious enough, it's not a case of being scared, it's a case of the very clever person in the room who knows how hard things are knows that trying to do that would be folly, waste a lot of money, and people will die.

Fuck this macho bullshit. Hard things are hard, serious people respect that.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

" You (likely) live in California, so you reflexively hate him, no matter what he says or does"

I reflexively hate him BECAUSE of what he says & does.

And i live in Texas.

And fuck you.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[MrTester]

Oh please.
If I had been in Lightfoots shoes I wouldnt have heard this as "Ill give you all the money you need to get to Mars." I would have heard a question that, if taken seriously, would cause all of NASAs priorities to be shifted around, lots of money spent on planning/replanning but when push comes to shove and the answer becomes "no, actualy we cant make that happen in in your term" and NASA becomes Trumps latest tweet storm, jobs are lost, there IS no additional money, everything we did comes out of the existing budget and we wasted a ton of money shifting priorities.

So "No sir, we cant" is the smartest answer there is when someone like Trump asks you to do something ridiculous.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, you disgust me.

Look in the mirror Solomon...
And get the fuck off the soap box.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[AstonMartinJunkie]

You are so correct sir!! Had Obama made a proposition like this he would have been called "visionary" or "brave" and the accolades and comparisons to JFK would have rained down from the MSM!!

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama cut spending on space exploration because when Dems are in office budgets actually matter. We live in reality & realize we cant go spend crazy all the time.

And as i recall, the MSM blasted him for it.

But im sure thats not how your fox-trained brain remembers it.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[hey!]

I don't live in California, but I do live in the real world.

In the real world, there is a limit to how fast you can speed up a project by dumping money on it. If you don't believe this that just means your experience with the real world is limited. Bad managers are quite generous when they're under time pressure, but a fat slug of money with a countdown clock attached doesn't make up for the lack of planning.

Going to the Moon in eight years was feasible but expensive. Kennedy already knew this when he made his Rice University speech. He didn't just pull that timeframe out of his ass. Going to Mars in three years is just Dunnking-Kruger in operation, the product of a man whose management experience is building bog-standard buildings and slapping brass-plated cladding on them.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a moment in history lost. This was a moment for serious people with serious dreams. Instead...

Instead we get a front page news story showing President Trump walking up a flight of stairs with a piece of paper stuck to his shoe. And the headline is "President walks around with toilet paper stuck to his shoe."

It's over.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how the last resort of all you trump dick suckers is to say "what about Obama!"

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up.

No, next year wasn't possible, but IT STILL WAS AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE SEIZED.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

It's typical leftism these days. Last weekend Trump offered the Democrats pretty much everything they had been demanding in return for reopening the government, and they not only rejected that offer, they rejected it before they even heard what it was.

That being said, given that the left is willing to close down the government over less than a half a percent of the government budget, it's fairly safe to say that they wouldn't have allowed NASA to go to Mars, either. The left has no great vision these days, they're too concerned about "microaggressions" and "being triggered" over the dumbest things. (Did you know that asking someone where they're from is a "microaggression" that can "trigger" people into feeling uncomfortable and not the most generic small talk most humans engage in when meeting someone new?) Under Obama, NASA's mission was to make Muslims "feel good about themselves." Nothing as grand as going to Mars or studying mining the asteroid belt - no, they wanted to make Muslims "feel good."

This is why China is going to be the first nation to Mars and we're going to be left arguing about the carbon impact of the machine used to move rockets to the launchpad.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

It's wonderful and fanciful and great to dream about, but it's a fantasy. The cold dark reality of cold dark space is that sending people to mars would be a staggeringly expensive project of dubious scientific benefit. There is no credible argument against this.

Space travel is and was always mostly a propaganda vehicle to justify weapons development. (Which is fine, if that's what gets it done) You likely grew up at a time when this dream was popular and since it's been woven in to your identity. To the point where you don't evaluate manned space travel

Trump, the greatest con man of the century, has come along to pull on those strands of your identity and manipulate your emotions. (Of which this subject is likely just one)

Trump doesn't give a wet fart about space travel.

Your post is a glurge of emotional appeals and betrays your feelings for scienticious cult of manned space travel.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

He offered to release the hostages in exchange for getting everything he wants.

That is not compromise, its appeasement. I thought you cons were against that.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

You say yes, then postpone launch dates, but still give the poten-sweettater the ego boost of having started the Man on Mars project. Everyone wins. Literally all of humanity.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Right. President Trump is the one releasing the hostages he never took.

President Trump has nothing to do with this shutdown. The President has vetoed no bills because he has been given no bills. This shutdown was caused entirely by Democrats refusing to vote for spending bills to keep the government running.

No bill ever made it to President Trump, so you cannot possibly find any way to blame him. The President and Republicans are the only ones willing to negotiate - so far, the Democrats have refused to even consider any sort of negotiations, and it's this unwillingness to talk that's keeping the shutdown going.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

That being said, given that the left is willing to close down the government over less than a half a percent of the government budget, it's fairly safe to say that they wouldn't have allowed NASA to go to Mars, either.

If Trump had campaigned on cutting funding to NASA, we'd have a non gender specific person on Mars by 2020. Nancy and Chuck would make it their mission.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you take your Kennedy comparison too seriously, remember this:

Kennedy made a speech in which he said "we choose to go to the Moon in this decade". Not "before the end of my term". His timeline was quite likely to include time in which he would not be in office to take credit for it, and yet he still made it.

Trump asked if it could be done within his term.

Now consider which one was more likely to have had a goal of public service.

It should be no surprise when respond accordingly.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

The techies aren't being losers here. The techies are being realistic. The optimal launch window won't occur until 2025. We could do it sooner but it would take more mass to do so and that stretches our technical capabilities and resources much more.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worse than that.

Two bills have gone before the senate that would have given all federal employees the one paycheck they've missed.

All but 3 democrats voted against it.

Who is holding who hostage?

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd rather have "free" education and "free" healthcare and let the Chinese have the moon. That's the truth.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you explain how it can be done and when, not some chickenshit list of excuses why it can't be done. That's what losers do. They have a list of excuses a foot longer than your list of requests.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[painandgreed]

You can say the timing was bad. You can claim it was unfair. But anyone who has ever chased a dream knows, you have to have your elevator speech ready. You never know who you bump into to make it happen. Instead of being snarky at Trump, you should save your Ire for the fucking NASA admin who was not prepared. He was asked, and he was not ready. Pathetic.

Nope. When it comes down to it, he was prepared and explained why it would be impossible. The unlimited funding scenario has already been run through, and I bet it was in some dossier that Trump refused to read also. When it comes down to it, given unlimited funding, we are 20 years from landing a man on Mars from the start of the funding. Possibly 30. Arguably, SpaceX has already started that process with the development of the BFR, but not with unlimited funding and their timetable doesn't really have it at the level needed by the end of Trump's first term. Then comes the Realpolitik that if NASA was given unlimited funding, they would be told how to spend it by the Senate and it would disappear into pork projects like the SLS and seriously miss any sort of optimistic timetable such as 20-30 years.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[AstonMartinJunkie]

Typical crude response we've come to expect from liberals.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[HornWumpus]

The is a close to optimal launch window every year. Do you even play KSP?

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[fropenn]

Kennedy provided leadership to propel the achievement of a dream that was years in the making.

For all we know, Trump came up with the "person on Mars by 2020" idea on the spot - has he ever mentioned it before, or since? Did it show up in any funding priorities? Maybe he was just making small talk with the head of an agency that he knows very little about and has no idea how to run.

Trump is no leader. He's simply seeking to find a legacy that he can leave behind as a monument to himself.

If a person to Mars is really an important goal, one of our future leaders can make it happen. But it won't be Trump.

