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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

#81

Post by [deleted] »

mannigfaltig wrote: post #69
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…

I have trouble understanding the enthusiasm about space. Space hostile and empty. Why not simply send space probes and rovers at a fraction of the cost and spend the money more wisely, for example in projects which research aging, cancer, overpopulation and disaster management in face of global warming. Why do we need to make the exception for space and get drunk with nostalgia and romantic ideas of exploration, when…

[deleted]

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

#82

Post by ceejayoz »

theseatoms wrote: post #60
giobox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Oh wow. That's disappointing.

Why is that disappointing?

NASA today exists, in part, to do exactly that, and has benefitted tremendously from their SpaceX partnership.

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

#83

Post by maxxxxx »

Bartweiss wrote: post #62
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.

> I wish they would commit to something and actually finish it. I think this is pretty well hopeless at the moment. Major NASA projects have a timeline and cost operating on a 10+ year scale, but their budget changes annually and their priorities change with presidential election. Really the only way I can see things improving is if a president managed to stake out a task that couldn't be taken away from them by the…

It may work if during one administration they planned a program that is coherent and actually funded. All the initiatives over the last decade(s?) didn't make sense and were not even funded. In short, they didn't even try.

For some reason the unmanned missions are managed much better. I do a lot of reading about them and all the decisions, trade offs and plans seem to be the result of careful and realistic planning.

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

#84

Post by chrismealy »

mannigfaltig wrote: post #69
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…

I have trouble understanding the enthusiasm about space. Space hostile and empty. Why not simply send space probes and rovers at a fraction of the cost and spend the money more wisely, for example in projects which research aging, cancer, overpopulation and disaster management in face of global warming. Why do we need to make the exception for space and get drunk with nostalgia and romantic ideas of exploration, when…

I don't get it either. When it comes to manned spaceflight rationality goes out the window. Humans living on Mars makes about as much sense as homeopathy. I think it's some kind of nerd religion.

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

#85

Post by HarkMamilton »

zatkin wrote: post #78
Quarrelsome wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because space is more than us and it isn't us. It gives us a non-nation based activity to pursue that is greater than the whole of earth. It represents new frontier, new resources and ways of thinking that transcend this planet. It is a form of evolution and of freedom that isn't shackled so much by our self-made problems of earth. There are new mistakes to make and that's super appealing.

We can't even cope with the environmental issues that we have on our own planet, so we avoid that and instead look to plaguing the rest of the solar system and beyond? Good grief.

Environmentalism isn't an excuse to give up on every other aspiration humanity might hold.

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

#86

Post by Eerie »

mannigfaltig wrote: post #69
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…

I have trouble understanding the enthusiasm about space. Space hostile and empty. Why not simply send space probes and rovers at a fraction of the cost and spend the money more wisely, for example in projects which research aging, cancer, overpopulation and disaster management in face of global warming. Why do we need to make the exception for space and get drunk with nostalgia and romantic ideas of exploration, when…

>Space hostile

Earth is hostile, too. A large part of human civilization is dedicated to making Earth more hospitable for humanity than it is in its natural state. We can do the same for space.

>Space empty

Only in a sense that a large container with a single fist-sized diamond is empty. It is empty on average. It contains an incredible amount of resources. Our solar system could easily house trillions of people (in O'Neill cylinders).

>for example in projects which research aging, cancer, overpopulation and disaster management in face of global warming

We already spend much more on these, than on space research.

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

#87

Post by maxxxxx »

awalton wrote: post #77
yellowapple wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slash it in half, give the slashed half to NASA. Then we can have ourselves a Pluto colony.

Meanwhile people are still dying for lack of access to healthcare, infrastructure is failing, education is remaining poor... I agree with the slash the defense budget part, but NASA doesn't need 300B/y (and would have a hard time spending it even). They need ~30B/y (i.e. double their existing outlay) to do SLS and continue existing operations, and it needs to be in a lockbox of some kind such that future political sw…

Yes, they just need steady funding and a process that ensures that the money is spent on worthwhile stuff. After plans have been vetted then the politicians can come in and distribute the money to their districts.

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

#88

Post by cannonpr »

mannigfaltig wrote: post #69
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…

I have trouble understanding the enthusiasm about space. Space hostile and empty. Why not simply send space probes and rovers at a fraction of the cost and spend the money more wisely, for example in projects which research aging, cancer, overpopulation and disaster management in face of global warming. Why do we need to make the exception for space and get drunk with nostalgia and romantic ideas of exploration, when…

Do you want to build a safer basket ? Or invest in two baskets and split your eggs ? To some extent that is one argument, however space research in it's own right has generated a safer basket as well, as most engineering research is highly reusable. A lot of environmental problems for example could be solved via space based power generation that is beamed down.

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

#89

Post by skinnymuch »

jsudhams wrote: post #39
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.

You want to outsource an incredibly ambitious space program to another country? That'll never happen and I don't know if it should either. Parts of it can be outsourced for sure, but that's it. Like Europe taking over parts of some space projects. Russia being paid for deliveries.

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

#90

Post by Robotbeat »

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.

You can blame Congress. Congress insists on zip-code engineered space hardware whose primary mission is to ensure profit for contractors in their districts. The Administration, no matter who heads it, generally doesn't buy that approach, which is why you see the old programs scrapped (because they weren't going anywhere).

(Putting the Earth-science thing aside for the moment.) It really is a mostly non-partisan divide, here.

NASA has its own problems. A culture of risk averseness that is incompatible with new approaches like reusable rockets (although NASA will use them if they're proven by others). A culture of safety-uber-alles which is even more incompatible with expanding the capability of human space exploration in particular.

But for all that, NASA still accomplishes great things. NASA has been critical for the success of SpaceX (around 2008 in particular) and even has helped Blue Origin considerably. NASA has completed the International Space Station (the largest spacecraft ever built by far) and kept it inhabited since 2000. No one under the age of 20 remembers a time when there wasn't at least a couple people aboard the Space Station. This program has built up a level of experience with long-term human spaceflight that, in aggregate, exceeds all other such programs. We have experience manufacturing in space and leveraging ISS for launching commercial satellites (Planet.com in particular), helping pave the way for the current wave of smallsat launchers.

There are now half a dozen active satellites (half from NASA, but all with assistance from NASA) in orbit around Mars, two active on its surface, plus a probe around dwarf planet Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, and another probe, New Horizons, which has visited Pluto for the first time and is now on its way to other destinations deeper in the solar system. This is all just scratching the surface of NASA's accomplishments in this time. (And next year are slated the launch of two commercial crew vehicles that NASA has been funding, SpaceX's Dragon 2 and Boeing's Starliner.)

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