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"What's the imperative? What's pushing us to go to Mars?" he said, adding "I don't think the public is that interested". I think it's the opposite -- the general public is much more interested in sending humans to space than yet another unmanned mission. I agree that robotic missions give the most bang for the buck, and should continue for the foreseeable future, but as far as the general public goes, a manned missio…
Anders went to space in ‘68. I think he’s lost the spirit of adventure he must have had to do so. Putting a human on Mars will be one of the pinnacles of human achievements, even a small ultimately failed colony an unbelievable achievement. I support both wholeheartedly.
So this is the part I don't get, re: "What's pushing us to go to Mars?", some time ago someone said the same of going to the Moon. There was no good main reason for going to the moon, other than the US and the USSR having who's got a bigger d k war. The reality I feel, is this time we do have a good reason, to actually kick start off-planet habitable zones that we'll reap the benefits years and years into the future
My assumption is that these habitable zones would be required to generate the necessities of life in an environment devoid of any of them. Nutrients, oxygen, water... we could make recycling them very efficient, but there's always some loss. And even if you had zero loss, that's insufficient. If you're going to make a habitable zone that can support new population, you need to operate at a surplus.
The other option if you can't manufacture these resources from nothing is to import them. But that's extremely expensive. That's not a problem if the recipient is generating something of roughly equivalent value, such as mining valuable resources that can be shipped back (classic colonialism), or conducting important research (as in the case of the ISS), but if the recipient isn't generating anything of value besides somewhere to run later, then it never really gets there because it relies entirely on receiving continued shipment from the motherland.
I'm happy to be set straight on any of the above points, but these are the doubts that come to mind whenever someone argues the moon or Mars have potential as off-planet habitable zones.
Few people are willing to call the shuttle a failure, but it was. It cost much more per mission than estimated and was supposed to lunch every two weeks. It averaged approximately one every 3 months. The payload was supposed to cost $635 per pound, but ended costing $27,000. You need a critical review of NASA if they are going to be effective in the future (Humans or no). This article may read as overly negative, but there is a lot of Pollyanna reporting regarding NASA.
With commendable growth of private space organisations within USA, it's perhaps inevitable that an American would be the first to land on Mars; which politics apart would still be a giant leap for mankind in general.
We become multi-planetary for survival.
Probably kind of people which were telling "They're talking about landing rockets, that's nonsense".