Re: How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Did he ever say it can't be done?
2. Is he a rocket scientist.
3. A timetable is already in place, 2030.
4. You are an idiot. Expecting a slashdotter to layout a timetable for mars.

Re: How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

????? So you admit you have no other reasons other than "well, Obama"

Well played sir on admitting you are wrong in everything you say. And have nothing to back it up other than "well, Obama"

Re: How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

If trump is a billionaire and wants the wall so bad, tell him to fucking fund it. Besides $5 billion is a down payment. The wall will cost over 70 billion.

Re: How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Keep paying $500 a month for shitty healthcare. Keep letting the healthcare industry jerk You. How's that copay working out? Awwww over you allowed limit? Well too bad sparky. Give us more money.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

He asked the question 2 years ago, so there were 4 years at the time.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[ceoyoyo]

There's a launch window near the end of 2019, but it's an 800 day transit. You'd get there sooner if you waited for the 170 day one in the middle of 2020.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[CQDX]

This is not new for the President. He was talking about Mars since he got elected (and I believe also on the campaign trail).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/b...

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

SpaceX already had most of the hardware required for 1-way. Dragon + Falcon heavy can send 16800kg to Mars, enough to land 1-2 people alive on the surface of Mars. Would probably be able to find more than a million people willing to do it. If Musk was handed a 2-year terminal prognosis he might even try to do it himself.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[MooseTick]

"you guys are a a complete bunch of pussies"

And you are so brave to blindly want to spend my money on a project because it sounds cool.

I get it. Saying mankind went to Mars would be an achievement and something to brag how we are better than whales and bears. But lets just say we could send someone to Mars in 2 years and it will cost one trillion dollars to make that happen. I'm sure there will be scientific and technological breakthroughs, but would a different project have a likelihood of having better and more useful breakthroughs?

What if that money were spent on:
Self driving cars - Think of the lives saved and worldwide efficiencies gained
Cancer/disease research: More lives saved
Paying down the debt: Not popular or a breakthrough but the interest alone would give us at least $30B/year back. That could buy a nice wall!
Healthcare - nuff said
Infrastructure
Tacos - That would get each citizen around 3000 items from the Taco Bell dollar menu!

There are a lot of options. Why is a manned Mars mission the BEST option?

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you think this "unlimited money" was going to come from?

Bear in mind, right now, right here on Earth, Trump can't even find the money to pay air traffic controllers.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention launch windows. There are only appropriately efficient launch windows for Mars about every couple of years. Yes, you can blast your way there with enough fuel, but the cost to do so is immense versus waiting for the proper alignment.

If he wanted a Mars mission within his first term the day he started it would have had to launch within a couple of months of its start (utterly impossible) or in mid 2018 (very slightly less than utterly impossible).

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Powercntrl]

I can't begin to describe how immensely sad this makes me at so many levels.

I'm more disappointed that people die in this country because they can't afford their medication. This country has failed in so many other ways unrelated to our obsession with showing off the size of our space-dick.

Yes, we have the technological capability of sending a human to Mars. That's not a good enough justification for spending money which could be better put to fixing problems down here on Earth.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, you disgust me.

So "techies" are looser pussies in your mind, and we just need a bit of good old-fasioned grit and will to get-r-done.
Oh, and California is bad - all bad - lets get rid of Californa (along with all of its top aerospace companies).

No, explain how we are supposed to tackle technical problems without said techies? Coal miners? Truckers? Flat-earthers?

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Powercntrl]

Tacos

So much yes.

And not just because I'm still salty Hillary didn't win and we didn't get a taco truck on every street corner.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely fucking right. The reaction to this is pitiful. America in the 21st century. Mewling. Pathetic. Awful

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Kennedy reading out a speech written by someone else. Inspirational.

Trump says to (without a pre-written speech) NASA "get to the moon in 2 years and I'll give you an unlimited budget to do it."

And you get an "orange man bad" reaction from this nerd site. That's leftist wankery politics taking over this site.

The correct answer is - "Sir, given all the complexities we'd have to overcome I'm honestly not sure we could get to Mars in such a tight time frame without huge risks and disastrous outcomes along the way... but NASA is full of people who who would jump at the chance to make history again, just like 1969. I'd personally work myself to death for the opportunity."

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

You think that bloviating is the same as wisdom. It is not. Kennedy did NOT define his moonshot by his presidential term. He defined it independently and in fact the project was completed after he was gone.

Scale. People have some real problems grasping scale. Some people think that life is like a movie. Kennedy knew a moonshot was possible but YOU don't grasp the problem with a Mars trip. And now for where you really suffer mental failure.....
TRUMP DOES NOT HAVE BUDGET GRANTING POWERS. TRUMP IS NOT A MONARCH.

So no opportunity was lost. Just some red faced moron hot air was given the least consideration possible which was the smartest thing that could be done. Yeah yeah I know, reality disgusts you. That's why you bury your head in Breitbart you imbecile.

This was a moment in history lost...WHAT THE FUCK? Just how stupid can you be? All that was lost was the time spent using big crayon logic to explain things to a disrespectful buffoon. Kennedy would have already known the basics from READING. Kennedy was respectful of others so he would have and did exercise PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY by acquiring basic knowledge by educating himself. Bosses that know nothing and just swagger into situations armed with offensiveness, arrogance and ignorance suck balls.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a stupid take. Everything in your post is based on a lie you tell yourself.

Nobody made any demands. He asked a question. That's all.

It isn't impossible. Not remotely impossible. In 2017 you could have gotten ULA and SpaceX on the horn and asked about making the next 2 launch windows. With a couple billion, SpaceX probably could have provided a few falcon heavies for the project. You've got Bigelow with what might not be a perpetual scam that you could use for a habitat.

It isn't likely that you could have put equipment on the surface of mars in the 2018 launch window, but it wasn't flat-out impossible either.

Sending people in the 2020 launch window would also have been very unlikely, but it wasn't impossible either. Not with buckets of money to speed up Dragon 2 or Orion.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that you are not a complete moron and you know a little bit about these things. Assuming that, it is simply your partisan blinders that are driving you to make such inane statements.

No, it wasn't a completely stupid and "macho" demand, it was a somewhat reasonable question about a somewhat unreasonable goal.

The correct answer would have been to set up a time to discuss the options - like killing the SLS ($18 billion already sunk) and using that money to fund ULA, BO and SpaceX in creating heavy launchers, any one of several companies who are working on potential landers and someone like Bigelow who makes habitats for transit. Then come back and say "landing by the end of your first term isn't possible, but here's a plan to get people on Mars by 2022" (or 2024, or whatever date is actually feasible). You sketch in some numbers and let him know that it isn't a real plan, just a cocktail napkin sketch, but it could work.

Then he can say "nah, forget it, it is too expensive" or he can say "here's some money to put together a real plan. Let me know ASAP and we'll get over to capital hill with a request for funding."

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like when Obama killed the Mars program simply because it had Bush's name on it? Or when he restored the mars program a few years later, with all of the same equipment and goals, just delayed by a decade or more and with tens of billions more in expenses? Like that?

Remember how all of the progressive "science communicators" cheered when Obama killed the manned space program? And then remember how the same people lobbied to have it restored? And then remember how they cheered his magnificence for putting back the manned space program?

Yeah, everyone who partakes in partisan politics is an idiot.

If you can't have a serious conversation with your boss about the budget priorities and goals for your agency, you shouldn't be in charge.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Cytotoxic]

I share your cynicism, but it wouldn't take unlimited funding to land a man on mars, and it wouldn't take 30 years. SpaceX thinks they are less than 10 years away from that capability, and they don't have unlimited funding.

Given reasonably unfettered funding, you could cobble together a Mars landing and return mission inside of 10 years. SpaceX, Blue Origin and the ULA all have heavy launchers in development that could do the job in the next couple of years. Falcon Heavy and Delta IV Heavy could participate now.

