I am no fan of John McCain’s, obviously (though we do have some common ground). So when he talks about space, I get email. This time, McCain has come out in support of a manned mission to Mars:
McCain, who spoke at the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors/Florida Press Association convention, also supports for human missions to Mars.
“I am intrigued by a man on Mars and I think that it would excite the imagination of the American people if we can say, ‘Hey, here’s what it looks like. We know that now, and here’s what may be there and let’s all join in that project.’”
I have been clear on this blog and elsewhere that currently, I am against NASA focusing on a manned Mars mission. Right now, NASA does not have the wherewithall, the focus, the funds, or the political clout it needs to accomplish this goal. Plus, it will be decades before we could do something like that.
Instead, it’s my opinion that NASA needs a more achievable shorter-term goal: getting back to the Moon and establishing a colony there. This is no easy task, and will take a lot of money, time, and brain power to make happen. Yet, it’s far easier, cheaper, and achievable than going to Mars. Many of the technological issues are the same, and the Moon is a lot closer and easier to reach. What’s learned from building and sustaining a lunar base can be applied to a mission to Mars, so that when we are ready we can do it right.
I think if we try to go to Mars now, NASA will be drained entirely of money for other projects (that too may happen witha return to the Moon, but hopefully not as much or for as long). Also, I fear that any Mars mission done in the next decade or two will be another "flags-and-footprints" mission, where we go, plant a flag, and come back. And that’s it.
We don’t need to do something just to do it. We need a mission that has long-term goals, to return humans to space and keep them there.
That cannot be done with a Presidential candidate’s throwaway line, and cannot be done with a short-sighted Congress, used to thinking that the political world ends at the end of a term.
We are currently exploring Mars robotically, which is fantastic… and it’s helping teach us how to get there (which is hard). We can keep doing this for a while, I think, before we send people. Also, there are other goals besides the Moon: the Orion rockets can take us to a near-Earth asteroid, which has incredible benefits to go with it as well. There is much to do and learn before we close the hatch on astronauts for their six-month journey to Mars. We need to keep Mars in mind as we go back to the Moon and explore other avenues, knowing that someday we’ll head there. We can do it, and I think strongly we should and will do it, but making that NASA’s focus now is a huge mistake.
I’ll add that McCain said he would extend the Shuttle’s life to fill the gap between the end of the Shuttle’s reign (2010) and the time we get the Orion rockets online (2015, though don’t bet that deadline will stay firm). I don’t know how I feel about that; the Shuttle is aging and IMO increasingly unreliable, but I hate having a five year (or more) gap where we rely on other countries to get people into space. Civilian space companies are on their way, but I’m not sure it’ll be soon enough… I’ll have a little bit more to say about that later.
And I am for putting people into space. You’ll find I’ve written about this quite a bit. But if we do it, we need to do it the right way: with our vision firmly in the future, with our goals firmly delineated, and the funding firmly in place.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
McCain’s reasoning is probably along the lines of “We did the moon forty years ago; how much harder could Mars be?”
I seem to recall also, in a book by Steve Hassan, that the Lyndon LaRouche organisation used to get elderley people in by giving them, among others, the line that “You could be the first grandmother/grandfather on Mars!”
June 10th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
McCain’s a politician, so I don’t find it surprising that he might take much more generalized, vague and idealistic stances on a task as monumental as sending people to Mars.
As for your opinions on where NASA should focus its manpower and budget, I completely agree–the processes needed to maintain a lunar colony are often similar to those we’d need to maintain a ship on a six-month trip to Mars (not the least of which is protecting our astronauts from radiation more efficiently), and thus the Moon is a much more attainable–and cost-effective–route to take moving forward for NASA both in its exploratory and scientific goals.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I am of two minds on this one. Obviously, I agree with you, completely, regarding manned missions, and that the moon is a far better target at this point.
But from a perspective of a McCain, who is clearly thumping for votes, this sounds like a pretty idea and makes him seem like he supports science and the space program in general. Truth is, likely, he has no idea why what he said would be a bad idea… and a well appointed science advisor will likely tell him the same thing… ultimately, it’s just not practical… not in McCain’s lifetime anyhow.
I’m not voting for the guy either way, but I guess my reaction to his statement where this is concerned would be: “meh”… but some part of me is at least glad he’s thinking on manned exploration as a good thing, in some shape or form.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Perhaps we could, in a way, work for both.
Colonize the Moon, yes. But keep sending robots to Mars. Perhaps what we learn while building on the moon could be applied for our Martian robots.
I don’t know if it’s feasible – but would it be worthwhile to start sending things like robotically controlled pop-up green houses to Mars? Figure out how to use local resources robotically and maybe start a hydroponics style garden?
Sure, it’ll take time, and increases in robot technology. But robotic technology will continue to get better quickly, and if we set a 20 or 30 year goal, and keep lobbing robots at Mars while we get our act together on the Moon, then maybe there will be a time when Earthlings (or Lunies) will travel to Mars and walk in the front door of the pre-made habitat.
June 10th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I don’t read the assumption of rushing to Mars ahead of the moon in McCain’s comments. Perhaps he said something more that wasn’t in the link, and perhaps he’s said, “Mars direct or bust!” somewhere else, but the assumption that he wants to skip the moon seems a stretch. Moon first, Mars later seems like an obvious enough progression that it doesn’t need to be included in a two-liner sound bite.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Things to remember about politicians when they are trying to get elected:
They are experts on how to get elected, second part they know what to say to get elected
They are not experts on everything(this can be extended to actors, atheletes, ex-playboy models who think they are experts on everything)
They now how to get laws passed
Some will say anything to get elected
All these apply to politicians and parties.
I am with the thinking Moon first and then Mars, but more money first.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Since I know nothing and therefore I am an expert in everything, I am in favor of the Planetary Society’s suggestion to utilize the SEL2 point as a jumping off point to everywhere. Why go to the Moon from the Earth when we can save money and energy by consolidating stuff at the Solar L2 point and then going cheaply from there anywhere we want to go? There is probably some properly dogmatic reason why not and I would like to know it.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
I’m going to have to go a bit against the grain on this one as well.
I don’t expect any politician to have a clear and studied focus on exactly how exploration should proceed. What would be nice to see is one that has a gut feel that we should do it. That, unfortunately, is all too lacking these days. A politician that believably expresses such a gut feel to me merits my attention.
I would agree that the moon should be the first target. But I would also agree that Mars should be # 2 with a bullet.
It’s been a very long time since I first read Clarke’s “Exploration of Space.” We should get on with it. But that isn’t going to EVER happen if we don’t get some politicians in power who feel the same. They don’t have to have the answers. But they most definitely do have to have the attitude. And they have to be able to convince the public that that attitude is right and proper.
I suspect I’m preaching to the choir here, but if my taxes need to be raised for THAT purpose, why then raise away.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Maybe a group of gay atheists should make their own space program to get the moon and then to Mars, so they can have a place for gay marriage and evolution can be taught. I wonder how long it take the current goverment to start funding NASA to get Mars first.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I’m all for colonizing the Moon (and Mars) but are there reasons why colonizing Mars would be more feasible despite the distance? I remember reading somewhere a while back that the dust on the moon is particularly rough and wreaks havoc on machinery. Is it any better on Mars? I have been reading about the Mars Direct program and it seems like a pretty good model for colonizing both the Moon and Mars on a realistic budget.
Obviously one key factor is having support from the public and politicians that isn’t contingent on 100% success because there will be failures where technology and live will be lost.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
I saw a clip of McCain talking about this, and it seemed to me more like a vaguely wistful thought than even a semi-serious policy goal. Mind you, lots of things seem vaguely wistful when they come out of McCain’s mouth, so I could be wrong — today he claimed he would veto all beers! (Yes, I know, he just flubbed a line).
I think having a permanent base on the Moon has the capacity to capture the public’s imagination, if it’s sold properly. If there is enough local water to work with at one of the poles (still open to question) and other raw materials, then working and doing science on the Moon — especially astronomy — would be much more practical than doing it in space where there are exactly zero local resources.
I think any serious go for Mars will have to wait until we solve the costs of getting into space. I’m still holding out hope for a viable space elevator within my lifetime, although there is still a very long way to go there. But until we can make launches much much cheaper, and safer, I think we’ll be restricted to the Earth-Moon system.
Of course, if the Chinese or Russians (or some other rising power) decided they could score a major propaganda victory by sending people to Mars, then we could get there sooner rather than later, but if it’s going to happen in before 2025, then it won’t be an American who takes that first step onto another planet.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
davidlpf, that’s an interesting idea. But I don’t see how gay atheists as a population would have more or fewer engineers and scientists among them than in the general population (though, of course, atheism among scientists is higher than average).
Would you care to elaborate? Hmmm?
June 10th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
We’ve been to the moon. Its time to go to Mars!
And, except for available money, there is no reason not to do it in the next decade. I’m a 40something male and I want to see humans on Mars and an Asteroid before any life expectancy statistics may spoil that experience for me.
Any manned space mission, be it earth orbit or to Jupiter, is intrinsically a cultural achievement. It is by definition about “Flags&Footprint”.
There is no scientific reason whatsoever for a human to be present in space. Science works with information. And to put it into perspective economically, any Mbyte of information collected by a robot is much cheaper than collected by a human hand.
