NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by aubiematt » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #106

tynpeddler wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The question should be, would you rather your tax dollars go towards a War machine? Or supporting the move of intelligent people to 3rd world Alabama to hopefully balance out the crazies and racists?

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

#232

Post by JustSomeNobody » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:23 PM UTC

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!

Shortest sci-fi book ever!

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

#233

Post by njarboe » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:24 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #227

njarboe wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Space hostile and empty." This is a feature, not a bug. There is a small fraction of humanity that has the desire to do very hard and physically dangerous things. Another fraction who greatly enjoy empty spaces and prefer having great influence over the culture they live in. On Earth, very hard and dangerous can be found, but the activities are either recreational (mountaineering) or involve hurting other people (mi…

Maybe Musk and Bezos can live in a biosphere bubble on the asteroid belt maintained by an army of their (wholly-owned) mining robots. But Mars is a bad joke. It's deep in a gravity well and is a gigantic, cold Sahara dessert without breathable air. If physicists and engineers can come up with a massless drive and potent, safe energy to drive it (e.g. EmDrive powered by fusion) we cold probably send missions back and…

Most inventions are serendipitous accidents. To find valuable things that can only happen in zero or micro gravity will probably require lots of people existing and experimenting in that environment.

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

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Post by bencollier49 » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:25 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #111

kbyatnal wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any idea how many of our modern technologies were developed as a direct result of the space program? New technologies were needed to go into space and many of them have become essential for our lives. MRI, LEDs, Anti-Icing Systems, Artificial Limbs, Land Mine Removal, Firefighter Gear, Water Purification, Pollution Remediation, etc etc...the list goes on and on. Studies estimate a $7-$14 return on investm…

Wow, you are saying if you take a massive pile of money to hire a bunch of the smartest engineers away from private companies and pay them to solve problems, they'll do it? And if NASA didn't exist, and these engineers instead worked for less bureaucratic, more entrepreneurial businesses, they'd invent nothing?

Well, one would imagine that they would instead be employed in finding new and more effective ways of making people click on adverts.

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

#235

Post by svachalek » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:29 PM UTC

badloginagain wrote: post #221

keenerd wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sh…

Just wanted to mention The Expanse, which definitely has hard limits on going over (or even reaching) the speed of light, and touches on many of the tropes you mentioned. It's also probably one of the best examples I've seen of a truly alien encounter- no bipedal humaniods with spoken language. The book series is excellent, and it has two seasons released from SyFy, which does a pretty good job capturing the feeling…

spoilers It sounds like you may not have read all the books yet.

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

#236

Post by greglindahl » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:30 PM UTC

keenerd wrote: post #230

badloginagain wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to mention The Expanse, which definitely has hard limits on going over (or even reaching) the speed of light, and touches on many of the tropes you mentioned. It's also probably one of the best examples I've seen of a truly alien encounter- no bipedal humaniods with spoken language. The book series is excellent, and it has two seasons released from SyFy, which does a pretty good job capturing the feeling…

Coincidentally I'm working through the book series right now. It is mostly good, though it would be nice if the main characters weren't quite as consistently lucky. The author's handling of energy is really annoying. I can overlook the structural impossibility of spinning up an asteroid for example, but I can't overlook the fact that they can command that sort of energy. It is made even more frustrating because they…

If you're interested in the science behind spinning asteroids, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarkovsky%E2%80%93O%27Keefe%E2...

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

#237

Post by keenerd » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #236

keenerd wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coincidentally I'm working through the book series right now. It is mostly good, though it would be nice if the main characters weren't quite as consistently lucky. The author's handling of energy is really annoying. I can overlook the structural impossibility of spinning up an asteroid for example, but I can't overlook the fact that they can command that sort of energy. It is made even more frustrating because they…

If you're interested in the science behind spinning asteroids, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarkovsky%E2%80%93O%27Keefe%E2...

That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. In The Expanse, they hollow out and spin up asteroids to use as a space station with centripetal artificial garavity. A typical rubble-pile asteroid would fly apart well before that. Even solid rock couldn't take the forces since they are all tensile.

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

#238

Post by CydeWeys » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:36 PM UTC

computerex wrote: post #49

thearn4 wrote: post #42

I'm a bigger fan of putting a semi-permanent ISS 2.0 on the surface of the moon vs. boots on Mars. I don't work directly in exploration systems, but I'm not the only one at NASA who feels this way. But more than anything I think we and the other executive agencies would take any strong commitment on an exploration and human spaceflight direction from congress that survives across presidential administrations over any…

I am a fan of that too, but I don't know how practical it is. What would we get out of having a manned station around the moon? It's a desolate piece of rock with little to no activity in the core. It's dead by all means, and the probes we have in orbit + instrumentation that was left by Apollo and the tons of moon rock we brought back I think already gave us an abundant amount of data to work with. But alas, I am a…

You misread the previous comment. The suggestion isn't a manned station around the Moon (which would have more negatives than positives versus existing LEO stations), it's a manned station on the Moon. There are plenty of reasons that having a base on the Moon would be useful. You can extract resources (including fuels, water, and construction materials) which would reduce resupply requirements, there's gravity which makes long-term habitation safer, and we'd start getting experience with manned stations that would directly transfer over to Mars. On a Moon base, if everything totally fails, you can always still get back to Earth and survive, or survive long enough for help to make it your way, so it's a lower risk than attempting to build a base from scratch on Mars. On Mars if everything totally fails, you're dead.

There's also the propellant depot scenario -- mine propellant on the Moon and use it to refuel ships that launch from the Earth. The Moon's gravity well isn't that deep and there are no atmospheric losses, so you can do farther/faster/cheaper launches using a smaller spaceship that reaches LEO mostly empty, then refuels at the Moon.

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

#239

Post by princetontiger » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:37 PM UTC

Last I checked, Bolden/NASA has spent time gallivanting around the world trying to be inclusive (Middle East, Asia, Africa, etc.). NASA is a larger allegory for the USA. This entire country is toast in 100 years. It's similar to the last Spanish galleons leaving Cordoba. In 2011, we have a similar Galleon Moment. STS-135 will end up being the flight from NASA, ever. To digest this fact makes me extremely sad.

There is a reason that the UK did not have a space program, but lead the exploration of the West in the 1800s. Britons had intestinal fortitude during the Victorian era, and this same urge moved to Americans after WW2.

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

#240

Post by okreallywtf » Thu, Jul 13, 2017, 6:37 PM UTC

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!

The reality could be a lot more melancholy. The universe is so vast and intelligent life so rare, countless species could evolve to space faring too far away from each other to ever have a chance to meet. Faint wisps of eons old radio chatter or long dead ruins might be the best we ever get but even that would be life changing.