Go back to the moon? Manned Mars mission??

Wow! If Bush and congress are serious about this, it's very cool.

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[RANT] Depends on how you look at it I guess. Why not just take 80 billion dollars or so and let the scientists at NASA and JPL decide what will bring the most science for the dollar? The ISS is a giant waste of money born out of politics and public relations grandstanding, not science. We've already established that there isn't any water ice on the moon so going back is in no way a stepping stone to Mars. What would be the point? Bush is just riding on the coattails of Spirit and trying to boost his poll numbers leading up to the election. Scientific goals should be set by scientists, not ignorant political ass hats. [/RANT]

Hah. When hell freezeth over.
The propulsion technology just isnt there anymore. We would have to rebuild a Saturn V or equivalent from scratch just to get to the moon. The god damn thing is so old they prolly dont even have the blueprints. And you know how NASA takes 20 years to get off their ass and fail...
Never mind that there is absolutely no point in going back to the moon. Mars, though, would be pretty spiffy. But we dont have the required propulsion science developed. There's no way in hell we could ever afford to put the insane amounts of food, water, and fuel required for propelling a spaceship to mars and getting it back safely, with the current chemical propulsion paradigm.

(Mega rant on)

Just how is Mr. Anti-Tax and Spend Republican Bush proposing to pay for all this? We already have one huge Medicaid bill out there, (which is guaranteed to leave our grandkids holding the bag). Now, he wants to dig the hole deeper with a slightly larger money pit. Again, this mama's boy proves he doesn't know the value of a dollar. You can't cut taxes, then throw truckloads of money we don't have on new stuff.

Don't get me wrong here. I would like to see a Mars manned landing before I croak, but with the current bugetary black hole the current administration dug deeper, it ain't gonna happen. At this point, it might be possible if an INTERNATIONAL effort went behind such a mission. Too bad Dubya pissed off our allies with his arrogance. If it does happen, it will NOT be on Bush's watch.

Presumably, we could use the moon to validate technologies that would be used for a mars mission, without the two year lag time. Plus, if there was a problem, we could get the survivors back quicker.

My $0.02

Flames to /dev/null

I think the jury is still out on that one. I seem to recall that there was evidence of possible water ice from comet debris on the surface of the Moon. I read this about a year ago. Haven't seen anything recently about the topic, so I could be wrong.

That would be awesome if it turns out to be the case. Don't get me wrong... I'm a giant science geek and I absolutely love this stuff, but I sometimes wonder if we'd already have men on mars if not for all the money wasted on nationalistic propaganda missions instead of real adequately funded science. Here's hoping the spirit rover finds something new and compelling.

Judging by the pictures that have been sent back NASA scientists have definitely discovered rocks on Mars and they are "cautiously optimistic" that they will soon be able to confirm the presence of sand.

NASA had good success with the Pathfinder mission and this one looks like it's going well. Last I heard the ESA is still waiting by the phone for their mission to call home. In the history of space exploration only the Soviet Union has been able to come close to matching NASA's "failures" and since they downed their orbital trailer home, sorry I mean Mir, the Russian space program consists of not paying their share of the ISS.

Can you tell I can't wait for the work week to be over? I promise I'll be in a better mood this weekend.

Actually the Soviet Union has had lots of accidents and failures in their space program that were kept hidden from the west and even their own people. Even now that the cold war is over, and much of the previous paranoia has subsided, we don't hear much about those events. Supposedly there was even a nuclear accident in the 50's that resulted in an atomic explosion much bigger than Hiroshima. Too lazy to see if any of this info can now be found on the internet or not. Maybe I will look when I wake up in the morning.

I'm thinking the plan is that it's the next administrations problem.

The firm I work for is doing some minor consulting work on the plans for the lunar base and it IS an international effort.
German and Canadian mining equipment manufacturers, a South African aquaculture engineering firm and Israeli companies involved with hydroponics, water treatment and pressure irrigation are just some of the firms involved in the planning. It is all based on very solid engineering work and we don't have to rebuild our rocket program since the Russians still have some very heavy duty lifters.

Exactly. We've already gone from record surplus to record deficit. Spend spend spend!

A manned Mars mission is actually no more practical than returning to the moon in the short run. But I am an optimist about the future of humanity. Space is the future. Even if we curb our current wastefullness and poor stewardship of Earth and it's resources, some day this planet will wear out. If we are still around millenia from now, we will need to spread out to the planets. The moon would be a stepping stone - even if there isn't water (the jury is still out on that one), there are resources that could be used for building and launching planetary exploration vehicles. Astronomic research, particularly radio telescopy, would be greatly enhanced by distance from bright and noisy Earth. If you are the paranoid type, a comet or asteroid is bound to impact the earth some day; a self-sufficient lunar colony would be nice to have for rebuilding.

I also think the ISS is a good thing. Even if it is mired in international politics, is scientific cooperation between major countries a bad thing? Smaller countries can sit back and watch the world go by, but the US is best served by fostering an international community. Science is a great avenue for doing this.

Some day in the distant future, we will probably end up terraforming Mars - engineered bacteria, diverting comets into it, whatever. That technology is currently beyond us, but we can do plenty of research now, before we change everything.