Venus for example is rather inacessible for human exploration, even robots have their difficulties there, so never anyone argues to travel to Venus to do science. Why then send humans to Mars? Because its a bit colder and has a less dense atmosphere?
There is nothing I want more than to see people go places like the asteroids, mars and moon.
But to use scientific reasons to argue for this goal sounds like hypocrisy.
June 10th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
It was mostly a joke because that seems to be what the current goverment is mostly worried about like russian commies in the fifties or sixties. It was not there to offend anyone. The thing the current goverment is lacking is motivation not resources, maybe if there was oil there and we could declare war on it.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Until we have ruled out the possibility of life on Mars (especially the microbial variety) we can’t possibly send people there. Heck, bringing soil samples back to Earth could potentially wipe out life as we know it. I cringe at the thought of sending astronauts to Mars knowing that the would not be able to return and the recklessness of politicians never ceases to amaze me. Is there any hope that we might concentrate our efforts on a viable space elevator and sustainable lunar colony first?
June 10th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
With the dumbing down of our nation’s youth, the creationists making inroads in education, and politicians thinking of themselves and how much money they can stea.., er, make, I’m happy with any and all ideas of staying in space, both close to home and at a distance.
While C. Columbus didn’t set out to come over here, he didn’t think stopping off at Sao Miguel Island to establish a base to study ocean currents, or learn how to live in isolatin well away from his home port was a first priority. He went for the whole, cheesey enchelada. Yeah, I know he was looking for a short route to the spice of India. He also didn’t have any idea of where he was going except he was bound to find something, eventually. Whether we go to the Moon or Mars first doesn’t make any differece. We just need to get going. If Congress will fund Mars but not the Moon, take the money and run. We still learn something.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Trance, the odds of life on Mars wiping out all life on Earth are infinitesimal. While nothing can ever be ruled out completely, the odds that a Martian organism could somehow adapt to and then overcome billions of indigenous lifeforms is the stuff of science fiction.
If there is life on Mars it’s in far more danger from us than we are from it.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Going to Mars may be such a hard goal that we wind up going nowhere. So I’m for the Moon first. But let’s go to stay, and then expand further out.
All of this will be much easier when getting to orbit isn’t a big deal. Anyone know if a space elevator is ever going to be feasible? Are there any game changing concepts out there that will make orbit easy? Wasn’t it Heinlein that said something about getting to orbit being 1/2 way to anywhere….
June 10th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
I fail to understand how anyone, especially someone who is an expert in astronomy, could possibly support manned space missions. The International Space Station is the biggest boondoggle this side of Iraq. I am aware of no signficant technological or scientific advances that have resulted from it. It is usually a bad sign when shuttle launches include high school experiments; if there was real science going on there would be no room for that kind of stuff. Going to the moon is a total waste of time, and a Mars mission is so far beyond the limits of human endurance as to be laughable.
Meanwhile, our highly competent robots continue to hit grand slams at every turn, producing incredible amounts of real science at a fraction of the cost of manned missions. Hubble, Spitzer, Cassini, Spirit, Opportunity, Phoenix, the list goes on and on.
Let us keep our focus on more and better space robots!
June 10th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
tacitus, with all due respect, I disagree. Martian microbes endure a far more hostile environment than life on Earth does. If the two were to meet, we, the collective biosphere of Earth would be jeopardized far more than Martian life. NASA doesn’t do anything unless the risk aversion odds are low enough. We simply don’t know what those odds are yet, but I doubt that a manned mission would be feasible even if the odds were as low as 1 in 100,000.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Putting humans back on the Moon or sending them on to Mars on chemical rockets is stupidity and resource waste of the highest order.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
tballou,
The reason that humans should go into space instead of just robots is very simple.
Robots can’t experience things. Humans can.
The Soviet space program landed robotic probes on the Moon before America landed people there. But America is said to have “landed on the moon” first. Why? Because people haven’t done anything until PEOPLE do something.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
With all due respect, Pop… you’re comparing apples to planets… so to speak. Even given the times and the challenges facing C. Columbus, you can’t compare his using an island between Spain and America as a launching point to this… sailing across an ocean, even in Columbus’ day, didn’t present near the challenges, even on a relativistic scale, that putting a man on Mars would present.
While I understand and agree with your point that exploration in any form is the goal, I must disagree that be it moon or Mars makes no difference.
Currently I just don’t think we really know how to make a successful manned trip to Mars. And more importantly, how to ensure that a return trip could be made from Mars. Learning to overcome the challenges of interplanetary manned travel both to and from the destination are paramount to even attempting a mission to Mars. We shouldn’t even attempt to land on Mars before we understand how we could begin the process of permanent colonization… otherwise it’s just a sight-seeing trip… one that could be just as easily done with robots, and have far more science performed. Going through the learning process of planetary colonization will be much easier on the moon… a trip of a couple of days (maybe even quicker by the time we do it) vs. months…
June 10th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
tballou, a short search on this site will answer your question. As I said in the post, I have written about this before. And the ISS is not the be all and end all of manned spaceflight. Again, I am no fan of the ISS, but I do support manned spaceflight. They are not one and the same.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I don’t think the public would be as gung-ho about a moon base as it would a Mars mission. Several years ago I wrote an SF story set on the moon and the universal reaction was that the setting seemed, well, dated. Several readers specifically said they would find it more interesting if it was set on Mars. The only way I think the American public would be interested in the moon is if the Chinese set out to claim it.
A mission to Mars is no more audacious than Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon before the decade was out. Whether the NASA of today can accomplish it is indeed questionable. OTOH I’m not confident they can get their act together enough to build a moon base. I mean, look at Orion. In the time it took to develop the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules, Orion won’t even get off the ground.
Maybe the exploration of space needs to be turned over to the U.S. Navy. They’ve had over two centuries of dealing with some of the same issues that’s going to crop up on long duration missions, plus enough backbone to get the job done.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
@ KC
Agree with what you’re saying concerning public interest… and that does make a difference. However I still don’t think we should sacrifice doing manned exploration the right way just to get the funding to get any manned exploration done. The results could range from futile to disasterous, but at this point, I don’t think it would turn out well.
I think if NASA, who has in recent history done a terrible job of marketing itself to the general public, were able to lay out a timeline of achievments with manned exploration and perhaps colonization of Mars as the final goal, while using the moon as an intermediate step to achieving this goal… I think public interest could be sparked.
In fact, I really think that if you make colonization of the moon the stated public goal, that would really get the public fascinated and interested, IMHO.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
What US needs is some motivations for people to get all excited about manned missions to the moon, kind of like back in the 60s, and yeah, Mars is waaayyy out there, doubt it will be achieveable in a few decades.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
A manned mission to Mars could be undertaken with today’s technology – if we didn’t plan on bringing the people back. The 101st Airborne Division has volunteered to go.
http://www.universetoday.com/2008/05/26/one-way-mission-to-mars-us-soldiers-will-go/
Having said that, I think that Mars (and to a lesser extent the Moon) is a waste of time and effort. Why, after having gone “halfway to anywhere”, would we want to go back down to the bottom of another gravity well? The asteroids are where it’s at, baby.
If we must go in the direction of Mars, then Phobos makes way more sense, as a testbed for asteroid utilization techniques. Since it is already in Mars orbit, the delta-vee requirements to go from there to Earth or the asteroid belt or wherever are considerably lower than the surface of a planet or large moon.
And once we do figure out how to utilize asteroids, look out. The orbital space colonies built out of a dismantled Ceres would have a surface area totalling somewhere between 300 and 500 Earths, according to calculations by Al Globus.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
One more thng: the only way that space is going to be opened up in a serious, sustainable way is if the effort produces a profit. By 2029 all the baby boomers will have retired, and NASA is discretionary spending- it will be one of the first things on the chopping block in the panicked effort to keep the social security checks flowing (and let’s face it, the Federal government won’t act on that crisis until far too late). If NASA is still the only orbital game in town by then, if private spaceflight hasn’t taken over the bulk of the work in space, then the wait for the next manned moon landing or Mars landing or what-have-you will be very long indeed.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I have to agree with The BA on this, as much as it pains me to.
I’m 44 and really wanted to be around when the first human hits
Mars, but at the rate we’ve been going, that isn’t going to happen.
Starting a permanent post on the Moon makes much more sense,
and is a step towards interplanetary travel for people, plus if things go awry it’s a lot closer.
I personally feel manned space travel is a must, one day this ball isn’t going to support life, if we’re still around, it might behoove us to be able to move to a more hospitable ball.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Agreed, Phil. The development of a lunar outpost is a far better use of our resources, material and political. Once we have a community there, all kinds of further possibilities become far more practical.
At the same time, we can continue robotic exploration of Mars and the rest of the solar system. As you and others have pointed out, combining robot and human investigation of space will let us multiply the advantages of both.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
I used to be a keen follower and supporter of all things space. But I think we’re now seeing that we have so many problems here on this planet, and limits that are becoming all too plain, that we really need to avoid expending resources on schemes that may not yield any tangible benefits for many decades, if at all. Let’s continue what science we can from earth, but we have too many real-life problems to solve on this planet to (potentially) waste resources on a programme to get humans, or anything else, into space.
I used to think “why not do both”, but I’m not sure we really have the resources to do both. Before assuming we have, let’s think about it coolly and clearly.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I’m Sorry. I just have to observe the obvious joke here…
“McCain on Mars”…
IF ONLY IT WERE TRUE.
