Bill Nye have a different argument. https://youtu.be/5ekUbzciyKg
"... put humans in orbit around Mars... '
"
NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
101–110 of 342 posts
Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
#102Earlier 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…
Money spent on NASA has provided significant breakthroughs in science that includes the internet, MRIs, ear thermometers, automatic insulin pumps, implantable heart defibrillators, fiber optics, light emitting diodes for brain cancer surgery, programmable cataracts, long distance telescopes, solar energy, artificial limbs, memory foam, shoe insoles, smoke detectors, water filters, enriched food, and tons of software.
Smoke alarms alone have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
#103In many science fiction books we assume that if an alien planet ever got a whiff of us they'd quickly board their space ships and come see us.
It's somewhat comforting to think the alien planet could also be in a perpetual bureaucratic budget crisis and they've dismantled their space program to make more room for tax cuts.
Politics could save us from an alien invasion!
Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
#104The main thing NASA needs to land people on Mars (or the Moon for that matter) is a lander. NASA does not have one, nor is one being funded. All the other details for Mars can be done with variants of what already exists or will fly shortly (commercial crew vehicles or even Soyuz, ISS modules for a transfer craft, launch vehicles like the EELVs used by the military or Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, in-orbit docking and propellant transfer which is commonly used on the Space Station, etc). If you see a lander being developed and tested, then you know you have a serious human space exploration program.
NASA has sufficient funding for accomplishing a human Mars landing. But not the political freedom to direct that funding where it's most critical (i.e. a lander).
SpaceX, on the other hand, is developing this technology for a lander. Their reuse technology for Falcon 9 proved for the first time the feasibility of supersonic retropropulsion, a CRITICAL technology needed for a human-scale Mars lander. A vertically landing reusable upper stage, which SpaceX intends to develop next (after block 5 Falcon 9) as part of their Mars rocket plans, is essentially a Mars lander prototype.
SpaceX, even though they have less funding and have to rely on funding from commercial launches (as well as capital used for developing commercially viable hardware, like the constellation) to develop their Mars lander, is thus on a better and surer path to Mars than NASA.
This is SpaceX's Mars architecture in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qo78R_yYFA
In order to pay for it, they will develop a smaller (but still tremendously huge) and more economical version of the rocket shown in that video to replace Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. They will use it to launch and maintain their 12,000 satellite megaconstellation (thousands of satellites per year), something that would BARELY be feasible with their partially reusable Falcon architecture (but not feasible with expendable rockets) but which fits nicely and economically into the capability of their subscale Mars rocket. This way, they can leverage capital they'll raise for their megaconstellation to build the primary pieces of their human Mars transportation architecture.
Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 probes may be cheap but they are slooooowwww. Most of the research done by spirit, opportunity and curiosity could have been done by a trained astronaut in an afternoon. As an example, in its 2623 day mission, spirit traveled less than 5 miles. Rovers are great for low budget exploration, but if you want to kick things into high gear, there's no substitution for trained humans. Some of you may be thinking, 'Hol…
> Rovers are great for low budget exploration, but if you want to kick things into high gear, there's no substitution for trained humans.
But how many rovers can you get for the price of one round trip space party?
Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 probes may be cheap but they are slooooowwww. Most of the research done by spirit, opportunity and curiosity could have been done by a trained astronaut in an afternoon. As an example, in its 2623 day mission, spirit traveled less than 5 miles. Rovers are great for low budget exploration, but if you want to kick things into high gear, there's no substitution for trained humans. Some of you may be thinking, 'Hol…
NASAs manned space efforts have devolved into a scam to divert funds into the state of Alabama. It literally can't build any manned space systems unless they are gold plated and cost 20 times what they should.
Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
#107Earlier 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.
Good grief Columbus, you aren't even competent enough to round the Cape. Why would you go west?!
Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
#108In many science fiction books we assume that if an alien planet ever got a whiff of us they'd quickly board their space ships and come see us. It's somewhat comforting to think the alien planet could also be in a perpetual bureaucratic budget crisis and they've dismantled their space program to make more room for tax cuts. Politics could save us from an alien invasion!
That would be nice, it's a shame it could just as easily result in an increase of military spending to fund a space program to come invade.
Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should cut the defence budget. 611B/year it's a joke.
The funny thing is, with the kind of space presence that kind of money buys you (we're talking Clarke-style rotating space stations here), nobody would dare fuck with you. You don't need an official space weapons program to be able to drop heavy things from orbit. Nor do you need a fancy anti-satellite ballistics system when you can have one of your many astronauts sidle over and hit it with a hammer.
Droping stuff from orbit is cool scifi weapon system, but in practice it is surprisingly hard to do (you cannot just drop stuff, you have to impart it with some deltav to cancel out orbital velocity of the station) and inefficient (you have to get the stuff up there, which when you ignore atmosferic drag requires same amount energy as the projectile would release on impact)
Re: NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
#110I 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 is empty?
I don't understand. In practice we have explored space to see new worlds. Things are far apart but there's lots of stuff in space.