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Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

bbc.com

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Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#41

Post by wpietri »

admax88q wrote: post #22
mgamache wrote: post #16

FTA: "I think the space shuttle was a serious error. It hardly did anything except have an exciting launch, but it never lived up to its promise," 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 $27,00…

I mean it did go to space, numerous times. Just because the budgeting projections were way off doesn't make it a failure.

According to Wikipedia: "The goal, as presented by NASA to Congress, was to provide a much less-expensive means of access to space that would be used by NASA, the Department of Defense, and other commercial and scientific users." [1]

So yes, if the goal was for it to be cheap and it turned out to be expensive, then it was pretty clearly a failure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Concepti...

Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#42

Post by friedman23 »

mgamache wrote: post #16

FTA: "I think the space shuttle was a serious error. It hardly did anything except have an exciting launch, but it never lived up to its promise," 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 $27,00…

> Few people are willing to call the shuttle a failure

Almost everyone calls the shuttle a failure

Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#43

Post by JustSomeNobody »

turingspiritfly wrote: post #5

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

> ... to actually kick start off-planet habitable zones that we'll reap the benefits years and years into the future

I think it's hubris to think we'd even get close to getting that correct.

Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#44

Post by assblaster »

gpm wrote: post #40
assblaster wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the cost:benefit ratio to long term colonization of an inhospitable planet?

Successful colonization? Huge, absolutely huge. We are resource constrained on earth. We are at risk of extinction from a huge number of not-that-small probability events. We could all do with some inspiring things in our lives. It's so huge it's hard to quantify, because it starts bringing in to question fundamental values. What do you think we, as a collection of smart and capable people, as a nation, as a civiliza…

Mars is not Earth II.

If you want to argue for a backup planet, you should invest your resources into long term hibernation biology and then send the humans to an actual Earth II in another part of the galaxy. If you truly believe humans are at risk of extinction and need another planet, finding an actual acceptable planet to colonize is a better idea.

Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#45

Post by friedman23 »

The article is pointless, I thought there would be interesting technical reasons why sending humans would be stupid but it's simply that he thinks it's cheaper to send robots.

We go to Mars because people with the means to send people there want to. It's as dumb as wanting to cross the ocean to travel to a new unexplored continent.

Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#46

Post by JamesUtah07 »

assblaster wrote: post #21
Svoka wrote: post #20

> Musk and Bezos, they're talking about putting colonies on Mars, that's nonsense. Probably kind of people which were telling "They're talking about landing rockets, that's nonsense".

What is the cost:benefit ratio to long term colonization of an inhospitable planet?

I think the parallel to Antarctica "colonies" is the closest thing to Mars colonies Antarctica is nearly inhospitable in terms of food production. There currently are about 5k people there in the summer session but it's mostly science based work. Certainly the is a lot of new science we could do on a different planet so I think that would be a big motivation

Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#47

Post by na85 »

bostonpete wrote: post #26
admax88q wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it did go to space, numerous times. Just because the budgeting projections were way off doesn't make it a failure.

I think the point is that we didn't need it to get to space. There were cheaper alternatives.

I don't understand the cost argument. NASA is allocated less than half a percentage point of your federal budget. $20B is nothing to the United States Government. You could double their budget and DOD would still be spending 16x more.

NASA is cheap. Direct your ire at Rockwell, not NASA.

Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#48

Post by DoreenMichele »

With 7 billion people on the planet and that number only growing, it seems likely that we either find more room for people somewhere or face a massive population die-off event at some point. The humane answer is look for more room to put this burgeoning population of humans. The other answer is likely a case of hell to pay for most people on the planet. Even those who survive will likely be facing serious hardships as a consequence.

And, I mean, why the hell not? We're all just dust in the wind anyway, dancing on this earth for a short time. If some folks think going to another planet is cool and are willing to endure what that takes, why should that desire be deemed invalid?

From what I gather, space programs are a unique combination of highly inspirational and requiring tremendous rigor and have, thus, fostered innovation the world would otherwise have never pursued. I imagine that has sufficient value to offset the high costs of space exploration, though I'm not actually willing to look up sources and try to prove that.

Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#49

Post by ptero »

admax88q wrote: post #22
mgamache wrote: post #16

FTA: "I think the space shuttle was a serious error. It hardly did anything except have an exciting launch, but it never lived up to its promise," 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 $27,00…

I mean it did go to space, numerous times. Just because the budgeting projections were way off doesn't make it a failure.

If a major exploration blew the budget but achieved its primary goal it could still be considered a success. But it must achieve its goal.

However, for the shuttle the lower price was the #1 goal which it failed to achieve. So it is a failure. Sorry. And that overfunded failure held back other options, because it is hard to compete when the competitor has many extra billions for development.

Re: Sending astronauts to Mars would be stupid, astronaut says

#50

Post by gpm »

assblaster wrote: post #44
gpm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Successful colonization? Huge, absolutely huge. We are resource constrained on earth. We are at risk of extinction from a huge number of not-that-small probability events. We could all do with some inspiring things in our lives. It's so huge it's hard to quantify, because it starts bringing in to question fundamental values. What do you think we, as a collection of smart and capable people, as a nation, as a civiliza…

Mars is not Earth II. If you want to argue for a backup planet, you should invest your resources into long term hibernation biology and then send the humans to an actual Earth II in another part of the galaxy. If you truly believe humans are at risk of extinction and need another planet, finding an actual acceptable planet to colonize is a better idea.

It's not clear we need a Earth II with our current level of technology. We can now make water, oxygen, fuel, metal, robots, and so on. An earth II would obviously be more ideal, but there isn't any available.

Interstellar travel is certainly a very very high risk concept all by itself. We don't even have the ability to send unmanned things to another star, nor do we have the ability to have humans hibernate for any period of time on earth, nor do we have a clear path to either of those technologies.

Moreover we don't know where any earth like planet is. Even if we nailed interstellar travel, chances are we'd arrive at another star system and discover that we didn't have the things we need to colonize the planet (do we need to live in domes? Or floating cities like on Venus? Deal with hot temperatures? Volcanoes? Is solar power available in high quantities or not? Assuming we are looking for somewhere with an atmosphere, how strong winds do we need to design for? What chemicals do we need to be equipped to filter? And so on and so forth).

Nor is extinction the only goal we are talking about here. We also benefit immensely from communication with more people. We can communicate with mars, but not people on other stars. We benefit immensely just from the inspiring achievement, which we don't really get if we (and our children) won't live to see the success or failure of the mission. And so on.

Successful establishment of a colony on mars is of course not without its own challenges. I think the risks I mentioned at the end of my previous post will mostly be about what it takes to establish a colony once we can get their, not the getting their. But the chance of success is obviously far higher with current/near future technology, and the value of success is greater.

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