Can we send Bush there as well?
June 10th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Inertially Guided beat me to it…
I suppose if McCain volunteered BA would throw his full support behind the plan
June 10th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
The arguments against Mars and for the moon are good ones, but I’m still not convinced.
Once you are out of the earth’s major gravitational influence, you’re halfway to anywhere. The only difference between trips to the moon and mars is travel time.
Radiation exposure risks of longer transit times would be more than offset by the radiation protection afforded by the atmosphere and rotation of mars.
In the next few weeks we should have concrete evidence of easily collectible water on the Martian surface, giving us Hydrogen, along with Carbon and Oxygen – all in usable forms. All such compounds would have to be brought to the moon from earth, at great expense. The technical challenges of mining lunar soil for useful compounds are either purely theoretical or tremendously energy-intensive. The existence of water in any usable form on the moon is unproven. No base on any rock in the solar system can function without tremendous quantities of water and oxygen. Both are plentiful on Mars.
Structures developed for permanent lunar habitation must be armored against raw space – true vacuum, radiation, intense cold and blistering heat. Any such technologies would be terribly over-engineered for mars and would never be used there.
Landing on the moon means using retro-rockets in a vaccuum. If such landers can be used on Mars at all, they would be poorly suited to it.
I have no problem with a lunar mission. even a lunar base. But saying that the moon is a “stepping stone” to Mars is incorrect. It is, perhaps, a psychological stepping-stone. The physical distance is much shorter, even if the delta-v is similar. Technologies developed for a lunar base will not be particularly useful on Mars, except for resource recycling technologies which can just as easily be tested on that big jungle gym we have in orbit right now. I also think that some of the technical challenges for a moon base will prove to be very difficult and expensive to solve. In particular, developing a semi-automated factory system to extract usable quantities of oxygen from lunar soil could well prove a more difficult engineering problem than the entire mission to mars.
I fear the moon is going to soak up most of the NASA budget for many decades. Unlike a robot, you can’t just cut the moon base program if there are cost overruns (unless you want to wind up in a “Lonely Astronaut” scenario).
Yes, I drank the Martian cool-aid. I just think that we are severely underestimating the difficulty of lunar habitation, and the effect it will have on future progress in space, manned or not.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
@TonyW,
I disagree,
We have the resources to spend $18 billion a year on make-up alone.
(That’s more then NASA’s annual budget.)
A big chunk of the economy in the 1st world is basically fluff, stuff we don’t really need.
Space however we do need.
The FAO using satellite remote imaging to help farmers in the 3rd world to be more productive is just one example.
The potential future pay-off is beyond any politicians wildest dreams.
We have lots of resources, and can do many things.
We just have to get our priorities straight.
The Earth Firsters don’t seem to realise that the reason that not enough resources are invested to ‘fix’ the problems on Earth is not lack of resources, but lack of political will to do it.
There are not enough votes to be won with it.
We can do both, and then some.
After all, we can spend $2 trillion per year on ‘defence’, and how many problems does that ‘fix’ exactly?
June 11th, 2008 at 12:14 am
Stinking gravity wells. There are plenty of asteroids barely more than zero delta-v away.
June 11th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Or they can just come here to California.
You know… we’re sort of *like* another planet.
June 11th, 2008 at 12:59 am
OK. We’re going to tax you personally at 100% to pay for it.
There. Convinced?
June 11th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Anytime someone goes off on a jag about aliens from other solar systems visiting Earth, I should let them read the comments to this post. The economic, social, political, and technological forces needed for such an endeavor are nearly impossible to come by. And it’s never going to get any easier no matter how far out we can reach.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:20 am
We can go to Mars in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.
Don’t forget the ‘flag & footprints’ mission to the moon cost a paltry $25.4 Billion in 1969 Dollars (or approximately $135 Billion in 2005 Dollars)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget#NASA.27s_yearly_budgets_chart.2C_adjusted_for_Inflation_.281958-2005.29_vs._the_relative_cost_of_project_Apollo
If we can commit 4% of the federal budget on a mars mission we will be there, but is US public willing to spend that much good money on such a far and theoretical goal, and (being the devil’s advocate here for a moment) what benefit will *I* reap of all that money dumped in “science” on foreign planets ?
June 11th, 2008 at 3:24 am
LOL! Taking McCain seriously on this seems like a waste of time. He doesn’t have the money, the time, or the interest. Mars is just a nice empty thing to be for, like mom and apple pie. Once he’s president he’d just as soon ask for donations from you to make it happen. Good luck.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:35 am
It was my understanding from posts here before that McCain’s election would mean the end of the space program with a freeze-on funding. Has McCain really changed his mind or, far more likely, is he just glibly lying about his real intentions?
My guess is that if elected the “100-year war” 100 year old McCain will put all your money in fighting further futile counter-productive, murderous wars against the Muslim world and will claim dementia or Alzheimers to excuse “forgetting” all about his new pro-space exploration promises.
(Yes, personally, I detest the guy & loathe his Retardican party & his puppet-masters there even more! But, hey, that doesn’t make me wrong!
)
The Bad Astronomer
Sorry to hear that BA I expected more vision, inspiration, zing and hope from you than that. I am all for putting Robert Zubrin in charge of running a Mars mission with NASA. I think Zubrin’s got a really good plan for successfully getting us there & staying and colonising there!
So let’s work to see NASA GET that necessary funding, focus, politicial clout and cajones! That’s the answer!
As JFK – in my view the USA’s greatest ever President – said :
“We go to the Moon and do these other things not because they are easy but because they are hard!”
Going to Mars with human crew aboard is a difficult challenge, it is something epic – and it is something I think we simply must get on & do!
(& we could easily afford it if we stopped wasting trillions and trillions funding our needless war against Iraq & Israel’s war against its victims in Palestine, Lebanon &, well .. everywhere..!)
So all the more reason to start now!
June 11th, 2008 at 3:41 am
D’oh! Argh! Stupid italics stuff-up! CORRECTION :
___________________________________________
So let’s work to see NASA GET that necessary funding, focus, politicial clout and cajones! That’s the answer!
As JFK – in my view the USA’s greatest ever President – said :
“We go to the Moon and do these other things not because they are easy but because they are hard!”
Going to Mars with human crew aboard is a difficult challenge, it is something epic – and it is something I think we simply must get on & do!
(& we could easily afford it if we stopped wasting trillions and trillions funding our needless war against Iraq & Israel’s war against its victims in Palestine, Lebanon &, well .. everywhere..!)
So all the more reason to start now!
____________________________________________
You know what I’m about to say next don’t you? :
Why oh why can’t we EDIT these posts!!!
June 11th, 2008 at 4:13 am
I agree that we ought to get back to the moon first and estalbish a base and eventually a colony.
It seems many people view the endeavour to get back to the moon as a case of “been there, done that” (except for closed minded hoax believers that is).
It would be useful also if the return to the moon was an international endeavour, like the ISS. Imagine multiple nations cooperating to making a lunar base. Things would go much smoother, IMO.
I also do feel the shuttle ought to be retired as scheduled for 2010. It’s expensive to refurbish.
I hope that the funds saved from it’s retirement are put to good use.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:15 am
KMR on 10 Jun 2008 at 8:26 pm
Wrong. Invading and ocupying other nations that posed you no threat – & funding Israel the apartheid theocracy set up by & for the most wealthy religio-ethnic mob on the planet is “stupidity and resource waste” of an infinitely higher “highest order.” Compared to that ..well nothing compares to that!
Besides I’d far rather see science incl. space exploartion funded than sport, art or politicians! It rewards us far more and far better in the long run than anything those – yet few quibble about tehgovt funding sports and arts …. Que?
Do yourself a favour & read some Carl Sagan, KMR . He explains why space exploration incl. human space exploration is so cruically vital & so necessary a goal far better than I can.
# HvP on 10 Jun 2008 at 8:31 pm :
Well said & seconded by me!
Who can even remember the name of the Russian probe / lander thingummy now? (Lunakhod wasn’t it? Or was it?)
… But .. ahh ..didn’t the US ‘Ranger’ space-probes get there first albeit crash-landing?
If so, it kind proves the point .. Who cares about the first robotic crafts on the Moon compared with the first people? I don’t think many if any of us either remember or really care. Not that I’m against having robots go as well & help us out too but having people *actual people* getting out there means a heck of a lot more!
What we – the whole world not just the USA – needs is another JFK to run the United States & to set a deadline for going to Mars (in no more than a decade! Better nine years than 10!) and to actually get us moving in the right direction!
Barack Obama looks a whole stack more like JFK than the 100 year old “100 year war-seeking” old fool MCacain ever could.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Incidentally, I’m all for doing the lot – Moon, Mars, ISS and more.
We just need to fund & run NASA properly.
I think the USA should consider trying to sell the shuttles to other allied Western nations like Australia (my home) and the Europeans so they can still be used by other nations to start up their space programmes too ..
(Perhaps even the Saudi’s or Iranians may buy them as they’ll certainly have the cash and hopefully can be inspired to do so! Wouldn’t it be so much better to see a friendly space rivalry with Iran rather than the nasty political one we have today?
… Or better yet space collaboration? I can see Anousheh Ansari – the US-Iranian space tourist playing a positive role here!