Companies that built modules for the ISS could be tasked with a transit craft. Given enough money you could start putting it up when New Glenn or BFR/Starship is ready. Dragon 2.0 could put legs back on and be ready as a lander in a couple of years.

Given "unlimited" funding, hitting the 2024 launch window (given a start date of 2017) wasn't impossible. It would cost less than we spend on stupid wars, and the money wouldn't be spent killing people. So there's that.

But that assumes an unreal scenario, I suppose. I really doubt congress would get on board with such a proposal in anything like the timeline needed. It would probably take them 4 years to approve a huge budget that, as you say, breaks the project up into a bunch of district-specific pork-barrel projects. And judging by the "quick option" SLS which used "off the shelf" components, I suppose your 30 year number wasn't actually unrealistic.

Re: How the mighty have fallen

[thelandp]

Nice speech. Would you have given the same if he had asked for Alpha Centauri by next Tuesday? Because setting foot on Mars by 2020 is about as likely

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know we already have a manned Mars mission on the books, right? Obama made a big speech and everything.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[painandgreed]

Well no, I don't think it would take unlimited funds. In fact, in this scenario of doing it by 2020, I think the bottleneck is time, not funds. I don't think that things can be designed, have supply chains arranged, built the tools, manufacture the ships, test them, and then launch and get them there in that timetable. Musk thinks 10 years. He also thinks 20-200 Billion dollars to do a manned mission to Mars and even he thinks that it will be towards the higher end of those costs. Now, I think we can say that Musk's timelines and outlooks are usually very optimistic and almost always go over on times, not sure about money.

Could we get to Mars on 20 billion a year over the next decade? I still don't think so. It took us a decade to get to the moon and going to Mars is much more complicated. There is simply too much tech that needs to be designed, built, tested, and revised before the final manned landing could realistically happen.Apollo 4 didn't land men on the moon, block one of the Falcon rocket wasn't the reusable version, and Mars Mission 1 won't land men on Mars. It's going to require several launches to test deep space habitats, large scale powered landing on Mars, creating fuel on Mars, refueling on Mars, and launching on Mars before we'd risk humans. I suspect we'll do a deep space habitat and probably a fly by of the moon. Then a manned fly by of Mars that could conduct operations with ships already landed on mars for refueling robotically to show that it can happen. Then there will be a manned mission to Mars' surface. I think we could probably do that in 20 years with adequate funding if all testing looked good and there were no unforseen issues.

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[MooseTick]

Is it a mission set to go in the next 24 months with an unlimited budget?

Re:How the mighty have fallen

[Anonymous Coward]

P and GP are addressing different things.

P is addressing technical feasibility, risk, full archtecture engineering

GP is addressing passion, the desire to make it work, which brings out the effort required to make something happen.

If you are building 150 roads, P is the right answer--particularly when you are on roads between #5 and #145

If you are doing something that will be new, different,one-off, and/or expand the breadth of human knowledge you need GP. There is no hope of categorizing all the variables, enforcing the configuration control, or maintaining predictability (or even performing maintenance beyond a single shot function). The totality of all the risks will never be fully known in advance, so technical arguments are not the point. The point is simply to try, because the only way you guarantee not going forward is not to take a first step.

Illegal aliens solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Trump understands the illegal aliens are coming from Mexico and not Mars, however, I'm not so sure. If he's looking for one way trips to Mars, he might think this is a great solution for the problem he sees as the southern border.

Derp, I be stable genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me the King the Mars! #MAGA

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[Anonymous Coward]

Best comment ever! Iâ(TM)ll grab my buggalo

Send Ocasio Cortez ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The video feed from Mars, with her psychotic-lunatic stare, will generate billions of page views !

Thanks, Trump!

[Locke2005]

Donald Trump, the "Fuck fiscal responsibility!" president!

Re:Thanks, Trump!

[TotalCriminal]

And Reagan. And Bush I. And Bush II. And Mitch McConnell.

Share the credit where it is due. He's just carrying on a time honored Republican tradition.

Re:Thanks, Trump!

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that you don't mention the president that outspent all of them combined. Pretty sleazy there...

Not news.

[Anonymous Coward]

"“The President would have to be right on time, a rarity,” - Yeah, no agenda here...

There was also no offer for unlimited funding.

This wasn't a meeting to accelerate the schedule. Trump was asking questions. Tell me, any of you, if you were president, wouldn't you ask if we could get to Mars earlier? Of course you would.

To summarize: A very biased source took a question that wouldn't be unusual for a president to make and misrepresented it so that all of the liberal sheep can all bleat in unison.

Re: Not news.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would ask the question, yes.

But when he said "during my term"

He showed his hand. He made it more about being a monument to him as president rather than being a noble thing to do to bring humanity a step forward. That's the difference. And if you can't see that you are a blind partisan supporter.

I say all this as a Republican going on 10 years.

Re: Not news.

[Anonymous Coward]

When Kennedy said we will goto the moon, he didn't say "we will goto the moon in my term, give me all the credit" that's all trump wants. Credit for doing something. Because so far, he hasn't done shit other than make rich people richer and cut taxes for the rich.

Who cares? TAKE THE MONEY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell him he nees to declare a national emergency. So he gets his retarded wall, and you get basically all the money you want. Suddenly, every amazing research you wanted is "necessary" to get to the moon. He does not understand it anyway!

In the end, when he's gone, of course the pproject will have failed (as planned), but you will have built a shitton of cool things, made a shitton of cool contracts (to keep things going) that you can't undo, and can still use all those things after he is gone.

Never underestimate the leverage of a useful idiot in the right position, who wants something from you.

Re:Who cares? TAKE THE MONEY!

[Anonymous Coward]

All that money is away from something else, or more loan.

Re: Who cares? TAKE THE MONEY!

[Anonymous Coward]

Deficits only matter when a Democrat is in office. It is ok for Republican Presidents to run up the debt. Bonus points for hiding massive war costs off thr official budget and then blame the next guy when people vote in a Democrat (cough Afghanistan/Iraq cough) as if it is his fault.

Re: Who cares? Pathetic editors lol.

[mstrash]

More unvalidated libel against Trump. More retarded FUD by high school diploma BeauHD and hut schooled flea ridden Missmash. Where is the room full of witnesses? If everyone makes up a new fake story in exchange for a $2M book deal, he can't stop them all. You partisan vile Republican neocons and moronic Democrats sicken me.

What if Trump did ask Musk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Starship is moving along awfully fast, Musk says it could carry a crew to Mars in 2020. Don't the pieces fit? Meanwhile, NASA's little Starliner capsule might get its first manned flight in 2019. Pretty embarassing for NASA if they only get a few Starliner flights in before Starship makes it obsolete, or worse, if Starliner is delayed another two years and never makes more than a test flight. I'd bet Trump asked Musk first, knowing how it would all play out, then asked the NASA guy just to get his incompetence and can't do attitude on record. Will make it easier to cut NASA later.

smod 0p

[Anonymous Coward]

Sales and so on, Session and join in list of other faster than this worthwhile. It's hot on the heels of from one folder on Nigger Association told reporters, Words, don't get be in a scene and to look into pr0ject faces a set The hard drive to people's faces is between each BSD bureaucratic and

You tell us

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you tell us?

I'm used to doing hard work to achieve what I want.
You seem to be the one crying because you didn't get your way and didn't get Hillary in the White House. There seems to be a LOT of you crying that someone else needs to provide you things you want (college, healthcare, food, housing, etc) without you having to work for it. You seem to be throwing a lot of fits because you are not getting it.
If you spent half as much effort working for whats important to you, you would already have it without having to oppress people who worked hard for what they wanted.

