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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

#211

Post by keenerd »

bluGill wrote: post #166
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!

Science fiction almost universally assumes the speed of light is not a hard limit. At this time we have every reason to believe that it is a limit. Our theories also say that if you were to go faster than light (which you cannot) it implies time dilation and time travel - again science fiction just assumes a loop hole so that doesn't happen. Many talk about travel at 10 times the speed of light (warp-10) as if that i…

> Science fiction almost universally assumes the speed of light is not a hard limit.

Not at all, you need to look at other sub-genres. The social, economic and military structures that form around slower than light travel are a mainstay of hard science fiction. "A Deepness in the Sky" is a great example. So is the first half of "Neptune's Brood" or the second half of "Accelerando". Any story that uses a generation ship as the setting, like "Hull Zero Three", also assumes sub-light travel. Or what would happen if present-day society discovered an alien race next door, like in "The Sparrow". Or maybe we need to make ourselves slightly less human to survive sub-light space travel. "Blindsight" and "Echopraxia" explore the philospohical ramifications of that. Even "Ender's Game" doesn't have FTL travel.

Now space opera almost universally assumes that FTL is possible. Though there are exceptions, Ian Banks "The Algebraist" is my favorite sub-light space opera.

edit: Some hard sci-fi will still use wormholes, either as a normal thing or a macguffin. FTL communication is also common. Though FTL comms are getting less common in modern hard sci fi. Us readers like this and it makes for convenient plot devices as comm lag leads to misunderstandings.

TV and movies are almost always space opera, with "The Expanse" being the only sub-light TV production that comes to mind, and "2001" for film. But I don't know as much about film as books.

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

#212

Post by wanderingjew »

datr wrote: post #184
bluGill wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science fiction almost universally assumes the speed of light is not a hard limit. At this time we have every reason to believe that it is a limit. Our theories also say that if you were to go faster than light (which you cannot) it implies time dilation and time travel - again science fiction just assumes a loop hole so that doesn't happen. Many talk about travel at 10 times the speed of light (warp-10) as if that i…

Just an FYI. In Star Trek at least the warp system works like this: warp-1 is the speed of light and it then increases exponentially with warp-10 being infinite velocity. Source: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_factor

> it then increases exponentially with warp-10 being infinite velocity

No, no, no. That was only in the Voyager episode Threshold. It is widely regarded as one of the worst Voyager episodes, and the entire plot of that episode doesn't make any sense. There are questions of if this episode is even canon.

In any event, there are other Star Trek episodes where warp 10 is not a hard limit. All Good Things has ships traveling at Warp 13. The Kelvans modified the TOS Enterprise to travel at Warp 11. Even within Voyager, transwarp conduits allow for travel faster than whatever warp 10 would be if you disregard Threshold.

Warp 10 is not infinite velocity. It's just a line in a terribly written episode.

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

#213

Post by AndrewKemendo »

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…

It might sound trite, but the character from the Matrix played by Hugo Weaving related the Human Species to a virus. I think it's actually a startlingly accurate definition if you look at how we consume and expand, without finding a homeostatic symbiosis with the other forms of the environment.

It's in our nature to slash and burn and expand and grow, part of our DNA. Space tells people that they can continue being who they are, biologically, if you just find another world to find or build resources on. We want to be free to consume all we want, but want none of the costs or consequences.

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

#214

Post by hildaman »

If NASA doesn't have the funding for landing humans on Mars, this isn't "news" to them.

This is whole article is actually designed to get attention at a time when the CJS (Commerce Justice and Sciences) appropriations bill is being marked up[1]. The CJS subcommittee (of the House and Senate Appropriations committee) decided how NASA money is spent.

It is no surprise that articles like this are popping up - at literally the same time as CJS Appropriations bill is being marked up.

The way things work, is at times like this, even if NASA had the money to go to Mars, they would never admit to it - because appropriators might start cutting (do more with less... yada yada yada...)

I say this as a big fan of science and space exploration, but thought that fellow HN'ers might appreciate a look behind the curtain to better understand what is really going on here.

[1] https://appropriations.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?E...

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

#215

Post by [deleted] »

datr wrote: post #184
bluGill wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science fiction almost universally assumes the speed of light is not a hard limit. At this time we have every reason to believe that it is a limit. Our theories also say that if you were to go faster than light (which you cannot) it implies time dilation and time travel - again science fiction just assumes a loop hole so that doesn't happen. Many talk about travel at 10 times the speed of light (warp-10) as if that i…

Just an FYI. In Star Trek at least the warp system works like this: warp-1 is the speed of light and it then increases exponentially with warp-10 being infinite velocity. Source: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_factor

[deleted]

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

#216

Post by pps43 »

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…

Going to space is disaster management. By the time we find an asteroid that's going to cause another extinction event it will be too late to start space exploration.

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

#217

Post by solarengineer »

bluGill wrote: post #185
HarkMamilton wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanity is at an incredibly high extinction risk. We have all sorts of incredible new technologies that could, at the very least, knock us back to pre-industrial society. They might just kill us outright. We've already used all the easily accessible high-energy fuels, so if our current industrial society falls apart, we will probably never build another one. If we don't get to space now , we will probably never get…

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.

Indeed. We'd have to start somewhere, though.

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

#218

Post by sgt101 »

nathancahill wrote: post #155
valuearb wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The gold plating is for radiation shielding in space. It reflects more infrared radiation than other materials.

I thought it was to prevent corrosion in leo.. I understood that the upper atmosphere's interaction with high energy radiation creates a corona of ionized gas around the earth which is extremely eager to combine/corrode any material it makes contact with.

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

#219

Post by sqeaky »

pklausler wrote: post #178
vlunkr wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the answers to the Fermi paradox.

Only if it would apply to all alien civilizations. The thing about Fermi's paradox is that the Universe is old and the local galaxy is big, so any explanation for the apparent absence of ETI has to cover all ETIs. It just takes one species in galactic history to reach the point of launching a self-replicating interstellar probe to produce a galaxy permanently aswarm with them. Heck, we're not that far away from being…

"in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." — Benjamin Franklin

So I guess Ben just knew that aliens would never be a problem because Death and Taxes. Apparently the IRS is more powerful than Statistics and Physics.

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

#220

Post by dredmorbius »

bluGill wrote: post #166
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!

Science fiction almost universally assumes the speed of light is not a hard limit. At this time we have every reason to believe that it is a limit. Our theories also say that if you were to go faster than light (which you cannot) it implies time dilation and time travel - again science fiction just assumes a loop hole so that doesn't happen. Many talk about travel at 10 times the speed of light (warp-10) as if that i…

Charlie Stross tossed a few planet's worth of cold water on this:

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

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