)
June 11th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Why spend all that effort hauling yourself up the well, only to fall back down another one? If you want to get people into space, let’s get people into space. Why the obsession with rocky bodies? Sure, I can see the scientific interest in rocky bodies, but why bother colonising them? Space habitats are the way forward!
June 11th, 2008 at 4:35 am
# davidlpf
Isn’t there meant to be a huge quanity of oil found on Titan?
Hmm … Maybe we can get them to go there!
(Actually, I think Stephen Baxter wrote a novel on doing that ..)
June 11th, 2008 at 4:41 am
andhakari :
Somehow I can’t see President McCain asking for “donations.” Taking your money (& not for spending on going to Mars or anything good!) sure!
Asking for it though … Nah!
June 11th, 2008 at 5:33 am
I saw the header and thought maybe someone had sent him there.
Oh, well. Hope springs eternal….
June 11th, 2008 at 5:50 am
Phil,
I find very little information about the Orion Rocket on the web, most of it in the form of press releases that seem to obscure more than they reveal. Why don’t you rewrite the stub at wikipedia about it?
I gather its nothing to do with Freman Dyson’s Project Orion. Too bad.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Re Headline: Good place for him.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:04 am
I’m not an expert, so I certainly realize I don’t have all the info. that said, I think it does make logical sense to proceed to the moon and then mars. What happened to the Mars semi-direct?
as far as the politics go, i am happy to see this getting some attention. yes, im sure the political advisors are whispering in mccain’s ear. but it means that the science community is being recognized. i would certainly have reservations about the sincerity of mccain’s comments, but regardless of the sincerity, talking about it is a good thing. period.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:21 am
@Joker,
“Isn’t there meant to be a huge quanity of oil found on Titan?
Hmm … Maybe we can get them to go there!
(Actually, I think Stephen Baxter wrote a novel on doing that ..)”
I just finished reading “Code of the Lifemaker” by James P. Hogan, in which the US sent a mission to Titan to get at the natural resources there. Unfortunately the sentient robots that lived there had other ideas.
Incidentally, the abovementioned book also has a lot of interesting commentary on bogus psychics, religion, skepticism, etc…
June 11th, 2008 at 7:32 am
I’ve read all the post up to this point. A theme seems to be coming out. Many want to reduce or cut the space programs. Many want to send robots and restrict going outward into deep space.
To use an idea from the Christian Bible: “…the meek shall inherit the earth…”
Folks, that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. Those of humankind with the guts to explore and take the chances of dying out in the cold lonely places will eventually all move off this rock. The only ones left will the the meek of sprit and soul. Earth will become stagnated and backward. If we don’t get our arses off and keep going we will all perish. Sending robots is a good idea to limited effect. Using robots exclusivly is like standing at your window with a pair of binoculars and searching the world for new knowledge.
Let’s go! Let’s get out of here and leave it to the meek.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Doc: Stephen Baxter’s Titan was just plain ol’ depressing. Decent story, but depressing.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:42 am
To me the real question, is there a real scientific purpose to sending humans to the Moon or Mars. For the cost of a human expedition, NASA could send 20 to 50 robotic missions. Can you imagine 50 robots on Mars from pole to pole and hill and valley? They could in time cover more ground, perform more tests, and retrieve samples for further research. If we want to explore the Moon, I don’t see why we don’t send robots to the Moon. There we could test new designs much quicker and perhaps a little cheaper.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Celtic_Evolution:
Don’t underestimate the value of public interest. Public interest is what puts pressure on politicians. We would get excited about a lunar base, but the public reaction is that it’s old hat. Never mind that it’s never been done.
How many others here remember the public reaction at the beginning of the Apollo 13 mission? We watched the coverage, but in the public mind it was another moon mission. Two missions and it was already seeming routine. When the Nixon administration terminated the Apollo program early, there was less outcry than when NBC canceled “Star Trek.” When the U.S. returns to the moon – *if* the U.S. ever does, the public will rightly say it was what we should have done all along, and go back to watching NASCAR and soaps.
We can insist on doing it “right.” My gut feeling is that this will result in us not doing anything at all.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:52 am
“I am against NASA focusing on a manned Mars mission. Right now, NASA does not have the wherewithall, the focus, the funds, or the political clout it needs to accomplish this goal. Plus, it will be decades before we could do something like that.”
Oh, that’s not fair.
Putting someone on Mars isn’t all that difficult.
Now, putting someone safely on Mars, in one attempt, and bringing them back afterwards, THAT’s difficult.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:57 am
I’ll just point out that The Mars Society is having their annual convention in Boulder this year. Hopefully you’ll be attending, and give everyone a chance to change your mind
. There will certainly be some flakes in attendance (at least, there were when I went), but there’s some actual work being done, too.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:11 am
For all of the people here stumping for Obama, you’re under the impression that he will be NASA-friendly. He has already declared his intention to make severe cuts to NASA to fund domestic programs. This will be a bigger deal to the space program than Mondale’s threats, and yet people here are just eating it up.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:15 am
@Zippy
What’s the point of taking all those pictures of Mars if we don’t ever go there?
Yes, I know there are benefits. I was just asking to show that any endeavour can be seen as having questionable value given the right (wrong?) viewpoint.
Robotic missions have great value, as do manned missions. I think the gist of the responses to BA’s post is that, given the relatively low cost of all NASA missions and the benefits (tangible and otherwise) derrived from them, we should launch as many of both types as possible and should have a permanent presence throughout the solar system. What remains is a question of prioritization.
Of course it all begins with getting NASA properly funded and having someone with vision to run it.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:16 am
There is one big flaw in your argument – the “wait until the funding is firm” concept. This is the Government we are dealing with and “firm funding” is a myth. The Shuttle and ISS were good solid designs until the government (both legistaltive and executive branches) decided they knew more than the engineers and scientists, and politically redesigned them both until they lost much of their utility and reliability. “Government is not the solution, it’s the problem.”
June 11th, 2008 at 8:27 am
I’m in the “screw gravity wells” camp. I think our priority in space should be to move power generation out of our biosphere. Think massive solar cell arrays – constructed as much as possible from space-based resources – at the Lagrange points beaming power to a geosync collector which, in turn, microwaves power to a ground station (somewhere in the middle of nowhere for minimal environmental impact) or, better yet, down a beanstalk space elevator.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:01 am
“We choose to go to the moon. 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, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” John F. Kennedy, Sept 12, 1962.
We finally landed there on July 20, 1969, less than seven years later. What will we accomplish by going to a dead, airless, rock in space that we’ve been to before? What will a moon base do for us? Mars is a living, breathing, planet with an atmosphere, and hidden secrets that we could discover, or perhaps the effort and the excitement will simply add to the National pride.
Gosh, what else came from the Apollo missions? From About.com: “Every day, in a variety of ways, American lives are touched by space technology. Since 1976, about 1,400 documented NASA inventions have benefited U.S. industry, improved the quality of life and created jobs for Americans.”
Wouldn’t you want to be part of a Mars mission? How many thousands of people worked on Apollo?
Of course, if those words had been read by Obama instead of McCain in a campaign speech, I’m sure all of you on the Left would be swooning instead of swearing. How about a little bit of intellectual honesty, instead of more “neo-con” bashing? I carry cards in my wallet, and every time I hear someone bashing Bush’s stimulus plan, I give them one with the address of the Treasury where they can voluntarily give their check back as a contribution to pay down the National Debt. Oddly enough, I haven’t had any takers yet…
Seriously, Phil posts a comment about space travel and John McCain, and some of you bring up the Iraq War and George W. Bush! Seriously, there is treatment for Bush Derangement Syndrome. BDS is a real mental illness, and has been documented by several psychiatrists…
Robert
June 11th, 2008 at 9:38 am
@ Robert
Easy there, big fella… in 64 posts on this thread, exactly 4 (by my count), reference Bush or the Iraq war… and 2 are from the same guy. So I really don’t see the need to make a point to call it out as if the thread had become hijacked by anti-Bush sentiment. All in all, this discussion has been pretty grounded in debate over Mars being the right target for manned missions, as it was intended. There’s no need for the “Bush Defense”… honestly, the comments in this thread are pretty tame regarding our fine, fine leader, if you ask me. And there’s also no need for you to turn this into a “McCain vs. Obama” debate. That’s not really the issue here. BA made no attempt to do so (he didn’t even mention Obama in the post), nor did any of the commentors (with perhaps one exception if you really stretch it). This is about McCain, solely, and his statement regarding manned Mars exploration… and whether it’s a good idea, and if we think he’s actually sincere in his statement or is just pandering.
Seriously… there is a treatment for UBDS (Unnecessary Bush Defense Syndrome). UBDS is a real mental illness, and has been documented by severl psychiatrists…
And now… back to the actual topic…
June 11th, 2008 at 9:40 am
I’m with Pamela and Fraser on this one in that we should restart and give higher priority to the Terrestrial Planet Finder program over going to either the Moon or Mars.
A manned trip to Mars would be awesome, don’t get me wrong, but the TPF just makes much more sense to me by attempting to answer the question about life on other worlds.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:41 am
The idea that Apollo was a “flag and footprints” mission is overly simple. Yes, it was “emplacement science.” But far more than mere political goals were accomplished.
