36 ms·

NASA: We're sending humans to Mars

1424 points by didgeoridoo 12y ago

stealthlogic 12y ago
Elon will beat you NASA.
MrZongle2 12y ago
Not in my lifetime. Somebody may get humans to Mars -- an effort that I'm all in favor of -- but given that NASA is kept on a short financial leash by politicians more interested in dumping money into their constituent areas than funding a long-term space policy, the odds that the United States government will be behind the effort are slim at this point.
- Mobiu5 12y ago
  NASA's budget is the highest of all government run space agencies and is three times that of Russia, which is number two.
  - Zelphyr 12y ago
    Isn't that kind-of like saying "My water is WAY cleaner than yours!" when we both live in a swamp? My point being, sure, we spend more than the other guy on space but compared to just about everything else we spend pitifully little on it.
    - Mobiu5 12y ago
      Perhaps, but I wouldn't underestimate them! They have a lot of ground-breaking projects happening even though you don't see them in the media very often. They do a lot with what they get.
  - ahoy 12y ago
    So your point is that russia's space program and the ESA (etc) are also underfunded then, yes?
    - csallen 12y ago
      No, Mobiu5 is countering MrZongle2's point that a non-NASA entities are likely to beat NASA to Mars. I happen to disagree with his analysis, however, because he's not taking non-government entities like SpaceX into account.
      - mikeash 12y ago
        I don't see him making any reference to non-NASA entities at all. All he said is that a trip to Mars made by somebody, anybody, might happen someday, but the odds of sufficient financial support for this attempt are poor.
        csallen 12y ago
        > Somebody may get humans to Mars ... [but] the odds that the United States government will be behind the effort are slim at this point. i.e. non-NASA entities have a better chance than NASA
        mikeash 12y ago
        Doesn't follow. Edit: I see he has other replies that clarify that this is exactly what he's thinking. "I'm fairly confident that I'll see humans on Mars before I die. I just don't believe NASA will be behind the effort." I still maintain that this is not indicated in the original comment, but that starts to become unimportant.
      - Mobiu5 12y ago
        I was really just trying to point out that he was trivializing NASA. Maybe a private entity will beat them there, maybe not. But they're clearly far from being an incapable organization and still achieve plenty of cutting edge, "world-first" scientific data gathering, engineering research, etc.. As a side note. I'm willing to bet they will be the first (with collaboration between the other space agencies as they often do). Edit: Plus, I don't know of any other deep space crew carrier that currently exists. It sounds to me like they have a head start since they already have one in their possession, albeit untested.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - molmalo 12y ago
    Yes, but you have to consider the difference in costs...
- Lambdanaut 12y ago
  NASA pessimism is one of the reasons the politicians have little incentive to change their minds.
  - MrZongle2 12y ago
    Pessimism has little to do with the actions of politicians. If Senators and Congressmen believe that a $5B mission to study lunar cheese via sub-orbital flight would drive that money into their constituents' areas, they'll support it. It has nothing to do with what the public at large thinks about NASA; it's merely a bullet point they can trot out at the next election: see, through my work in Congress I brought jobs to your area, re-elect me. And THAT is why I doubt NASA can pull this off, because it's clowns like that who control the purse-strings. It's why we junked Apollo capsules for the Shuttle. It's why we have an Orion capsule in development now to replace the Shuttle. It's why the target for HSF went from the Moon to low Earth orbit, languished there for decades, paused briefly on the absurd notion of an asteroid interception mission as being viable, and is now back at Mars. My pessimism in NASA's manned program is well-founded. They have the ideas and the know-how, but their plans are at the mercy of self-serving, science-ignorant politicians.
    - bdamm 12y ago
      At this point we have corporations that can fund space flight. Do we really need governments funding a trip to mars? I think it isn't worth it. Leave it up to those who want to spend their own money. The government should be funding climate science, geo-engineering research, studying how to avoid war, and continuing to fund research into more powerful and cost effective propulsion and energy systems that we can use in space and here on earth. I think NASA shouldn't send a manned mission to mars.
      - rgawdzik 12y ago
        > "studying how to avoid war" I'm sure it isn't that straightforward.... Say you diverted NASAs 18.4 billion yearly budget. What can you do with 18.4 billion dollars? To give you contrast of how little that is relative to other American financial concerns, the GM bailout of 2008 was 51 billion. Why not have Mars missions if the US can give car companies tens of billions?
- dllthomas 12y ago
  Research, development, and construction will all take place in, y'know, areas.
