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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

#201

Post by [deleted] »

Pxtl wrote: post #179
pier25 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would explain the Fermi paradox

The Fermi Paradox is different. It's really about interstellar colonization, not just travel. It's basic geometric growth: the Universe is old-enough and geometric growth is fast-enough that, if interstellar colonization is possible, aliens would have spread across every habitable planet in the galaxy, just as all life does. They would already be here. Therefore, there is some filter that prevents the vast majority o…

[deleted]

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

#202

Post by srtjstjsj »

ythn wrote: post #195
bluGill wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance against what? Lets assume a self supporting mars colony today, and that the asteroid hits earth tomorrow making humans extinct. Will the mars colony get off mars in time to avoid their asteroid? It seems to me that we need to get to a few earth like planets before we can assume survival.

The assumption is that we will somehow "terraform" Mars so that it will be earthlike before Earth is destroyed.

why would martian life survive the destruction of earth from extraplanetary impact, which would affect martian orbit?

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

#203

Post by summadat »

datr wrote: post #191
tgb wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't sound exponential to me!

Ha good point. Should have said hyperbolic growth.

If memory serves me right, Warp speeds are x^3 faster for each step. Warp 1 is 3x faster than light, Warp 2 is 27x faster, etc

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

#204

Post by kchoudhu »

gnode wrote: post #197
squarefoot wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Politics could save us from an alien invasion!" I'd rather hope in the opposite.

Politics could resign us to an alien invasion?

An alien invasion could fix our politics.

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

#205

Post by Theodores »

melling wrote: post #137
habosa wrote: post #103

In 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!

It’s not just politics, it’s the entire human race. For example, we are spending $45 billion in our healthcare bill to fight the opioid epidemic. Imagine if we were able to avoid such problems in the first place.

It is not a problem though. My friends in big pharma did better than me - big houses, cars, holidays, money in bank. I guess they will be on the Narcan gravy train too. Doctors have to drive fast Porsches too, don't they?

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

#206

Post by dsfyu404ed »

squarefoot wrote: post #190

If the bean counters at NASA read "Buy Jupiter!" by Isaac Asimov they'd already have the solution at hand. Ok, building flying billboards is still a bit hard, but advertising is the point. What about sending probes and ships named after the highest bidder name/company? Of course they would have also a name for the scientific community and those of us who would never ever accept saying "Coca Cola has landed on Mars".

Just doing sponsors like in auto racing would go a long ways.

"Mobile 1 the official grease of $a_bearing_on_mars!!!!" is pretty damn good advertising.

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

#207

Post by nunobrito »

ptero wrote: post #162
mannigfaltig wrote: post #69

Earlier 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…

Part of the reason is the same desire to see what is at the other side that pushed seafarers, voyagers and adventurers for ages to travel across hostile oceans, mountains and deserts. It is not that we "need to get drunk .. with romantic ideas of exploration" as a society; but as individuals enough of us do anyway. I personally see it as a good thing. We do need to watch the costs, which is why my hopes are with the…

I happen to be Portuguese (land of pioneer seafarer) so had a chance to live with these legends in popular stories. There were other empires with better ship technology and huge fleets in place (e.g. China) and back in Europe one could find countries with better economical conditions to pioneer into the unknown seas (Genovese, Castillians, French, ..).

Yet, it was a tiny land on that corner of Europe which did the initial jump into the unknown.

Not just jumping, they crossed the whole of Africa using tiny boats and bargaining food at each stop. They succeeded because there was no other option. If the Portuguese crown were to make money, it had to risk doing what the others wouldn't.

500 years later. The US rulers don't see yet the money aspect in Mars, not even at the moon. But there is another "crown" already aiming for the moon, the Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_large_modular_space_st...

It's going to be interesting. Let's see if a human can finally reach the moon.

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

#208

Post by droidist2 »

criddell wrote: post #183
coss wrote: post #171

I like to imagine a world where tax payers can choose where they wish to allocate their taxes.

Would one of the options be return to sender ? If so, I can tell you the box most people would check.

It would all go to my foundation.

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

#209

Post by Asdfbla »

While this would certainly be a blow for science in general, I don't understand why people are so enamoured with human space travel and think it's a realistic avenue for humanity to get out of the responsibility we have for Earth (there's the strange defeatist sentiment on the internet that we have to leave this planet in the foreseeable future).

Fact is, the laws of physics probably dictate that we won't ever leave the solar system and in our solar system there's not much we can work with to make the other planets habitable. It's comparatively soooo much easier to simply make life sustainable on Earth and then figure out space travel in the thousands/millions of years we have left until some external disaster (asteroid, exploding sun, whatever) threatens us. In the meantime, we can explore space efficiently with robots.

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

#210

Post by _ea1k »

summadat wrote: post #203
datr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha good point. Should have said hyperbolic growth.

If memory serves me right, Warp speeds are x^3 faster for each step. Warp 1 is 3x faster than light, Warp 2 is 27x faster, etc

It actually varies from series to series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive#Warp_velocities
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