For example, how was it ascertained that there was a lot of H3 on the moon? Apollo samples.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:57 am
There has been ideas floating around for a manned one-way trip to Mars. I think we have our astronaut! Dubya can be his co-pilot.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:58 am
@ KC
“Don’t underestimate the value of public interest.”
I don’t… believe me… I know how that works, and I agree with you there… BUT…
“We would get excited about a lunar base, but the public reaction is that it’s old hat. Never mind that it’s never been done.”
I disagree here… I think the public response would only be muted because they would initially doubt its plausability. I remember when the plans for the ISS were first announced. Initially there was a buzz in the public about this “Space Station”… people were interested, and allowed there imaginations to ponder the possibility. Unfortunately we live in a culture where reality is for many defined by what they see in movies. So most people I knew had this vision of the gigantic, circular, gravity simulating, spinning wheel in space… but when the first plans with images were released about what the ISS would look like and what it would do, I think the public lost interest. This is not what we had in mind.
I think a plan for the lunar base has a chance to grab the public imagination if it were allowed to be designed on a grand enough scale, and marketed properly, and even allowed the possibility of civilian “tours” once built. I really do think that if people actually saw this as an actual reality, eventually, they would be excited about it. But that really is just opinion… I could be wrong about that.
“When the Nixon administration terminated the Apollo program early, there was less outcry than when NBC canceled “Star Trek.” ”
Well, to be fair, in truth the Apollo missions were becoming repetitive and unnecessary. The failure with the Apollo missions is that we initially went for the wrong reasons (to beat the Russians) and therefor didn’t have the long-term vision to continue the program and adapt it, instead of just re-running the same essential missions without any eye towards updating and revising the technology and mission goals. From the public’s point of view, they were watching “reruns”. No-one cares when the network stops running reruns of the same program.
“We can insist on doing it “right.” My gut feeling is that this will result in us not doing anything at all.”
You might be right… I won’t argue that… but I’d rather not do it at all than rush through something on an insufficient budget that winds up in catastrophic failure or loss of life, which would set back any manned program, to Mars or anywhere, back decades if not kill it completely. Instead, we could evolve the program in small steps much closer to earth with 2 day lunar missions, until manned missions that land on other-worldly bodies becomes second nature. Then trips to Mars, asteroids and other targets can be realistically considered.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:00 am
For people I think the road to Mars, Luna, the asteroids, etc. is up a space elevator. We’re so close to making that a technological reality. I think the first few Orion rockets would be able to take up the materials needed to start dropping a cable. Then we could move beyond the age of rockets and into the age of space flight.
Once the elevator is up and the price per pound of getting stuff into orbit drops we can afford to provide some radiation shielding.
Without a skyhook it takes much richer nations than the US and a lot more political will than anyone has to make moon travel more than a novelty for a select few.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Methinks thou doth protest too much…
If BDS is a real mental illness, then CDS is a real chronic mania that’s afflicted millions on the right for nearly 16 years and shows no sign of abating. Add to that LDS, ADS and GDS, amongst others. I’ll leave you to guess what the L, A, and G are. It’s not hard.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:16 am
I didn’t read all the replies but I thought the basic direction of the go to mars plan was something like (very simplified):
1: Replace the shuttle
2: go back to the moon
3: build a colony on the moon
4: learn to live on the moon while mining materials we can use to go to the moon
5: launch the mars mission from the moon colony
I do agree with the BA 100% on all points this time but every idea I have heard for sending a manned Mars mission included going to the moon first. Of course I’ve been out of the space business for a year or so and my launches only stayed up for about 15 minutes before they all put little dents in the Kwajalein Atoll…
June 11th, 2008 at 10:16 am
@ Ibid
I’ve always been intrigued by the space elevator idea. I know it actually has some real possibilities… however I was under the impression that at this time, the only material (that we know of) considered to be strong enough and flexible enough to make this a reality would be the still fairly new carbon nanotube technology. And for the forseeable future we have no way of manufacturing a structure out of nanotubes that would be on the scale of what a “space elevator” would need. Am I wrong about this?
June 11th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Not possible.
QD’s #1 Law Of The Monkeyverse: Ideology dissolves skepticism on contact.
Remember how the “molecular acid” blood went through metal like a fist through wet tissue paper in the Alien movies? It’s like that.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:23 am
First :
Apollo missions were real science missions, but if not for the ‘flag & footprints’ component they were too pricey. or else what happened to Apollo 18 through 20 who were scheduled.
Second :
A space elevator is perhaps the most visible possibility to lower launch prices but there are others :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator#Alternatives_to_geostationary_tether_concepts
But it all hinges on funding.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I’m totally stealing that line, QD…
June 11th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Actual timeline:
1. Replace shuttle
2. Go back to moon
3. Public and political forces lose interest and everything gets mothballed, setting us back decades. Again.
Rinse and repeat.
You people have *got* to let go of your childhood fantasies and accept a more practical and pragmatic approach. If we had done that from the start, we’d already have all the things you wanted.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:28 am
@Celtic_Evolution
It’s early days yet, but advances are being made quite regularly. The longest nanotubes are only a couple of centimeters long at the moment, but researchers are confident that the methods being used today will eventually grow nanotubes several meters in length and can be scaled to industrial level. They have also been able to spin nanotubes into reels of fiber of indefinite length, with some very short lengths (i.e. mm) having up to 1/3 of the strength required . So if you combine the various strands of research (no pun intended) then people are reasonably optimistic that we will one day be able to make the ribbon cable necessary for a space elevator.
There are, of course, many other huge logistical problems to solve, but if we fail to build a space elevator, it suspect it will be something other than not having the right materials for making the cable.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Just curious, what is that pragmatic approach you are talking about, because I have strong suspicion, that it is neither practical nor really an approach
June 11th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
thanks for the update and clarification, tacitus… clearly I need to renew my Popular Mechanics subscription…
June 11th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
@Celtic_Evolution
what Tacitus said.
We’re close enough that NASA has had a couple of conference on the subject. In my life (I’m 33) I expect to see Clarke Tower dropping to a point on the equator near Sri Lanka. People will take the UNE (United Nations Elevator) Heinlein up to Virgin Station where they’ll live and eat while assembling the lunar shuttle Harriman and interplanetary ship Enterprise.
Vote Ibid in 2016 and it’ll happen.
June 11th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Obama and NASA funding: I don’t see it happening. Too many jobs at stake. The military is the obvious place to look for money. It’s the biggest chunk of the budget and just by improving efficiency they could likely free up an entire NASA budget’s worth of $ without losing anything. Or, we could find and recoup the billions of dollars that have simply disappeared, unaccounted for, in Iraq. There’s what, like $50 bil that no one knows what happened to? Also, Bill Nelson is supposedly on the VP short list. Don’t see him letting NASA get cut for something that could be better paid for by simply trimming the fat elsewhere. And what if Phoenix or an upcoming mission found life/evidence for life? I’d guess NASA would get a nice budget increase in that event.
Men on Mars is such a tempting, romantic idea. I really think we should keep it in the plan, but there is simply no sense in doing it until those men could accomplish something of value. The robotic missions are doing a fantastic job and our astronauts could be better used closer to home for the time being. I think there’s much we can learn on the moon that would be applicable to Mars, primarily, building a habitat for astronauts and scientists. But seriously, we should spend a good ten years now getting us back to the moon in a meaningful way and then a similar time on the moon before we aim for Mars. I say no earlier than 2030. (But not too much later, OK guys? I DO want to still be around to see it.)
Everyone’s talking about the space elevator idea, and that’s fantastic, but what ever happened to the mag-lev launcher concept? Are we getting anywhere on that? Is anyone even working on it anymore?
This post is a mess, and I apologize. This cold I’ve got is really affecting the hamster wheel between my ears.
June 11th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Oh, i believe we should go to Mars… when the time is right.
I don’t think that will be for several decades, at least.
Just a couple weeks ago, there was a crisis aboard the ISS because the 0-g toilet broke down! All jokes aside, what are the chances of a mission to the red planet failing catostrophically, if something like this were to happen on the outbound leg of such a flight? Being locked in a can, and choking on my own waste is not something that inspires others to explore the outer solar system.
Beyond the simple mechanical problems, we still haven’t learned enough about how to protect a crew from radiation exposure… effects of 0-g over the long term, and so on.
Yes, by all means, let’s go to Mars. But, I’d rather do it as a cooperative effort, several nations sharing the cost. We could be using it as a means of bringing us together, rather than as another “in your face, russia!” grandstand by the GOP.
Bush wanted us to go to Mars, but he’s only now realizing that we have a dilithium crystal shortage.
June 11th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Why bother? You’ve already passed judgment sight unseen. I have better things to do that type up a treatise for biased strangers on the intertoobs.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
The problem then would be that there won’t be any profits in importing (or exporting) materials. Possible space industries, aside from science, is tourism and possibly energy.
The Moon would be useful for all three activities. But Mars would captivate the person on the street as regards support and funding.
I think exploration and colonization has a cultural value in itself, and most activities benefits from a “pull” process instead of “push”. If we go there we can figure out more reasons to return, we have a larger momenta, et cetera. But it’s definitely more risky as regards policy and politics.
Make it an international mission, and the budget numbers would look a lot more reasonable. Let us keep it below 1 %, akin to a science budget, unless we can figure out a profitable way to do this.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
so, why you bothered to write anything at all ?