Re: You tell us

[Anonymous Coward]

LUL. You trump supporters are always so honest.

Re: You tell us

[Anonymous Coward]

And statistically, the most likely to be on welfare. The hypocrisy is sweet like Mt Dew Diabetus.

My Idea: Send Trump!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's go ahead and satisfy Trump's narcissism by making him a national hero and sending him to Mars no later than 2020! He can be the first person to Mars. You only need enough oxygen for a one way trip though. And networking and his Twitter should only work until he gets to Mars.

Should have taken the money

[petes_PoV]

Although it is impossible, since Mars missions are only feasible every 2 years due to orbital mechanics, the guy should have committed to it. With a huge cash injection, NASA could have made 10 years of progress in every aspect of space exploration. Hell, they might even have caught up with SpaceX in terms of rocketry.

And after Trump's term is up ... what's the worst that could have happened? The guy gets fired and nobody is on Mars. But there would have been a lot of progress made. Maybe it would have then been possible by the end of Trump's second term?

That is the problem with bureaucrats: they are too honest. Nobody expects politicians to tell the truth - the people they deal with should be self-serving for their causes, too.

Re:Should have taken the money

[ceoyoyo]

Maybe the NASA guy knows that Trump doesn't control NASA funding allocations?

Better waste of money than the Great Wall of Trump

[ClarkMills]

And I know just the man to put in charge of this project...

The catch is everyone going are all Democrats

[mykepredko]

Starting with Nancy Pelosi and the Mueller team and their 13 angry democrats.

Re:The catch is everyone going are all Democrats

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, He'll just tell them they are going "To Serve Man".

Re:The catch is everyone going are all Democrats

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll invite the Martians back to live in a sanctuary city.

Re:The catch is everyone going are all Democrats

[mykepredko]

Nice one.

It reminds me my work at LG Electronics

[Anonymous Coward]

It reminds me my work at LG Electronics, when my manager was asking something absolutely impossible like sending employees to the Moon next day. And if I tried to say something against of it, he was saying that my job is to think about the plan of how we are gonna achieve this instead thinking why we cannot do that.

Fake News

[AndyKron]

What offer? There was no offer.

Trump wants fame

[sit1963nz]

If he wants fame so much, lets send Trump on a one way trip to Mars, in fact lets send his whole damn family.
Tell him its a revival of the TV series "Lost in space" and he is playing "Smith"

Aim the damn thing at the sun and tell him its a short cut as Mars is on the other side.

Silly /.er

[rsilvergun]

Deficits only matter when a Democrat is in charge.

Might not be a popular opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be the first to admit I'm not a fan of Trump. I also realize that pulling off something like this in a couple years is nearly impossible and just throwing money at it isn't a solution. That said, reading some of the other things that he said, I almost think he's on to something even if he was probably more concerned with making himself look good.

“We don’t capture people’s imaginations anymore,” Trump said, in what Sims described as “a rare moment of wistfulness.” Trump continued: “We used to do big things — incredible things. No one could do the things we could do. You have to inspire people. They went to the moon. But the call would be great. Honestly, how cool is NASA?”

Are we really on track to actually do something like a manned Mars mission by the 2030s or will that keep slipping? There are a lot of problems that need to be solved but is anyone actually working on solving them? Whether you like Trump or not, he did have a point - the space program used to inspire people and it would be amazing if it got back to that point.

Nazi faggot

[Anonymous Coward]

Women hate you.

The first president on Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps NASA could put Trump on Mars before the end of his current term? Win-win-win.

And had it been Obama

[cascadingstylesheet]

And had it been Obama, we'd be talking about how visionary and forward looking and all that he must be ...

Re:And had it been Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

No we wouldn't be and you are a fucking idiot.

Re:And had it been Obama

[zifn4b]

And had it been Obama, we'd be talking about how visionary and forward looking and all that he must be ...

Only the sheeple that can't think for themselves, i.e. most people.

Re: And had it been Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

The repubtards last line of defense. That's how you know he's getting desperate.

"But, but, DEMOCRATS!"

Re:And had it been Obama

[Powercntrl]

And had it been Obama, we'd be talking about how visionary and forward looking and all that he must be ...

When the ACA fucked up my health coverage, I called it like I saw it. When "cash for clunkers" let people trade in old pollute-mobiles for new pollute-mobiles, yup - bitched about that, too. I also recall not being too happy about the EV tax credit, because rich people don't need the taxpayer's help buying a luxury car (regardless of how "green" it is).

I still think the Republicans are worse, because homophobia is part of the their platform (yes, that's actually the GOP's own website admitting they're against marriage equality), and they're still just as bad (if not worse) at taking taxpayer money and using it to give benefits to the super-rich. They're also fucking hypocritical for incessantly claiming how pro-life they are, yet they don't seem to mind when adults drop dead because they can't afford healthcare/medicine. Gotta take a mulligan on that one, right GOP?

Both sides of our two-party system are evil. The Republicans are just more so.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice strawman!

No microscopes on Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

While the usual be-ta dribblers bash on Trump for actually wanting what the be-ta dribblers wanted yesterday before reading that Trump wanted the same thing, slashdot diverts from the real story- that there are no microscopes on Mars.

What most dribblers here do not understand is that al-pha scientists at the end of the 1960s accepted that the evidence proved that microbiological life is common throughout our solar system where conditions on various moons and planets make life possible. Too many meteorites showed fossil evidence of this. Then there was America's 70s Mars landing with first quality chemical tests that proved beyond all doubt that life did exist on the surface of Mars.

And then organised religion struck back with Project Big Bang II. The original 'big bang' was a creationist ploy selling 'adam' and 'garden of eden' in another form, and had proven to be a storming PR success. So orgaised religion had its people dismiss the meteorite evidence and then the Mars chemical analysis with the ole 'who can tell?'.

Well Hooke's invention certainly could tell, within minutes, which is why it is essential that there are no microscopes on Mars- and a legion of shills telling you in places like this one why microscopes are "anti-science"- or why the macro lenses used for geological examination on Mars are, in fact 'microscopes' (an utter lie).

It gets better. Australian researchers have developed molecular methods for looking at fossils that now prove whether a form is organic in origin, or just a crystalline function of inorganic aging. Their method recently examined a very interesting fossil that be-tas had been arguing for years was just a plant- and proved it to be an animal as al-pha scientists had always claimed. This was an Earth fossil- but their same methods have proven that the meteorites did indeed contain fossils of life that originated off our planet.

Why does this not get mainstream coverage? The power of organised religion on our planet is absolute. In the USA, nothing gets done at the highest level without the explicit approval of the judaic forces that have always controlled America. The real leaders of the 'protestant', catholic and j-ish churches work toward an identical agenda- and that agenda is pure societal control. The leaders of the recent m-slim influx into the USA sit at the same table.

So science in the form the plebs understand it is simply part of a religious continuum. A preacher from two thousand years ago would get the REAL meaning of 'global warming' in a second for instance. And he would also understand why the idea of extra-terrestrial life is such a problem.

NASA has one job and one job only- to perfect the means of waging nuclear war. When 'I dream of Jeanie' was a big hit in the 60s, this wasn't even hidden, as all astronauts in the USA had to be members of one branch of America's global murder machine- navy, airforce or army. There could be, by definition, no 'civilian' astronauts in NASA. After Vietnam, a new lying propaganda was needed, and the NSA worked to rebrand NASA.

So NASA has no issue with real non-military science being removed from their fake civilain programs. The only real science at NASA links to warfare- warheads, propulsion units, satellites etc. When organised religious leaders decide that there will be no Microscopes on Mars, NASA raises no objections, and 'young' scientists/engineers at NASA are told to keep their traps shut if they want to keep working there.

