Mars and Moon Are Out of NASA's Reach for Now, Review Panel Says

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/08/AR2009090802464.html?hpid=sec-nation

by fjabre • 17 years ago

15 26 17 years ago

washingtonpost.com

onreact-com• 17 years ago

The Chinese and the Russians or the Indians will reach Mars.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/01/05/China-Russia-Mars...

wouterinho• 17 years ago

I guess these are nations that have something to prove in this area, especially China and India. Putting a man on Mars will certainly confirm you to the general world population as a "real" new dominant power.

joezydeco2• 17 years ago

Or confirm you as a nation that puts an expensive, small return mission as priority over more pressing internal problems?

zandorg2• 17 years ago

Also, if you can generate rocket fuel with internal labour (not imported), you can outdo the Americans in rocket fuel cost by a maybe 10x factor (I mean India here, or any economy like Thailand, with a different 'gearing' from the US dollar).

hughprime• 17 years ago

I'm confused -- is labour cost a big part of rocket fuel costs?

Actually I'd like to know much more about rocket economics. How much of the cost is in fuel vs engines vs support staff etc? If we started cranking out Delta rockets at mass production rates could we get the price down to, say, a million bucks a pop?

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

I call horse manure.

Mars and the Moon are well within reach. They are not a priority.

Now you can argue that the priorities are wrong, and I'll agree with you, but don't spin it that somehow it's a matter of "reach". It's a matter of will.

fjabre6• 17 years ago

Agreed. It really is a matter of prioritizing.

With the way things are going on this planet one would think this would be a higher priority.

Increasing our chances of survival as a species should be a high priority but it seems we can't see the forest through the trees.

We have developed the means to destroy the planet, yet we have no way of escaping should that ever actually happen. It's not the kind of situation you'd like to find yourself in considering all the political and religious strife prevalent across the globe.

shrughes• 17 years ago

> Increasing our chances of survival as a species should be a high priority but it seems we can't see the forest through the trees.

Why should this be a priority? There are better things for NASA to do than satiate some folks' religious beliefs.

GHFigs• 17 years ago

Increasing our chances of survival as a species should be a high priority

Why?

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

We have developed the means to destroy the planet, yet we have no way of escaping should that ever actually happen.

I'm not at all sure that we have the means to make the Earth less habitable than the Moon or Mars. The Moon is pretty darned uninhabitable. Mars likewise.

Assuming the absolute worst of the nuclear winter hypotheses to be true, we could perhaps destroy most of the higher life on Earth. But even after a nuclear winter the Earth would still have substantial amounts of water and oxygen, and almost certainly a functioning biosphere of some sort. [1] Which is more than can be said for the Moon or even Mars.

Meanwhile, we most certainly don't have the technology to reach an extrasolar Earth-like planet, and spending tens of billions of dollars to have humans dork around in near-solar orbit won't change that fact one bit. If you really do dream of settling other planets, you need to spend far fewer dollars on far more radical experiments. Or you need to read Charles Stross:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...

Possibly both.

[1] Bacteria are hard to kill. Many of them thrive on the lightless ocean floor at extremely high temperatures. And unicellular creatures built our oxygen atmosphere, so the loss of it probably won't bother them too much.

robryan• 17 years ago

If there not willing to give NASA more funds there almost better off pulling the plug on the thing and instead giving the money to private space companies, or retaining NASA as a purely research/ robotic exploration company.

wallflower• 17 years ago

Buzz Aldrin has said that if we send men to Mars and back once - it's an accomplishment but if we can do it three times, then we've proved that we have solved the problem. Russia is already training men to live in isolation for one hundred and five days (the duration of the Mars - Earth flight).

http://pda.physorg.com/_news157702743.html

nwatson• 17 years ago

Why do we need to solve the round-trip problem to Mars? Many set out in the past from the Old World to the New World with no intention of returning. There are plenty willing in the near future to go one-way to Mars. "Humans in space" isn't about science ... robots do that. It's about pushing the limits of the human experience and spirit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/opinion/01krauss.html ... send material and equipment to Mars first, then the first human colonists. To never return. It's 10% the cost of a round trip we can't afford.

run4yourlives• 17 years ago

Mars and the Moon? In a few months NASA won't even be able to send a man into space, let alone the moon.

Sad really.

Mars and Moon Are Out of NASA's Reach for Now, Review Panel Says

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