I’ve NOT passed any judgment yet, I am only testing a few hypotheses ,
and the most likely of them says your practical approach is in fact the old tired canard “priiivate goood govermeeeent baaaad” . I am not biased at all, on the contrary, would be very happy if it were wrong.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
It will be a one off technology though, as long nanofibers seems to be as dangerous as asbestos. [Short can be assimilated by immune cells.] Not a promising start for a new potential technology.
I sincerely doubt you would find many biologists agreeing with you, as an understanding of evolution would imply otherwise. If there are martian life, it would be adapted to a slow metabolism from mineral weathering and such. It would be utterly unlikely to have means to handle our biochemicals, our innate and adaptive immune systems, or compete with the growth rates our life is adapted to.
Such life would need very many generations to accumulate those capabilities. Maybe not the billions of years we needed to become ourselves, with our immune systems. But on the order of thousands or millions of years at a naive guess, at a reasonable rate of generation time.
Here is a recent experiment where E. coli learned to utilize citrate instead of glucose as growth media. It took roughly 20 years to acquire that capability, and it already had the metabolism to use citrate, it ‘only’ needed the transport mechanism to get at it. Something that other bacterias has, but it lacked.
Now bacterias in the wild could adapt much quicker, as they can exchange genetic material with each other and viruses by lateral gene transfer. But any martian fauna can’t borrow already existing genes, they don’t have our genetics. So they would be utterly unlikely to gain a foothold here.
As for the visiting astronauts, every day our immune system handles tougher challenges to our life than that imagined here, from life adapted to mess with our cells for any number of benefits including making them production plants for its descendants and then destroying them. If we can survive that, we can survive anything less.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
@ a simon
from your first post:
Yeah… I can see how QD is way out of line for taking that statement as pre-judgmental. (rolls eyes).
How much harder would it have been for you to have approached with the statement, “I’d like to hear what solutions you have in mind… I’m curious”? No, no… what you said is way better.
I know I would be interested to hear it, but now you’ve upset QD and ruined it for EVERYONE… Sheesh!
June 11th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Re the BA’s “a short search on this site will answer your question”
I did the search, but did not quickly find a summary of your arguments for manned spaceflight. Could you please provide a link or three? Or maybe a single condensed posting?
I know you have blogged about this many times before, but all I can recall offhand are emotional arguments along the lines of tballou’s “robot’s can’t experience things, humans can.” If the goal is science, especially given the finite resources of NASA, then it appears that robots are clearly the way to go. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather see the $$ we spent on the invasion of Iraq spent on manned mission, but NASA just doesn’t have those resources.
Re: Colony on the moon.
Colony = move there & raise kids, Right? I can see a long term research station, but who the heck really wants to live there? If so, why don’t we have colonies on the South Pole? I suspect the South Pole is a much less harsh environment than Mars, but in no way do I want to raise my kids there. Image living for years in 1000 sq/ft house. Maybe one or twice a year you can suit up and go outside for a few hours. Really, who’s going to sign up for that and how many would beg to come home in six months? I just don’t see it.
June 11th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
McCain on Mars? If only…
June 11th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
@ Slowly but Surly
Says who? I don’t think that’s what NASA or nay other space agency has in mind for that term… at least not in the near or even distant future. That’s a LONG way off. Maybe hundreds of years… likely more.
No… I think the term “Colonize” in this case would simply refer to the ability for astronauts / scientists to live for extended periods of time on the lunar (or Martian, if you prefer) surface, in a sustainable habitat where long term research, and even perhaps manufacturing, could be done. Colonization in the “settlers” sense is quite a ways off, and not really part of this discussion, IMO.
And the first person who comes back at me with a Wikipedia definition of “Colony” is getting a boot to the head… figuratively.
June 11th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I’m surprised no one brought this up: if we at some point manage to digitize intelligence–you know, the old cyberpunk/new transhumanist “uploading”–we can definitely simplify human spaceflight a great deal. We get the relative inexpense, mass efficiency, and logistical simplicity of robot flights and all the advantages that humans can bring to the table.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Calladus said:
>Perhaps we could, in a way, work for both.
>Colonize the Moon, yes. But keep sending robots to Mars.
I don’t believe there is any real or proposed plan to increase manned exploration at the expense of robotic exploration of the Moon and Mars. Both human missions will require more robotics – presite surveys, etc.
> I don’t know if it’s feasible – but would it be worthwhile to start sending things like robotically controlled pop-up green houses to Mars? Figure out how to use local resources robotically and maybe start a hydroponics style garden?
That kind of hardware is way downstream. We need to develop an overall plan for Lunar and Mars exploration and habitation, including how to use robotics to precondition the colony sites. One idea is to preposition supplies ahead of the explorers, including equipment to manufacture air and fuel on site prior to the crew arrival. Once they get there, they have materials waiting, and the crew mission doesn’t launch until the in site equipment is in place and working. Those are certainly ideas that will be considered when Mars missions become real planning stages.
tballou said:
> I am aware of no signficant technological or scientific advances that have resulted from it [ISS].
Well, there are the Engineering challenges of building a project in space, and the operational lessons involved. There is also some science on long-term weightlessness, particularly studying bone density and how to prevent bone loss. But that is coupled to ground research.
Of course some of that is due to the “cost saving” measures by Congress of cutting some of the science modules and reducing crew size for an extended period. But at least the Columbus and JEM modules are now arriving.
TheTranceMan said:
> tacitus, with all due respect, I disagree. Martian microbes endure a far more hostile environment than life on Earth does. If the two were to meet, we, the collective biosphere of Earth would be jeopardized far more than Martian life.
I think it depends upon the conditions. There are Earth microbes that inhabit sulphuric acid pits and volcanic vents. If you put most human life on Mars, the Mars microbes would certainly win. But sticking something acclimated to a dry, cold environment in the middle of the ocean, or the Gobi desert, is not going to be the same thing. Soaking Mars acclimated microbes in an oxygen-rich environment is likely to be very destructive for those microbes.
Ed Minchau said:
> A manned mission to Mars could be undertaken with today’s technology – if we didn’t plan on bringing the people back. The 101st Airborne Division has volunteered to go.
Very interesting article, and a new suggestion for source of first-round colonists. However, I think psychologically there is a big difference between sending people on a challenging and dangerous but potentially survivable mission and a one-way trip. And there are differences in thinking about a one-way but long term colonization and a one-way short term venture. While I appreciate the offer, I doubt many people have the stomach to agree to that. One-way colonization only makes sense once infrastructure is in place to make the destination habitable.
I also worry about the “combined forces” idea. Either we have a huge step in inter-human relations and peace making mission, or we have soldiers killing each other on another planet.
StevoR said:
> I think the USA should consider trying to sell the shuttles to other allied Western nations like Australia (my home) and the Europeans so they can still be used by other nations to start up their space programmes too ..
The Shuttles are useless without the extensive infrastructure to support them. I doubt any other countries could afford to buy what it would take to be useful. (KSC anyone? How about Mission Control? I suppose USA would be willing to work for Australia instead of the U.S. gov.)
Helena Constantine said:
> I find very little information about the Orion Rocket on the web,
Orion is not the rocket, it is the space capsule. The rocket is ARES.
Don Wiseman said:
> The Shuttle and ISS were good solid designs until the government (both legistaltive and executive branches) decided they knew more than the engineers and scientists, and politically redesigned them both until they lost much of their utility and reliability.
I will add to that the current political redesign, cancelation of Shuttle. There is no vehicle inexistence or in plans to replace on essential capability of the Shuttle – downmass. The Shuttle is the only vehicle able to bring things back from space, other than a handful of crew members and what fits in their pockets. Even the Orion (CEV, whatever) will have limited payload ability. We can launch things to station (Progress, ATV, the new Japanese resupply vehicle), but those all burn up on reentry.
This is crucial because the ISS and many items on board were designed and built with the intent that they would be returned to ground and serviced. That means quantities of hardware were built based upon a rotation in use plan, and hardware is not built for easy (if at all) maintenance/servicing in space. We are now having to look at building replacement hardware instead of reservicing existing items because we can’t get back the ones that exist. Okay, at the moment we can, but not once Shuttle retires.
Charles said:
> The idea that Apollo was a “flag and footprints” mission is overly simple. Yes, it was “emplacement science.” But far more than mere political goals were accomplished.
There was some really good science carried out on the Apollo missions, and we did learn some really important things about the makeup and origins of the Moon. However, the thing that made it happen was not the science (eh, it’s rocks), but rather the politics driving it. And there was no followthrough. Apollo was cut short. Ergo, the characterization as “flags and footprints”.
Celtic_Evolution said:
> The failure with the Apollo missions is that we initially went for the wrong reasons (to beat the Russians) and therefor didn’t have the long-term vision to continue the program and adapt it, instead of just re-running the same essential missions without any eye towards updating and revising the technology and mission goals. From the public’s point of view, they were watching “reruns”.
I do agree there was not a long term vision in the government’s mind, and after the political goals were reached the political will was gone. I also agree the public looked on the missions as “reruns”. However, I disagree with the characterization that there was no eye towards updating and revising the technology and mission goals. Every Apollo mission built upon the previous mission, but improved the hardware and operations of lunar study. The Apollo 17 lunar module was a significant improvement in ability over the Apollo 11 LM. The later missions had rovers, and the crew could venture further and for longer periods of time. The problem is that you are thinking in step-function and not the reality of engineering improvement, which is typically incremental. The fact that the American public is unable to grasp engineering and science realities does not mean the engineering and science were redundant.