And now the propaganda has gotten so bad, Trump is bashed for wanting what you all wanted only yesterday. And I am young enough to remember the original well developed plan by NASA to put men on Mars in the aftermath of the moon program. And, before cancellation, that was going to happen many years BEFORE this current date. The cancellation happened NOT because of cost, but because it was decided that such a program could not be prevented from revealing the existence of life (assumed relatively primitive) on Mars.

Be-ta dribblers who think sciencey stuff 'cool' do not get how most of their favourite sciencey themes sold to them by the mainstream media are actually barely disguised religious themes- same as it always was for the plebs.

Liberals are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

How did Kennedy know?
Was he a rocket scientist that calculated it out? or did he ASK NASA just like Trump here did.

You liberals are a fucking waste of time to talk to. Just so the rest of you know what they achieved today, to celebration and cheers... NY put in their Constitution the ability to have abortions in the 3rd trimester, up to the due date. Babies born alive due to botched abortions (not botched because they are done by inducing and killing the live baby later) are now allowed to be killed. Yep, your due date, you can have abortion by giving live birth and then killing it then, cheered in NY by governor when it passed today.

The border wall however is immoral.

Fuck all liberals.

Re:Liberals are evil

[hey!]

I don't think the border wall is immoral. It's just stupid.

Re:Liberals are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the border wall is immoral. It's just stupid.

Funny thing is I think this about people who oppose what I would consider common sense and comprehensive immigration control; which would include physical security aspects, such as a wall.... not immoral, just stupid.

Re:Liberals are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, the wall is stupid...but I'll go a step further:

THE BORDER WALL IS UN-AMERICAN.

America was built on immigrant spirit and labor. It thrives on diversity. "Give us your poor..." America is about defending freedom, helping the little guy. So a tiny handful of Mexicans want to escape a terrible place to come taste freedom...and we say no? Why? Don't give me the "they'll take our jobs" crap, that's been proven false by so many economists and political scientists that I've lost count. We say no because half of this country is CONSUMED BY HATE.

IF YOU BELIEVE IN FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY, THEN YOU ALSO SUPPORT OPEN BORDERS.

Did I mention that a wall also keeps us IN?

Re:Liberals are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't stupid or immoral. I live in Laredo, Texas. We don't need a wall here because the rio bravo mostly does the job: hint, it's a PHYSICAL BARRIER.
Down the road a bit where the border doesn't run along the riverside, there are walls and yes they do work and no they're not immoral.
Right across the border are shitloads of narcos who would happily bring their gun battles across here without a physical barrier being there. You clowns think it's perfectly safe down here and that there is no threat from the border. There is. You have your head in the sand and you are fed your pap from CNN and the like who have an agenda.

Re:Liberals are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why almost every property in the history of cities is separated by fences and walls, because it's a stupid idea and doesn't work.

Relevant captcha

Re:Liberals are evil

[hey!]

Every property in the history of cities have roofs. Should we build one of those over the country?

Re:Liberals are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, ask yourself WHY there are roofs and WHY there are walls and you might see why your comparison is fallacious.

Re:Liberals are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing how experts are right about what you care about, but when security experts say border walls are viable and cost effective, you say "It's just stupid."

Almost as if you decide on what is true not based on evidence, not based on the recommendations of people who dedicate their lives to studying the issue, but how you feel about it possibly being true.

Re:Liberals are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the border wall is immoral. It's just stupid.

Once you realize who will receive the money for it and who financed Trump's election campaign, you'll get around to realize
a) why Trump is not interested in more effective solutions outside of construction industry
b) why the border wall is immoral. Remember: we are not talking about a "mere" $5bn here: that's just the down payment.

Re:Liberals are evil

[amicusNYCL]

That's why almost every property in the history of cities is separated by fences and walls, because it's a stupid idea and doesn't work.

That's such a dumb analogy. The reason you put security stuff on or around your house is to "encourage" a burglar to pick a different house. If someone is specifically targeting your house and only your house that privacy fence you've got isn't going to do shit.

So, where exactly do you think people on the southern border are going to go if they see there's a wall there? What, are they going to try the next country over?
  Try a different analogy. You own a big piece of property, a ranch or something. You're a turf farmer, so you've got miles and miles of turf that is great for sleeping on. Every homeless person in a 100-mile radius wants to sleep on your turf, and only your turf, and nowhere else. These people are determined to sleep on your property. Is a wall going to stop them if they're determined to get in? How about 24-hour security with infrared cameras, drones, etc? Wouldn't that be a better investment if your goal is to keep everyone out than simply building a wall and calling it done?

That's the discussion the country is having. For some reason though, people in Trump's camp have decided to suggest that anyone opposed to Trump's ideas wants no border security at all, in any way, and people can just freely frolic across the border at will. No one is arguing in favor of that, people are just saying that a wall is not the end-all-be-all solution. A wall in specific locations would probably help. Increased funding for patrols, cameras, drones, etc would also help, maybe even more so.

That's the discussion, so take your "but houses have walls" analogy and shove it up your ass. Thanks.

Re:Liberals are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Even dumber is arguing that a wall won't do more to keep people from crossing a border than not having a wall.

They put a wall around half a city in Berlin and it worked just fine at keeping people from crossing.

A wall is not immigration policy. You can have a wall with a race-based, xenophobic, limited immigration policy. And you can have a wall with open immigration to all comers. A wall is orthagonal to the problem.

It is inarguable that a wall makes crossing the border harder at the place where the wall is. That's why illegal border crossings have moved from places where there is a wall to places where there isn't a wall.

"It is too expensive for the value added" is an argument against the wall. "It is bad aesthetically" is an argument against the wall.

But "you can't just put up a wall and be done with it" is not an argument against the wall. Nobody is arguing that they should build a wall and fire all of the borer patrol. It isn't even a decent straw man - it has absolutely nothing to do with what anyone is arguing.

Arguing over building a wall is pretty stupid. In the grand scheme of things it isn't that expensive, it would undoubtedly do the job it is designed to do (increasing the likelihood that border agents can stop illegal crossings) and it has absolutely no impact on immigration policy.

You can have any immigration policy you want and still have a wall. You can have a guest worker program. You can increase quotas tenfold. You can allow unlimited legal immigration. You can ban all immigration from anywhere except Europe. You could expel all non-native born citizens. None of those things is incompatible with a wall.

A wall is just a wall.

You can have a wall around your house in conjunction with a security system, or an on-premises armed guard, or you could leave your doors unlocked behind the wall. It isn't the be-all, end-all. It is just a barrier to movement.

I'm not sure why this is a story...

[Chas]

Sometimes you can overcome logistical problems by simply throwing money at it.

Other times, you could throw every last cent, ruble, kopeck, yen, yuan, won, bot, pence, etc on the planet at it and it still won't make some problems go away.

If POTUS asks you about something like this, simply tell him that a manned Mars mission on a 1-2 year (since launching in December of 2020 would essentially be 2 years) timetable falls into the latter category.

Hey, unlike past presidents, this one actually ASKED NASA about it.

Elon Musk

[Anonymous Coward]

2002 to 2012 And I seem to remember he did something else .

Nancy Pelosi Offers Two Chickehawks in Every Pot!

[Anonymous Coward]

“And we will strengthen our democracy by passing the Equality Act, that is an act to end discrimination against LG— LGTB community,”
Nancy Pelosi

I would have asked that question

[taskiss]

It's an interesting question - "can you do it?"

My next question would have been - "What would it cost?"

And then I'd have started asking about priorities and what they presently had on the table, etc.

Folks sure are funny though, getting wrapped around the axle 'cause the man asked a question.

Re:I would have asked that question

[Anonymous Coward]

If the timeline where 5 years it would be an interesting question.

