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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

#271

Post by throwaway91111 »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #200
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!

if we got a whiff of intelligent life on mars, funding would appear

I mean, cash could also appear from thin air on NASA's front lawn.

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

#272

Post by greeneggs »

tynpeddler wrote: post #96
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…

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…

There is no better time for manned space exploration than now. Certainly within 100 years and possibly within decades, robots will be better than humans in nearly every aspect of space exploration. I think the proponents of manned space exploration see their window closing, and are getting a bit desperate.

If we want NASA's research to have benefits to broader society, it would be best to redirect it all toward robotics and artificial intelligence. This would give the most scientific benefits as well as long-term engineering benefits.

Currently, the money being spent on manned space exploration has negligible side benefits. A lot of it is being spent on old technologies, like non-reusable rockets that are too expensive to fly.

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

#273

Post by keenerd »

ethbro wrote: post #258
keenerd wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone says that after book 3 or 4 they go downhill anyway. I like to believe there was only one Matrix movie ever made and only one Dune novel. I will probably prefer to believe that there were actually 9-N books in The Expanse series, where N has yet to be determined.

I'm rereading the Dune series right now and on Children of Dune . Actually REALLY enjoying the 2+ books more than the first. What would one do if one had become a human god but didn't like the future he saw? Like the post- Ender's books (before Card sold out), I find mulling over the consequences of upsetting an applecart far more interesting than the upsetting. The first books in both series feel a bit too "Mission…

For me it is all about the world building, the practicalness of the universe presented. Dune had a decade of planning go into it before the first book was written. The rest did not have that amount of background effort and it shows. After the first book it all feels like he's making it up as he goes along, instead of drawing on an encyclopedia.

Children of Dune had the most egregious problem with this. Trying here to not spoil the plot for you, but at towards the end (page 329 of 408 in my edition) Leto discovers something profound. The backstory to introduce this was first mentioned on the previous page. It didn't use some bit of trivial from the first two books, and he couldn't be bothered to write it 300 pages earlier either. (Feel free to email me when you think you've reached that part.) The later novels are slightly better, then he's writing these new discoveries into the previous chapter.

Re-reading Dune has always been pleasurable for me. You can feel it is just the tip of an iceberg and tease out the history by reading between the lines. The other books lurch from one deus ex machina to another.

Ender's Game is also largely about consequences too. Humanity wins the fight and destroys the big bad, but this doesn't happen at the end of the book. There is still a third of the story left to mull over the consequences.

edit: Slight spoilers, but nearly all of the later Dune books essentially allow anyone to come back from the dead. He never once explores the ramifications of this. What happens if you try to bring back multiple copies of someone at once? Does every cell in our body really carry the full weight of our entire past experience? What about identical twins? What if you blended the nucleus of one person with the mitochondria of a second and the cellular plasma of a third? Or does the procedure somehow tap into the soul? Is god annoyed that the natural cycle is broken? Does the process damage the soul? Never once delves into any of this, instead it is used only as a cop-out to avoid creating new characters.

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

#274

Post by codys »

jldugger wrote: post #105
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…

> 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?

It's fairly hard to figure this out. What follows is a really bad comparison between Apollo & Curiosity, which completely ignores tech advancement, the difference between a moon flight and a mars flight, the length of time for each mission, the amount of data collected, and a whole lot of other stuff.

The cost of Apollo program in 1973 was reported as ~$25 billion. In 2016 dollars, ~$135 billion. The Apollo program made 6 manned landings (I'm going to ignore non-landing missions as we're talking about rovers & consider them part of the development cost for the program).

The curiosity mission was reported as costing $2.5 billion in 2011 ($2.6 billion in 2016 dollars).

So with some really bad math (as noted earlier):

- dollars per manned moon mission = 135/6 = 22.5 billion

- dollars per unmanned mars mission = 2.6 billion

- For the cost of 1 manned moon mission, we could have ~8 (22.5/2.6) unmanned mars missions.

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

#275

Post by throwaway91111 »

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…

Maybe humans are just early in general. Who knows, maybe intelligent life evolution will peak in several billion years and we were just ahead of the curve.

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

#276

Post by [deleted] »

njarboe wrote: post #150
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…

"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…

[deleted]

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

#277

Post by gorkonsine »

ItsDeathball wrote: post #267
ethbro wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the closer target doesn't look alien . How often do countries go to war with people who are similar to them? Now how often with people who are the other ? (Whatever definition fits)

Well, 1930s Germans were pretty similar to Poles and the Dutch, and even more similar to German Jews. Indians and Pakistanis are also not exactly space aliens to each other, nor are Iraqis and Iranians, Russians and Ukrainians, or Syrians and other Syrians. I'd say the historical rule for warfare is that the belligerents are so similar that tiny differences seem irreconcilable. Proximity and competition for resources…

Exactly. I can't think of many wars where the belligerents were really different from each other.

American Civil War: many were actual relatives! ("brother vs. brother") WWI: English are descended from Germanic tribes, French are closely related to Germans too. WWII: Same as WWI mainly; Italians aren't very different from French/English/Americans. Americans/Japanese were a pretty big difference though. But Japanese/Chinese isn't that big a difference, relative to non-easterners.

The people who promote wars frequently try to cast the enemy as alien, in order to rile up support for the war and to get soldiers to participate.

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

#279

Post by 0xffff2 »

nobleach wrote: post #266
0xffff2 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You jest, but if I ever get the opportunity I will take a one-way trip to Mars without hesitation.

I don't doubt your dedication.. I just try to imagine a week later after the initial "I'm standing on MARS!!!" wears off... ok... so... there's nothing here...

Ok, fair point. There would obviously need to be a mission plan that involved a bit more than "go to Mars", but I think even thoroughly monitoring my slow death by radiation over the course of a few months would be sufficiently scientifically worthwhile that, along with the sheer fact of going to another planet, for me to volunteer.

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

#280

Post by Pxtl »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #275
Pxtl wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe humans are just early in general. Who knows, maybe intelligent life evolution will peak in several billion years and we were just ahead of the curve.

That is incredibly unlikely.

Let's assume that aliens had a 1% head start on us. They were 1% faster at evolving. That's not a crazy idea - Earth spent 2 billion years going from photosynthesis to multi-cellular life. The cretaceous extinction could've been a 50 million year setback, how close were Dinosaurs to getting sentience?

We're at 13 billion years on the global clock right now, so 1% of that is 130 million years. An alien with a 130 million year head start on us. Imagine that.

Now let's assume there are 40 billion habitable planets in the galaxy. That seems like a lot. And let's assume it takes a really long time for a planet to go from "just colonized" to "ready to produce more interstellar colonies". Say 100,000 years - longer than recorded human civilization. We'll make a vague approximation - every inhabited planet can colonize another planet once per 100,000 years. That seems conservative.

It takes about 35 generations for a doubling population to reach 40,000,000,000.

35 generations. So with a generation taking 100,000 years, that means 3.5 million years.

In 3.5 million years we see a species go from "sentient" to "every habitable planet in the galaxy".

You can play with the numbers, but the result speaks volumes: geometric growth is fast, and the universe is old.

It is highly unlikely that we're the first. And if we're not the first, and interstellar colonization is possible, then every planet in the galaxy should already be colonized, because it would take a blink of an eye in galactic timescales.

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