- free2rhyme214 12y ago
  SpaceX is more likely to get humans to Mars than NASA.
  - ceejayoz 12y ago
    If SpaceX's approach shows promise I'd expect NASA's program to evolve to integrate it somewhat. SpaceX might become the launch vehicle for the unmanned portions, for example.
    - daphreak 12y ago
      SpaceX's approach is to reuse well understood technology but do it mostly in house instead of farming everything out. The are innovating on process and cost but nothing else (at the moment). Those are two areas where NASA certainly could learn something.
      - ceejayoz 12y ago
        I really don't think you can claim they're not innovating when they've already propulsively test-landed (in the sea, but successfully) two Falcon first stages.
        daphreak 12y ago
        They've done those landings (as tests) on land with the Grasshopper as well. The videos are super cool. NASA has propulsively landed many things (on other planets!). The fundamentals have been around for a while. What I'm trying to get at is that SpaceX is currently not the go to place for rocket science. I do think they are making mark in rocket building science which is exactly what we pay them to do.
  - valarauca1 12y ago
    NASA's annual revenue is 73% SpaceX's market cap. But lets pretend that doesn't matter. Musk makes a solid ~1.1 billion a year off of various investments, and has ~11.7 billion in assets. Even if he dumped all that in SpaceX, you'd sill be ~6billion short of NASA's budget. Implying those assests could be quickly liquidated. Even if we assume SpaceX has more/better talent then NASA. Your still working with at least an order of magnitude lower budget. Which is massive, especially when we are talking about the difference between $1bil/yr and $10 billion/yr
- codyb 12y ago
  Well how old are you now? It's an interesting statement because technological advancements are virtually assured to keep increasing the average lifespan (especially in industrialized and wealthy countries, excuse the recent dip due to obesity) and they're also virtually assured to keep making space travel a more viable reality. Combine that with increased global cooperation (possibly deteriorating right now) and increased private competition and I think it's feasible. I'm 24. I have a feeling I'll more than certainly see humans on Mars barring any unfortunate calamity to myself. I've also been saying I'd live until I was three or four hundred years old since I was a ten years old. So call me an optimist in a variety of ways. Everything I've said is totally from a layman's perspective and I truly have not given the question much thought besides an initial excitement at the prospect upon reading this headline and checking out the news.
  - MrZongle2 12y ago
    My skepticism isn't based so much off of my age (I'm in my 40s) but rather NASA's track record when it comes to manned spaceflight. I'm fairly confident that I'll see humans on Mars before I die. I just don't believe NASA will be behind the effort.
    - codyb 12y ago
      Hmm, I'm on the other end actually. I think that for humans to go to Mars it will have to eschew a profit motive, which companies like SpaceX simply can't do. As NASA is the best funded space agency for the richest and most technologically advanced nation on Earth, I'll believe the odds are stacked in their favor that they'll be behind the first astronauts there. Of course, if our politicians don't stop bumbling around we may very soon not be the most advanced nation on Earth which would be unfortunate. When it was a race, NASA did good! Hopefully other countries will join in and spur us on. Even Republicans might be able to get around to the idea of showing off American exceptionalism (I think it's bullshit, American exceptionalism has been predicated off a very rich country investing lots of money into research. But call it what you will, it is what it is.).
scj 12y ago
There are two possible scenarios where I'll get my hopes up that humans are going to Mars: 1. It is so close that it is obvious. A heavy lift human-rated rocket is in service. It is demonstrated that humans can live long duration without the radiation shielding of the Earth. The capsule is human rated (planned to happen in 2021). A robotic landing of the vehicle on Mars is done (a lot of Mars probes have failed on this step). That humans are selected / training. This goal is set for the 2030s, so it fails this criteria. 2. They announce a huge amount of funding to be spent within a few years. The pages I've read thus far don't suggest what funding levels are. I'll happily listen to what they say, but I'm still skeptical. EDIT: Expanded the conditions for point 1.
- mikeash 12y ago
  #2 is out of their control. I'd speculate that at least part of the purpose of this announcement is to shame Congress into ensuring sufficient funding.
  - scj 12y ago
    Shaming congress doesn't appear to be effective at the moment. Bush Sr. talked about going to Mars with SEI. Bush Jr. talked about it after Columbia. Skylab (the space station in the 70s) was supposed to teach us about long duration spaceflight in order to go to Mars (and we've been parked in LEO ever since). I want to believe... And I like Zubrin's plan to go to Mars. As it could work with an incrementalist approach, and thus is pragmatic (and sounds like what they are doing). But the problem is that there is a long time before the work on the incrementalist dream starts and landing on Mars. Who knows what will happen to funding in the mean time.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      It doesn't, but what other choice do they have? If you only have one button to press, you might as well keep pressing it. Maybe it'll work one of these times.