With a 1 year deadline, the only answer is "no, orbits don't work that way even if we magically had the ship fueled and loaded on the pad right now we couldn't launch it before the deadline let alone reach Mars."

All the interesting bits about what we actually have vs need to build vs need to design, and what they would cost in time and money don't even come up when it's trivial to demonstrate the trip itself can't be completed in the allowed time.

Re: I would have asked that question

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you have also said "during my term?"

Making it about YOU and not about the American people makes it sleazy as fuck. But you guys keep ignoring that part. I wonder why?

Re: I would have asked that question

[taskiss]

Of course everything's about me! What other perspective can I represent without appropriation?

What Trump's second response should have been

[SuperKendall]

When the NASA guy tried to patiently explain why it would be 2030 when NASA was there, Trump should have responded with:

"Well SpaceX says they'll be landing people there in 2025, why is NASA so slow? Maybe I should just send more government money to SpaceX. Why do you think you deserve it instead?"

Re: What Trump's second response should have been

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump was already distracted and asking about boob jobs in space by then. The orangutan in chief would be satisfied with a feed from a merged fox and Cinemax that just showed porn in front of a "wall" and in space.

#ShitholeCountry #NoUniversalHealthcare

[Anonymous Coward]

BIGLY Trump is the leader you all deserve. My white kids are learning Mandarin now. Good job Doland!!

old but fit men

[Max_W]

Certainly, it is impossible to send young baby-face astronauts to the Mars by 2020. It is too risky. If they die in an accident the young promising lives will be destroyed and people will be upset.

However, there are fit old men who could risk it. For example, try to do the exercises which this 70+ years old mad does: https://youtu.be/HMe2JyoIOYk

Such men if selected and trained properly could do it.

Re: old but fit men

[Anonymous Coward]

Being FIt is only a small part of the equation.

Re:old but fit men

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the US Air Force talked about this idea way back in the 1950's and 60's. It was connected to nuclear aircraft (as in, 'a plane powered by a reactor') and the shielding required was just too heavy. So some genius came up with the idea of getting old aircrew to fly a minimally shielded nuclear plane.

It went nowhere. The idea of deliberately irradiating an old crew because 'they are too old to matter' was horrific. Nuclear aircraft also went nowhere. The whole concept sits on a shelf labeled, "Bizarre Ideas That Got Far Too Much Attention".

Unlimited Funding To Put People on Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Has he got anyone in mind?

It's only fair

[Comboman]

Richard Nixon, the last criminal commander-in-chief (well, last one to get caught) was president during the first moon landing, so it's only fair that Trump gets to be president during the first mars landing.

Re:It's only fair

[Obfuscant]

Richard Nixon, the last criminal commander-in-chief (well, last one to get caught)

Perjury is a crime, and I recall a more recent President who did that.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[Anonymous Coward]

The $5 billion is a down payment on the wall. The total cost will be well over 70 billion.

I bet the Senate knows very little about Space

[Anonymous Coward]

This is only news, because Trump said it. I bet only Bill Nelson and Richard Shelby were the only people in the US Senate who knew much about rockets, and the manned space program. You could probably get at least a couple dozen senators to say similar things.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[Anonymous Coward]

I find this comment to be incredibly offensive to my beliefs in treating people like people and not arbitrarily carving up the world just to fight over who controls the biggest bits.

Not worth the cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Figure 50x the cost of the wall. Unlike the wall, not worth the cost.

How is the SLS a boondoggle?

[Anonymous Coward]

The SLS seems like a normal, shuttle derived rocket. It could have had its first flight by 2020, before the Shutdown, instead of 2017. Now, if you mean it doesn't have any payloads yet, that is the fault of Congress, not the SLS rocket.

Reminds Me of Steve Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Great leaders sometimes ask "unreasonable" questions. I'd wager that there were more than a few incidents like this involving Steve Jobs.

Not a credible source

[zifn4b]

Gee the second top article on that site is the BuzzFeed article that was proven to not be credible. Liberal bias much Slashdot?

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[Anonymous Coward]

Good I'll gladly support it. If you value your beliefs and culture you'd support it to.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you would need one helluva an army to defeat the USA if you believe in that nonsense.

HE offered to pay to send people to Mars????

[Holi]

It had to be out his own pocket, since Congress, specifically the House controls the purse.

Stupid president questions...

[mirthful1]

I'd imagine it's pretty common for a president to ask something stupid of an expert. What I can also imagine is, with this particular president, the anecdote from the expert becomes public and the subject of articles like this one. And I like that. Trump seems to have no shame. He also seems more than willing to go out on a limb and ask something risky and look like an idiot. I personally have Never held that against someone in my professional career of 30+ years in technology. I also rarely ever share an embarrassing moment like that. Rarely, haha. With this exchange, I think it was right to share it.

Ruskies getting pressured too

[mirthful1]

On a related note, the russians are pressuring their NASA also. Time to put up or shutup and let some other folks have a shot perhaps: https://arstechnica.com/scienc...

For a country which landed on moon in 7 years.

[MarkH]

Not an unreasonable question. The USA when puts its mind to something gets shit done.

Other examples include Manhattan project 1939-1945.

Not within 1 term mind. But still good question

Re:For a country which landed on moon in 7 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

There was something....different about the workforce back then. Can't put my finger on it--for fear of being sued for harassment--but hmmmm. Oh, and common core/new math/every single liberal boondoggle that has come up since then to make education 'better' for a country that went from nothing to the moon in 10 years :|

You Republitards are

[Anonymous Coward]

The Republitards are. You fuckers keep adding unacceptable riders to the bill. You assholes actually thought we'd agree to stop allowing asylum at the border? Fuck off.

Link at the history

[Anonymous Coward]

If JFK could (successfully) ask for a man on the moon by 1969 in 1962 (with pratically no space technology available), why shouldn't DT get a man to mars, by the end of at least his 2nd term? Because it was a hoax the first time?

Re:Link at the history

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a little matter of returning back alive. It takes 3 days to travel to the moon. It takes 300 to Mars at the shortest, which is every 2 years. Once they get there, it's a much longer trip back.

So 6 days in space vs at least 600, 2 orders of a magnitude difference. I don't think we've see that much improvement in any system since the Apollo missions other than computing, certainly not propulsion.

So if you think your graphics card will get you back home, by all means go to Mars.

In which Trump plays Slashdot liberals for fools

[Iamthecheese]

He does this all the time. He says something way out of bounds of reality and in return he gets half of the world's experts writing pages and pages of detailed reports on anything he needs to know. Crowdsourced expert opinion for $0!

Rock and Roll!

[Anonymous Coward]

the first Terran contamination

You wanna piece of me, boy? Jacked up and good to go, gimme something to shoot!

Not a hit piece

[Anonymous Coward]

He does that anyway but how many damn hit pieces do you need for one person?

Telling the truth is not a "hit piece".
Stating facts are not libel.
So every time he does something (stupid|clueless|evil), someone will write "Princess Tinyhands just did something (stupid|clueless|evil)....for the third time this hour."
Hence, each (stupid|clueless|evil) is documented, not as a bug but as a feature of a system that is working.

Welcome to an America that, for now, still has free speech and a free press.

Offtopic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really?

Sad!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Probably just as well nothing happened. Presidents have an irresistible urge to cancel a previous one's NASA pet project to save a little money temporarily but more importantly so they don't have to stand here like Nixon and thank a previous president for the effort.

Continuing such is a lose-lose for a president.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[Anonymous Coward]

Half of Congress is the other guys. Of course they have bad approval ratings.

Meanwhile 110% of them get re-elected

Wow..

[Tulsa_Time]

I would think we celebrate a President that is asking for accelerated space exploration...

He was asking what it would take.. not blindly demanding it...

A few minutes of explanation of the logistical challenges cleared it up.