Scott said:
> 5: launch the mars mission from the moon colony
I don’t think many serious plans look at launching the Mars mission from the Moon. The Moon may be a technological, operational, and psychological stepping stone, but I doubt it will be a staging ground. Far more likely to lauch from Earth direct, or assemble in either Earth or perhaps Lunar orbit. If rocket fuel is to come from the Moon (one scenario), lunar orbit still makes more sense for staging. Unless Mars colonization is a century away. It will take a long time to build infrastructure on the Moon for the kind of manufacturing required. Far more likely to build things on Earth.
Celtic_Evolution said:
> I’ve always been intrigued by the space elevator idea. I know it actually has some real possibilities… however I was under the impression that at this time, the only material (that we know of) considered to be strong enough and flexible enough to make this a reality would be the still fairly new carbon nanotube technology. And for the forseeable future we have no way of manufacturing a structure out of nanotubes that would be on the scale of what a “space elevator” would need. Am I wrong about this?
Depends upon whom you listen to. To hear the space elevator folks, nanotube filaments are in technological development for a lot of Earthly applications and the ability to make spools of significant length is only a small step away. They optimistically project it will happen in a decade or so. Also, part of the technology for the space elevator will be the ability to splice many filament lines into a composite ribbon and build it in sutu (i.e. drop a thin ribbon and then build it up). Lots of engineering challenges to make it happen, but nothing that screams “IMPOSSIBLE”.
Joe Meils said:
> Just a couple weeks ago, there was a crisis aboard the ISS because the 0-g toilet broke down! All jokes aside, what are the chances of a mission to the red planet failing catostrophically, if something like this were to happen on the outbound leg of such a flight? Being locked in a can, and choking on my own waste is not something that inspires others to explore the outer solar system.
NASA is currently trying to shift it’s mindset for mission hardware design. Future missions will have to rely more on sparing and tooling being available and the crew to do on-site repairs. This is part of the challenge of designing for long duration missions without access to quick resupply.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Those who have found humor in the headline here must not have seen Friday’s coverage from the Washington Post where I first saw it:
— begin quote —
McCain Wants a Man on Mars
By Robert Barnes
Sen. John McCain told Florida newspaper editors today that he thought it would be exciting to send a man to Mars. He did not specify whether that man should be Sen. Barack Obama.
—- end quote —-
(Full article at http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/06/05/mccain_wants_a_man_on_mars.html)
June 11th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Here is what McCain’s statement (or any other politician’s statement for that matter) on the subject is worth: With an additional 75 cents I might be able to buy a bus ride. In other words, zilch. Politicians have been making statements about NASA going back to the moon and manned exploration of Mars for decades, but nothing ever comes of it.
Here is what Carl Sagan predicted in his book “The Cosmic Connection” page 161:
“I believe we will see semipermanent bases on the Moon by the 1980s. They will initially be resupplied with material and personnel from Earth, but will become increasingly self-sustaining, utilizing lunar resources. There will be children born in such colonies. They will eventually think of the Earth as “the old country” – an old-fashioned world in many senses, set in its ways, not moving with the times, more constrained and less free than the lunar colonies, despite the rigors and technological constraints of life on the Moon.”
That was written in 1973. Since that time in terms of manned spaceflight all NASA and their Russian peers have done is circle the earth in low earth-orbit, no farther above the Earth than Sputnik which was launched in 1957. I will believe in moon bases and manned Mars missions when I see them and I’m not holding my breath.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
“Anyone know if a space elevator is ever going to be feasible?”
I’ve always wondered how the space elevator going up to geosynchronous orbit 22,000 miles up gets around the inconvenient problem of having to pass through a low orbit debris field where bits and pieces of space launches of the last 50 years are hurtling around at 17,500 mph whereas the space elevator will be moving in low earth orbit position at the same speed as the earth or about 1,000 mph. Thus space debris will be whizzing around it with a relative speed of 16,500 mph. Even a small screw or bolt impacting at that speed is going to cause major damage to the space elevator.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Tom, the original design in the NASA paper calls for simply moving the ribbon out of the way of debris well in advance of possible collisions. We already map orbital debris down to about baseball size and no doubt that part of the elevator system would be debris removal missions (easy if you use the elevator itself for launch) and even better tracking of debris.
The proposed ribbon is curved in shape so that any small debris that escapes detection, or meteorites that strike the ribbon will punch a hole in it, and not tear it completely in half.
Lots of issues to solve, sure, but this is still easier than, say, launching an interstellar mission. (i.e. not impossible in the near future).
June 11th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
>Irishman said:
“Every Apollo mission built upon the previous mission, but improved the hardware and operations of lunar study.”
Sure… I understand that… but my point wasn’t that the technology itself wasn’t improved from mission to mission, but more that the missions themselves seemed to have a lack of real long term vision… in other words, we didn’t see the missions progressing in a way that would have lead utimately to permanent bases and colonization. They were really just a series of short term science projects, coupled with political muscle-flexing. I in no way mean to demean the accomplishements of the missions or the technologies they produced and developed… but the long term goal that everyone expected… that missions to the moon would continue to grow… progress… evolve to full-fledged colonization… that vision never materialized. That I guess was my point.
“The fact that the American public is unable to grasp engineering and science realities does not mean the engineering and science were redundant.”
Agreed… and I did not mean to imply they were, in reality. My implication was that because of the lack of long term vision, they took on that appearance to the general public… and as KC pointed out earlier, public perception is a strong motivator when policy and budgets are made.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Irishman and Torbjörn Larsson, OM,
You’re missing my point. This is not a beast vs. beast battle, this is a quarantine issue, for both worlds. Life most certainly exists on Mars; if it wasn’t there before, it is now, and it came from Pasadena, CA.
Experiments have already proven our worst fears that microbes exposed to the harsh radiation of space and survive, do so by mutating into “super-bugs”, far more malignant than they were before exposure.
Don’t forget that the surface of Mars is not protected from cosmic and Solar radiation because it lacks the relatively strong magnetic field that Earth has. Martian life, regardless of origin, has a distinct probability of being immensely harmful to Earth’s biosphere. What exactly are those odds? Not even at 1 in 1,000,000 can we seriously contemplate the irreversible contamination of Earth.
Anything that goes to Mars is going to have to stay there. So why are we even discussing sending anything but robots?
June 11th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
I see that StevoR is practicing his strawman building and tearing down skills on me. Note that I never said that space exploration was bad – I cut my teeth on Heinlein’s juveniles such as The Rolling Stones, Have Space Suit – Will Travel, and Citizen of the Galaxy. Those books inspired me to become an aerospace engineer. The space exploration Kool-Aid has filled my veins for over 35 years and continues to do so at full strength today. But using chemical rockets to accomplish those lofty goals is indeed waste and stupidity of the highest order. We need to develop sustainable, efficient space transportation, and a maximum Isp of 500 sec just doesn’t cut it.
Now – go build your strawmen elsewhere.
June 12th, 2008 at 4:04 am
KMR wrote : “We need to develop sustainable, efficient space transportation, and a maximum Isp of 500 sec just doesn’t cut it.”
Then perhaps you will be interested by this review :
http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/archives/2008-06/001014.html
of the book : Dewar, James A. To the End of the Solar System. 2nd. ed. Burlington, Canada: Apogee Books, [2004] 2007. ISBN 978-1-894959-68-1
June 12th, 2008 at 11:22 am
USA should cut the silly return to Moon plan completely, and make a public request for someone to build a launch vehicle that can do less than 1000$/kg to LEO. Do it in x number of years and you get 10 or 50 billion USAF and NASA payment and contract. Then start doing actual stuff in space.
US or USSR could have sent a man to the Mars, landed safely and returned by late ’70es. It was technologically possible back then, and is of course technically possible now. But it would be expensive. Way more than Apollo. Big fan lander with a hab module. Even bigger lander with the RV. Main ship could be a Skylab sized habitation module. With a ton of radiation shielding. And all the food/water/oxygen for the journey. And all the spare parts for the ship you can think of, time 3 just in case. The fuel to get this to Mars, and back. And that is a huge amount of mass that needs to be placed into LEO == mucho $$$$.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
The quarantine protocol would be based on biological knowledge though.
Current quarantine is based on the problem that if Earth life contaminates Mars, which is much more probable than the reverse, it will be difficult to observe preexisting life processes.
So? That happens to far greater extent every day when microbes riding out into our outer atmosphere, or our space ships/in our astronauts if you are concerned with possible prespace malignant microbes, gets irradiated. Seems survivable to me.
I would like to look over your references to such experiments though, so please cite them. I dunno what a “super-bug” is. Smallpox on adrenalin?
IIRC the plan for the next (or the next after that) Mars mission is to get samples back. What you claim isn’t what is going to happen.
June 12th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
I said: “We need to develop sustainable, efficient space transportation, and a maximum Isp of 500 sec just doesn’t cut it.”
Chris CII mentioned (via a review link) the NERVA-style rockets researched in the ’60s. NERVA rockets are really neat; I did a research paper on them my sophomore year. The fact that we can’t make stabilized monatomic hydrogen hurts the specific impulse some, but you can still get around 1000 sec Isp with them. Shielding hurts your mass fraction some, though.
