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NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

arstechnica.com

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Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#31

Post by Tepix »

giobox wrote: post #25
snappyTertle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. There's more important things to spend public money on at the moment (like servicing the $20T in debt). Let private companies, like SpaceX, voluntarily spend R&D on it.

Given the huge investments NASA has made in SpaceX to date, I'm not entirely convinced that the split between public and private money in this space is as black and white as you suggest. SpaceX arguably wouldn't be here today without NASA's cash. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/without-nasa-there-w...

NASA paid $1.6b and got 12 flights to the ISS for it. Rather cheap in my book. I'm not aware of any other "huge investments" ... there were some smaller ones, however.

Looks like both NASA and SpaceX got a good deal.

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#32

Post by amelius »

giobox wrote: post #25
snappyTertle wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. There's more important things to spend public money on at the moment (like servicing the $20T in debt). Let private companies, like SpaceX, voluntarily spend R&D on it.

Given the huge investments NASA has made in SpaceX to date, I'm not entirely convinced that the split between public and private money in this space is as black and white as you suggest. SpaceX arguably wouldn't be here today without NASA's cash. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/without-nasa-there-w...

Sounds a bit like the story of how Microsoft saved Apple, back in 1997.

https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#35

Post by dolson »

Nanite wrote: post #4
maxxxxx wrote: post #3

I have been watching this since 2000. New president comes in, scraps old programs, declares new "vision". NASA does a few incoherent things and the whole thing restarts after a few years. It's pretty sad. I wish they would commit to something and actually finish it.

NASA programs typically span multiple decades and run in the billions of dollars, The political pendulum sways from one side to the other side every 4-8 years, every new administration is looking for ways to cut down taxes. It's amazing they get anything done imho.

The manned spaceflight portion of NASA doesn't really get anything done.

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#37

Post by maze-le »

sametmax wrote: post #30
FiatLuxDave wrote: post #11

I had a conversation a few years ago with Buzz Aldrin. He was talking about his idea for a Mars Cycler which would travel continuously between Earth and Mars. I told him that I thought it was a great idea (especially as it would be investing in 'permanent' space infrastructure instead of a single-shot mission) but that I thought it was unlikely that the government would allocate enough resources to build it. He seeme…

Right now Mars doesn't have any resource with crave enough to justify this enormous cost. If suddenly we discover that there is something we can get money from, and not just knowledge, you'll get investers.

Martian soil contains non-neglible amounts of phosphates[0]. Phosphorus is highly important for the production of fertilizers and gets increasingly rare here on earth[1]. It wouldn't suprise me if 150 years from now, phosphates are imported from martian soil.

[0]: https://phys.org/news/2013-09-phosphate-soluble-mars.html

[1]: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jsfa.4650/full

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#38

Post by Kazamai »

I don't see the purpose of landing people on Mars. Just to say, "we did it". Wouldn't it be a much more rewarding goal to research and execute systems that could send humans one way to planets in our galaxy. Even seeding organisms on other planets in the hope that they evolve into intelligent life.

Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars

#39

Post by jsudhams »

Tepix wrote: post #7

NASA has enough funding, they are just spending it on SLS and Orion(¹). It appears that if they were to pay the "new space" companies to get them to Mars, the money would be enough. (¹) because Congress wants them to, because ... jobs (as if "new space" companies weren't creating jobs, too... even competitive ones)

They should outsource this to India or Israel.
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