Why does everyone have to jump to their particular political confirmation bias as a knee-jerk reaction ?

I would take this as a sign that Trump will support increased space exploration and try to support it... unless your politics outweighs your love for science and exploration.

The Art of the Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it.

What a fucking asshole.

Should be clear enough

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is exactly what comes to mind when people used think of politicians. They will say and do anything to maintain power.

The problem is that people got so used to politicians being very sly about it that when this guy came around lying to their faces they thought it was something different.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[phantomfive]

Trump thinks his approval ratings will rebound if he successfully gets the wall. If he loses the wall fight, he'll almost certainly lose re-election. Also he's counting on a North Korean peace deal announcement next month to really give him a boost.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

What's BS is the price tag of $5 billion. $5 billion isn't even a down payment. $5 billion isn't enough to buy the raw materials needed. $5 billion is a lie, to get us on the treadmill of spending for political pork. And once the pork BBQ fires up and people smell the pork, you won't finish spending anytime this century.

$5 billion buys you 1 mile. Once you've done that, the Republicans will be back, cap in hand, 1,999 additional times. There's never enough political pork for this Republican Party. After all, who doesn't love a good BBQ?

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[subie]

That's false and you know it, the total cost is approximately $25 billion, this has been stated many times.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[subie]

no what they said was true. Point of fact, before Trump got into office, 2008 Pelosi wanted to build a wall, 2009 Schumer wanted to build a wall and 2014 even Hillary on the campaign trail stated that she wanted a wall. The democrats hate trump which is why they are playing this game.

It's both

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the border wall is immoral. It's just stupid.

It's both.
On the one hand, it is a symbol for paranoid cavemen who base their decisions only on an irrational fear of Brown People; which angers and alienates allies with which we have little quarrel; which is not something moral people should encourage or tolerate.
On the other, it is a waste of money on a vanity project.

Also, Princess Tinyhands is a multi-billionaire. He said so himself. Multiple times.
If this Wall was so damned important to him, he would've paid for it himself by now.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[Anonymous Coward]

My beliefs are ambivalent on the value of the wall, but my (and probably your) culture is definitely 100% against there being any destructively-long long walls breaking up the natural habitat, being an eyesore (I live in New Mexico, the most beautiful state in the union, and the idea of shitting on our landscape is hugely unpopular here), getting in peoples' way, and infringing the property rights of people who own land near the border.

Don't bring protecting our culture into this, or else most Americans will be allocating money to tear down the sections of wall that have already been built. American culture is overwhelmingly against the wall. And when you get nearer the border, that only gets more extreme.

If the wall is your culture, you should consider moving to North Korea, or maybe East Germany in the 1960s (if you have a time machine). Your unAmerican views would probably fit in better in those places. Your communist vision doesn't have a place in America, snowflake.

Why the defeatist mob mentality?

[cowtamer]

NASA is part of the executive branch. Theoretically, they've been planning to put a man on Mars by 2020 in the 1990s. There is no shortage of mission plans, both grandiose and mundane.

He should have said yes. Gotten the funding -- bipartisan congressional support might have existed to do something other than appease the illiterate racists masses. And maybe in a decade this would have happened. Otherwise NASA is going to keep reorganizing various projects into each other and buying staplers until the public gets tired of funding it.

For the record: I do not for a second believe that he understood the complexities. But what NASA needs more than an increase in funding is direction and for the direction not to change drastically every 2-4 years. We could have had multiple cities on various heavenly bodies by now if it wasn't for politicians fear or ACTUALLY telling NASA to go to space.

Why is this bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

...unlimited funding for NASA and a man on Mars by 2020? Wouldn't that be cool?

Other things people are duped into thinking it's t

[Anonymous Coward]

"I won't cum in your mouth"

"I'll still respect you in the morning"

Well, we were on the moon already, but you know...

[Anonymous Coward]

...we instead decided to piss away massive amounts of money on the shuttle and climate change, let alone 'outreach' programs, and we seem to have forgotten all of the awesomeness that got us to the moon. What changed between then and now? What happened to the workforce between the 1960s and the 1980s? Is there perhaps a picture virtue signaling the NASA work force that could give us a clue?

To paraphrase Gunny...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bet you if there was some democrat voters up there on top of that planet you could get up there....

Orange man BAD!!1!!!

[astrofurter]

Don't you uneducated deplorables know that space travel is ANTI-SCIENCE? Everyone knows that, or at least us real people do. And it's also RACIST!! You Trumpanzees know who else was into rockets? That's right, the NAZIS. Educated people like ME know that USian rednecks are too genetically stupid to ever put a man in space. Fire the locals, bring in the H1Bs! We will replace you! Heil Hillary!!

I bet the Great Orange Cheato doesn't plan to send even one transgender Islamic feminist astronaut! And CNN says he's planning to build a WALL on Mars!! Except everyone knows it's impossible for Americans to travel space - only our Chinese betters can do that. Death to America! Long live cheap plastic junk and the financial oligarchy!

Orange man BAD!!!!!!1!!11!!!!!!!!

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[astrofurter]

"first we need to deal with the dependence on low-cost undocumented labor for the agricultural sector in the US"

Easy. Any agribusiness company caught willfully and repeatedly employing illegal immigrant labor shall have the whole of their lands seized. Expropriate the traitorous capitalist dogs, and sell off their land for cheap to family farmers.

Sure sure, the enemies of the people on the Supreme Kangaroo Court would object. But let us not forget how the great President Franklin Roosevelt put the judicial oligarchy in check.

But really, illegal immigration is a red herring. The real harm to American working people comes from the fully lawful "guest worker" (unwelcome guest) programs. The entire, explicit purpose of such programs is to drive down wages for indigenous workers. Ending the unwelcome guest worker programs is a necessary first step towards making America great again.

Lying press!

[Anonymous Coward]

Kennedyâ(TM)s moonshot was no less audacious.. but the media lauds him as a visionary. Trump, they consider the same vision to be absurd.

Oh, and the media covered up JFKâ(TM)s numerous affairs (including with a playboy model!)

What a double standard!

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[astrofurter]

"Trump DGAF about approval ratings, as that would require a bit of dignity."

So the leader who does _not_ pander to the media old boys' club, nor to fickle (and often enough outright fake) public opinion polls, is _lacking_ in dignity? Oooookay then....

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wa

[Anonymous Coward]

Vote Trump in 2020 for PEACE.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[quenda]

The real harm to American working people comes from the fully lawful "guest worker" (unwelcome guest) programs.

That, but I'd say automation is the bigger issue. And changes in business practices. Big companies replacing decently-paid employees with outside contractors paying minimum wage. The gig economy. That sort of thing.

Yes. From tax cuts and wars ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and paying off debts that only exist to make private psychopaths richer compared to humans.

Tax cuts for the rich, war budget and debt costs per year are very similar numbers by the way. (And the free money the banks got during he bailout is about ten to twenty times that.)

We can put a colony on the moon by 2024...

[Anonymous Coward]

So if Trump started it now, and announced this as his moonshot if congress will provide bipartisan agreement, including putting forth a signed declaration that they are all going to back it next term if they are reelected, it could happen.

Now for the implementation side of things: We'd need a nuclear reactor. We'd need the Chinese and the Russians onboard. We'd need every heavy lift vehicle on the planet available for at least 20 launches per year.

If we did all this we could have enough fluid in orbit to act as radiation shielding, enough lead and/or depleted uranium panelling to protect a saferoom/plant stores, and the framework necessary to begin assembling it all. The labor and precision requirements for this would be immense. It would mean pulling in every talented machinist in a dozen countries. It would mean working in METRIC (because we can't fuck up with any of those unit conversions like the last mixed project.) But putting men on mars is definitely possible by then, short of a catastrophic impact en-route.