Other propulsion ideas we need to be researching with much more effort than we are currently: the original Project Orion external nuclear pulse rocket; the Bussard IEC fusion machines; space elevator aka skyhook (I class this as propulsion although it really needs a complementary system to get too much beyond LEO); maybe even solar sails (the very low thrust is worrisome though). These, along with NERVA, all have formidable technical and political problems, and have not been conclusively shown to work at anything approaching full scale. But any of these have significant potential to produce a viable method of access to space well beyond LEO with costs per pound at least an order of magnitude below chem rockets. If we waste our money developing bigger chem rockets which CANNOT be significantly improved in performance due to fundamental physical limits (Isp is limited by the molecular weight of the working fluid and the amount of heat that can be added to it) then we won’t have money to spend on the propulsion sources we need for the next fifty to one hundred years.
June 13th, 2008 at 10:33 am
On this one, I agree with Gregg Easterbrook–the gentleman who wrote the article and did the video interview on asteroid impacts that the Bad Astronomer posted not long ago: a crewed Moon base would not be a good value for our science dollars. Yes, it has a very high cool factor: people living on the Moon! But there is little science that they can do that robots couldn’t do at a fraction of the cost.
Easterbrook has written:
“The Apollo program spent about $135 billion, in 2006 dollars, to place about 50 usable tons on the lunar surface. Even an austere moon base would need 300 or 400 tons of structure, equipment, fuel, vehicles, and life support—and probably more. Suppose today’s technology allows for lunar-rated materiel to be built and placed on the moon at half the cost of the Apollo project. This quickly gets you to a program cost of at least $300 billion to build the moon base.”
He argues that the hundreds of billions of dollars that a lunar colony would cost should instead be devoted to studying the Earth and it’s climate; exploring the solar system with space probes; space observatories; and, of course, protecting the Earth from Near-Earth asteroids.
There are, of course, many other critics besides Easterbrook. But I would recommend that article to you: http://www.slate.com/id/2155164/
Here are some other recent science missions and their costs (in U.S. dollars):
Cassini-Huygens (Saturn): $3.26 billion
Phoenix Lander (Mars): $386 million
New Horizons (Pluto): $650 million
MESSENGER (Mercury): $427 million
Mars Science Laborator: $1.2 billion
Spitzer Space Telescope: $800 million
Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope: $690 million
Even a mission to Europa–where there is the possibility of discovering extra-terrestrial life–could be done at a tiny fraction of the cost of a Moon base. For the cost of such a base, we could pretty much explore every nook and cranny of our Solar System with probes. Just imagine Cassini-like missions to Uranus and Neptune, or a Venus lander!
Exploring the Solar System and universe with unmanned probes and telescopes is very cost effective, unlike manned missions, most of whose money goes to keeping the astronauts alive and putting their heavy supplies and life support equipment into space. Crewed missions also require a much lower failure rate, since the loss of people is much worse than loss of a machine, this results in more up-front costs.
NASA has cancelled or delayed, for lack of funds, many valuable missions, such as the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission and others that would study the Earth’s climate (which is kind of important for us); other cancelled missions would have improved weather forecasting, which can save lives and property.
I respectfully disagree with the Bad Astronomer on the present usefulness of a Moon base, albeit not on the coolness thereof. It would take far too many resources at a time when other projects, of much greater agregate value, would have to be sacrificed.
June 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
TheTranceMan said:
>You’re missing my point. This is not a beast vs. beast battle, this is a quarantine issue, for both worlds.
I never said it was beast vs. beast. I’m talking about environment. Just because some single-celled critter can survive radiation exposure does not make it able to survive an acid bath. Or soaking in an oxygen-rich environment. Anaerobic bacteria don’t grow in oxygen, what makes you think Martian bugs will?
> Life most certainly exists on Mars; if it wasn’t there before, it is now, and it came from Pasadena, CA.
Well, I don’t agree with your certainty but do accept the possibility, even reasonable probability, something made it to Mars from here.
June 17th, 2008 at 3:01 am
To build a base on the moon will cost $300 billion up front. To keep a few souls alive inside it will cost what? Another $100 billion per year? For how many years do we keep this going? Until … uh… until what?
For what return on this investment? Nothing whatever. Zilch. So we can say “Hey, look there are men on the moon!” And a month later:”Hey look, they are still there!” It will certainly be the most expensive travel/tourist itinerary in human history. And the most pointless.
Currently the USA and the other states building and maintaining the ISS are hard pressed to do even that. Repairs and maintenance to Hubble had to be cancelled/postponed because the USA are CURRENTLY not even capable of launching enough vehicles into low earth orbit to maintain the ISS properly.
So let us spend $400 billion and shift the whole shebang on to the moon. This is NOT progress. It is just plain breathtaking stupidity.
Now if you want a two orders of magnitude increase in stupidity shift the whole shebang on to Mars. I can only assume those who think a manned trip to Mars is remotely feasible do not have the faintest idea of what is involved. I see it in the comments here – eg “… a six month trip…”
It will take six months to GET THERE. Then maintain humans there and wait for Mars to complete an orbit before you can consider the return journey. Perhaps three years in all. The Apollo trips took 5 or 6 DAYS each. This one is two or three YEARS. Landing and returning a fully independently self sustaining biosphere with its own energy, water, fuel, food, hospital, waist disposal, maintenance and repairs … the mind boggles.
The technology for that return journey does not actually exist yet. The cost will be literally and figuratively astronomical. The risk insanely high. The return on investment round about nil.
And in between the search of a few dimes to conduct real science continues with ever increasing desperation.
I can not believe that anybody suggesting this boondoggle is really serious. It is a form of entertainment where we indulge in science fiction as if it is real.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Clive I guess you come the people who thought sailing across the Atlantic, in the 1600′s, was a waste. The Apollo program did not just give us entertainment and moon rocks. It avdanced our scienctific knowledge of Earth and our solar system. But even more important the R&D for the space program has produced many of the new tech we use today. We have the technology to go to the Moon and to Mars in the next 20 years. IMO the space program is one the few government agencies that has produced anything useful the money that was put into it.
It has p*&%ed me off for years that we went to the moon and did it successfully, but because the average joe got bored with it we stopped the program. Congress took money away from NASA and dumped it back into the many ‘waste of good programs’ that make up most of our government programs. If we had continued to support the space program like we did in the 60′s we probably would already have a permanent base on the Moon and either going to Mars or at least in the final planning stages of the first trip to Mars.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:27 am
Kevin
Sailing across the Atlantic had a purpose. The purpose was to trade. Consequently a cost-benefit analysis could be done. No other technological options were available.
What is the purpose of spending vast sums so that a few souls can sit around on the Moon/Mars? What benefit can we expect?
No doubt the Apollo programme resulted in new technology. But that could all have been developed at a fraction of the cost if space exploration was aimed at gaining as much scientific knowledge as possible at as small a cost as possible. Difficult to know exactly but approximately 95% of the Apollo costs and new tech were solely geared towards placing a HUMAN in space – regardless of the cost or futility of the whole exercise.
Some of the most breathtaking scientific endeavours of all time have been achieved with a shoe-string budget (the scraps and small change left over in the sofa cushions after the unprecedented largesse expended on putting humans in space). And humans in space have achieved absolutely zero that could not have been done at a fraction of the cost by unmanned craft.
Compare the costs and returns associated with the ISS, the Shuttle, Apollo etc with Hubble, Viking, Cassini etc. etc. etc.
By now we could have had an array of space telescopes absolutely dwarfing Hubble in size and ability exploring in all the EMF’s to the origin of space and time. We could have been able to directly detect earth-like planets in other solar systems. We could have had probes and robots on ALL the planets. We could have had working laboratories on Mars with advanced understanding of its geological and climatic history and development. We could have had space based sensors monitoring our own climate and bio-sphere to an extent currently unimagined. The scientific yield could have been in the realms of fantasy.
In stead we have …. um …. plans to make footprints on Mars.
This is really a no-brainer. Unless the purpose is simply footsteps and flags at any cost whatever.
B.t.w. what is MEANT with a “permanent base on the moon”? Is it manned? For what purpose?
Do you realise the expense and technological challenge involved in placing a man on Mars? NASA refused to speculate but some of their officials hinted at half a trillion.
Now remember these are the people who predicted in the seventies that we will have 42 Shuttle flights per year at a cost of $20m per flight.
Reality? 4 flights per year at a cost of approx $1.3 billion per flight. NASA has CONSISTENTLY misjudged the cost and difficulty of manned space flight in ALL their manned missions by TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE.
Those footprints on Mars are going to cost the entire US GNP times ten.
July 14th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Well, it’s not actually Bad Astronomy, it’s just bad science and public policy: going back to the Moon that is! The Moon is a steppingstone to nowhere! why climb out of one hole to fall into another one? The argument that NASA isn’t up to going to Mars now is an argument against NASA, not against the idea of a manned Mars mission? Don’t you read Zubrin at all?
July 14th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Oh, I forgot, here’s a prediction (preferably, it’s about the future): the NASA and Bush moon initiative will end the U.S. manned space program forever (costs, failures, causalities, etc. etc) if it goes forward. So, if you’re against a human presence in space, then by all means support the Bush administration’s policy of returning to the moon (after all, the Bush administration has such a WONDERFUL track record with science and technology).