^^^^SPACE EXPLORATION^^^^
vvvvvPOLITICAL COMMENTvvvvv

As for political comment - not a Bush supporter, but being as objective as I can, a large part of the deficit is due to the slow economy, which was on it's way into recession when President Bush took office. Corporate accounting scandals, technology industry crash - all in progress when Pres. Bush took office. Lately the US has been experiencing the greatest economic growth in two decades - hope we can keep it up. Not the President - we. 9/11 also struck a blow to the economy that was not the fault of the President, regardless of who was holding the office. The following "war on terrorism", whether justified or not, is another factor. But this has nothing to do with space exploration.

BTW, IMHO it helps make your arguments seem more like reasoned opinions and less like vindictive off-the-cuff rants if you use terms of proper respect for the President and it's holder. I say President Bush, not "dubbya" and President Clinton, not "slick Willy".

I don't blame the economy on Bush. That house of cards was going to come down no matter who was in office. There are so many other good reasons to hate him. I think it's dangerous to elevate the office of president to some kind of artificial pedestal. Respect has to be earned and Bush has done anything but earn it from me. He's just a human being, no different than all of us. It's a mistake to assume someone else knows better than you do simply because he managed to end up in an important job. We pay his salary. He works for us. As far as I'm concerned that makes us his superiors, not the other way around.

As for a moon base, sounds extremely cool. I was a Space 1999 fan when I was a kid I just hope these plans are being made my the science community, not by a less than intellectual political hack worried about his legacy.

'Tax and spend' is morally evil, 'Borrow and spend' is morally good. Repeat until your eyes glaze over.

A good deal of the SL community wasn't born during the glory days of manned spaceflight. Every launch used to be an event, and it was all over the 7 or 8 tv stations the average American could watch.

I remember staying up kinda late to watch the Apollo 11 astronauts step off that LEM and into history. I was only 6 at the time, but it was really cool, and it happened on a weekend in July, so it wasn't a school night.

Back in those days, Americans were really proud of NASA. Space related stuff was everywhere. NASA had direction, and it looked as though manned spaceflight could only get better. IMHO, that changed with Skylab.

At first, Skylab was cool. America's first platform in space. Big things were gonna happen up there. Then, they launched it. That launch was far from perfect, but Skylab wasn't a total loss. A little NASA ingenuity got things back on track.

What followed was routine scientific stuff. Yay science, but it failed to excite most of us. In a word it was BORING. In the end, Skylab's most exciting moment was its reentry into Earth's atmosphere.

Next, we had the big Apollo/Soyuz mission. They docked, exchanged stuff, and hung out in each other's capsules. Wheeeee...

Now, we have the space shuttle. It was in development for years, and the design that finally made it to space came along around 1973. This time, the promise of regular manned flight seemed to be within NASA's grasp. Space was fun again... for 5 minutes.

Shuttle launches became non-events, and nobody paid attention, until Challenger blew up. Unfortunately, the cycle repeated right up until Columbia broke up over Texas.

I could go on about the ISS, but I'll get to the point. Back in the day, NASA had a blank check, and direction. Now, its practically a line item thing in an already strained federal budget. Also, for the last 30 years, manned spaceflight has been all about experiments in (insert mundane task) in a weightless environment.

I really would like to see at least a return to the moon in the next few years. Unfortunately, regardless of who wins in November, it ain't gonna happen.

Borrow and spend is only morally good if you dont have kids and don't care about the future.

Why hasn't anyone mentioned that it takes 3 years to get to mars?


3 years. 5 or so people.


HOMICIDE! YAY!

STARVATION! EVEN BETTER!

Not necessarily. Spirit got there in 6 months. It's just a matter of launching at the right time and taking advantage of special orbits.

Its not just being confined to small spaces for over a year. Keep in mind the other fun things that humans go through in weightlessness, like bone and muscle atrophy.

As for launch windows, I'd imagine it takes months for Mars and Earth to realign themselves for the shortest trip home. A trip to Mars is not for the weak.

Hmm.... well anyway, if I may steal a little estimate quote from another website:



They forgot to mention software engineers, and new technologies it will develop, but that's okay.

The 400 on defense is annual, so dividing the 40-80 by (say, 10 years) gives you a 4-8 billion dollar annual increase per year (less per year if you do it over 15 years). Also, current NASA allocations can (and I think will) be diverted, so it should be less of an increase than that. Right now NASA's budget is around 15 billion, I think. Seems like pennies almost, if my calculations are accurate?

Think about this:

In the Apollo missions, new computers had to be developed to fit inside the module. The technology developed to make computers like that were later used for the PCs! Thanks to new demands for space travel, we have nice, small computers instead of computers that take up an entire room. Our world is no longer the same! There's a good chance that something will be developed for future missions that will benefit us.

Yes, but don't forget about the inevitable cost overruns and bloated budgets. Government estimates are a joke.

Yeah, that'll probably happen.

I'm pretty objective so I'm not going to unconditionally defend NASA like some may unconditionally support so-and-so viewpoint--NASA *IS* a bloated government organization, yeah. But nevertheless, it's an investment in the future and I think it's worth it.

There's lots more applications and fields that space "investment" has yielded positive results in.



There's so much stuff coming out of this field that they have a yearly publication.
Space Spinoffs

Pretty cool actually...

There's actually a pretty interesting book, "The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin, which details a plan in which we could build, today, a permanent settlement on Mars for a (relatively) small amount of money.