But to do it would mean not only turning around America, but the WORLD. ...
Do you see that happening? Because I don't.

Re:We can put a colony on MARS by 2024...

[Anonymous Coward]

Blew the title, I meant Mars. China has the moonbase concept already underway, and I have no doubt they can pull it off.

Disagree.

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot was discovered from the moon landing, particularly from the rock samples and dust brought back. Up until that point there had been a lot of different theories on the composition of the moon and what it all meant. Since the lab equipment wasn't very advanced at the time there wasn't any way to accurately sample the composition remotely without also verifying it with a physical sample.

The moon landing game them one. Plus a view of the earth from the surface of the moon, which likely inspired thousands to millions of kids to do whatever they could to bring about the FUTURE...

Of course not, because the congress is busy...

[Anonymous Coward]

spending $168 Billion this year on illegal aliens (spread across the entire budget, from healthcare, to food, to prisons - all of it, but none of which would be spent without the illegals being in the country).

Next time somebody asks why we do not have all the cool stuff we used to imagine, like colonies on the moon and mars, and supersonic bullet trains linking our cities in underground vacuum tubes, etc, just keep in mind the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend every year on national lawlessness (the illegals problems) and international lawlessness (the permanent non-war wars in the middle east that provide no benefit to the American people and which the politicians are desperate to keep fighting yet unable to annunciate ANY plan for winning (google: "pentagon papers" for a cautionary tale our previous 4 presidents all seem to have missed))

Oh, NASA's bugdet for this year (IF we ever get out of the shutdown) will be a little under $20 billion.

REALLY? Not paying attention???

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA was given the task of turning a shuttle ET into a shuttle-less ET (stretched slightly) stretching the shuttle SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters) by one segment each, and placing 4 SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines) at the bottom.

The initial space shuttle development (for the external tank, SRBs AND THE ORBITER) began in 1972 and the first flight was in 1981. That included all the R&D needed to invent the shuttle main engines, orbital maneuvering engines, and the orbiter airframes, and code the software to fly the orbiter through a Mach24 reentry, the development of new materials (like the thermal tiles), all of it. Done in 9 years.

The transition work from shuttle to SLS began in 2005 (under the Constellation program and then named the "Ares V"). It was re-named the SLS and the design further refined at the 2010 NASA budget fight between congress and president Obama. Depending on how you view it, we have already spent either 14 years of 9 years converting reusable SRBs and SSMEs into throw-aways (the simple thing and opposite of what Musk is up to at SpaceX) and stretchin a big gas tank. As things currently sit, SLS which is required by law to make its maiden flight by December 2017, is only barely likely to fly in a reduced capacity on an unmanned test flight before the end of 2020 and will not carry a single human into space until about 2024 (that will be 19 YEARS of development time before a human rides it into orbit).

NO NEW TECH HAD TO BE DEVELOPED FOR SLS! There was not one damned thing that was unknown and required research. NASA went from not even being able to put a chimp into space on a suborbital flight to having a man on the moon in 10 years, needing to invent a mindboggling list of materials, techniques, and facilities as well as FOUR flight architectures (Mercury-Redstone, Mercury-Atlas, Gemini-Titan, and Apollo-Saturn). In that 10 year period, NASA built the Kennedy Space Center in FL, the Johnson Space Center in TX, the Stennis facility, and many more.

The more you look at it the more shocking the corruption (outrageous "cost-plus" contracts to sclerotic dinosaur aerospace firms like LockheedMartin and Boeing) and complete bureaucratic incompetence of today's NASA becomes. The place should be shutdown permanently and all employees fired. Start a new place staffed by college engineering seniors and grad students, a few physics profs, a handful of military test pilots, an experienced former politician to interface with congress, and some tough-as-nails retired marine colonel to call the shots - a team with big ideas, energy, enthusiasm, competence with numbers, a willingness to take reasonable risks, and a drive for accountability balanced with performance.

ahem...

[Anonymous Coward]

were YOU worried about "fiscal responsibility" when:

[a] Bush sent troops to Afghanistan and Iraq for a war that has cost TRILLIONS of dollars and lasted FOUR TIMES AS LONG AS WWII??? If you are an establishment Republican (AKA "RINO" - Republican In Name Only), then I'll bet you never complained a bit, particularly if it was somebody other than you personally stepping into a combat zone.

[b] Pelosi and Reid (and his then-leutenant Schumer) gave president Obama nearly a TRILLION dollars IN ONE YEAR, IN ADDITION TO THE BUDGET, as "stimulus" for "shovel ready" jobs??? If you are a Democrat, I'm betting you were fully-onboard.

[c] Both Bernie and Occasio-Crotez have repeatedly called for "medicare for all" (a project the CBO has repeatedly analyzed and priced in the 30+ trillion dollar range for only the 1st decade of coverage??? If you are a progressive, then I'm betting you have been thrilled by these proposals without even bothering to think about the impossibility of giving EVERYBODY a form of insurance that functions by shifting most of the costs to other customers with traditional private insurance and yet simultanously eliminating those traditional insurance policies, companies, and customers.

Compared to RINOs, Neocons, Liberal Democrats, and Progressives, Trump is looking pretty damned fiscally responsible and a hell of a lot more patriotic.

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump: empowered to the point of delusion
Democrats :disempowered to the point of delusion

Ship him off

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump should be the first to be shipped off to Mars or the Sun. Moron of a Republican to offer a government agency free reign.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wa

[Anonymous Coward]

Those people often don't return the favor. You have to be able to handle that.

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandate and enforce with harse penalty e-Verify check of all employed labor

It can be done, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It can be done, but he should not have asked that from NASA.
Changing the laws that allow him to remain in office until humans are on Mars is not area for NASA. Nevertheless those laws can be changed when funding is not an obstacle. However he might not be able to provide THAT kind of funding.

If we can get a rover we can get people to mars.

[Lohrno]

Now living people, that might be a bit more of a challenge...

Re: He can't even get the money for his stupid wal

[lgw]

Even if the two facts are unrelated causally, they're both still true. Trump is shameless, which may make him just the person needed to shake things up. Time will tell.

Desperation

[Anarchduke]

Sounds like someone is suddenly desparate for a huge success.

Fuck Yeah

[wolf12886]

Do you want me to like Trump?

Because this is how you get me to like Trump.

Trump said:

[Anonymous Coward]

He asked, "But is there any way we could do it by the end of my first term?"

Lightfoot answers: Yes, do you have any "volunteer" in mind?
Hehehehehehe

No

[Anonymous Coward]

You're looking for logic where none exists. Trump wasn't looking to place people on Mars as part of a great and noble march of humanity out into space. He wants ego gratification, sound bites, jingoism and porn star Fridays.

Your desire for space exploration isn't the issue here, no matter how much you want it to be. "Just take the money!" is the banner you take up. OK, what happened to Sean Spicer, who took the money. What happened to Anthony Scaramucci, who took the money? What happened to Bannon, Hicks, Mattis, Dubke, Flynn, Priebus, Price, Omarosa, Gorka, Porter, Tillerson, Shah, Zinke, Ayers, Kelly, Sessions, McGahn, Pruitt, Hagin, Waddell, Shadlow, Bossert, Anton, ...

You can say some of these people had "issues", or personal reasons, or they left for some unremarkable reason. All of them though? At what point do you stand back and say, 'there seems to be a larger issue here, some sort of pattern going on'?

If NASA engaged with Trump on a politically motivated and unsustainably short timeline and mission, it only ends badly for NASA. NASA will continue to exist long after Trump has left the scene and NASA needs credibility. Engaging with Trump like this damages NASA credibility. There's no upside to it.

Public masturbation of 5037285

[shanen]

Z^-1

Re: Public masturbation of 5037285

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy is really sick. Someone needs to get him some help.