      - 12y ago
azdle 12y ago
Looks like the briefing already happened. Does anyone know if a recorded version is available anywhere yet?
- drdeadringer 12y ago
  It's up on YouTube now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU
Marcus316 12y ago
I missed the live briefing ... is there a replay somewhere that I can watch?
- drdeadringer 12y ago
  Found it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU
jonnycowboy 12y ago
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/01/nasa-orion-spacecraft-human-mars-mission http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/01/nasa-orion-sp... It seems they're just hyping this Thursday's mission. That said, I don't know anybody could withstand a one year trip in a capsule the size of Orion...
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  > That said, I don't know anybody could withstand a one year trip in a capsule the size of Orion... It's possible that they'd use something like Bigelow's inflatable module for extra living space during the trip. A year in Orion without additional space and with two roommates sounds like Hell.
- scrumper 12y ago
  I read some of the background material about Orion. The transfer mission will include much larger structures for crew habitation. Orion is there as the return-to-Earth vehicle which also provides something they call 'abort anywhere' - the ability to pull the plug on the entire mission at any point during the flight to Mars.
skriticos2 12y ago
Sometime in the past fifty years NASA became paralyzed not by budget cuts, but by political in-fighting, fractured organizational structure and lots and lots of red tape. And then there is all that pork that goes around with the entrenched contractors. The tale of the last Mars program that NASA put together is a great example of this. They got handed a technically sound plan to get there in reasonable time with reasonable resources. Then every org-unit in NASA wanted to add their own part to stay relevant and it got so bloated both technically and financially that it had to be put to rest. So unless they convince me that they managed to get their internal structural problems under control, I don't think they get anytime to Mars within this century. And certainly not before the private sector does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program p.s.: There is a free movie on YouTube telling the tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcTZvNLL0-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcTZvNLL0-w
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  I'm definitely expecting the private sector to do it at least a decade before NASA does it.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    I'm curious why people think it will happen in the private sector first. Is there some applied science, resource, tourism, or other value to be had? We haven't seen a private sector moon landing yet (it's been 50 years since NASA did it) simply because there isn't much market value in putting a person on the moon. So why Mars?
    - cschmidt 12y ago
      I suppose because Elon Musk wants to go there, and he seems good at getting stuff done.
      - 14113 12y ago
        This comment really sums up the cult of personality that's grown up around Musk.
fredsted 12y ago
What an amazing time to be alive.
induscreep 12y ago
What exactly is the need to send humans to Mars? Why not robots? Is it worth risking a human's life for science, when a robot can do an equally good job?
- danbruc 12y ago
  Because we can. Climbing to the top of a mountain is also dangerous and usually of no practical value.
- gfodor 12y ago
  existence proof. a necessary step toward multiplanetary human civilization.
- cryptoz 12y ago
  > What exactly is the need to send humans to Mars? Lots of reasons, some below. Primarily, the reason to send humans is because we have to in order to ensure the continued survival of (known) life in the universe. Sending a few people to Mars will be the first steps in becoming a multi-planetary civilization, which will reduce our dependency on a single-point-of-failure for all known life. > Why not robots? You ask as if we haven't been sending robots to Mars for the last 3-4 decades. (Edit: We should absolutely send robots. We should send way more robots than people. But we should still send people.) > Is it worth risking a human's life for science, when a robot can do an equally good job? Not sure if trolling. Humans have collectively agreed that it's worth 10,000+ annual deaths in the USA in exchange for the convenience of cars. So yes, 1-5 human lives on Mars is worth the science that they'd get done. Also...there are no robot scientists yet. Maybe there will be in the future, but we can't bank on that and allocate budgets to imaginary robotic scientists that are better than humans. I've been trolled haven't I?
  - taylorwc 12y ago
    I agree with you on these points, but think the vehicle deaths makes for a poor comparison since we're not really advancing science in the same way. I'm guessing that NASA would have its pick of qualified volunteers for a manned Mars mission because of the science involved; people who would willingly risk their lives.
cryoshon 12y ago
We have to wait until the mid 2030s (20 years!) to put humans on Mars via the government's program? I fear that this goal is not nearly ambitious enough. Set a deadline far away, and the time you "need" to spend preparing to meet that deadline will increase in order to fill the amount of time you have.
- fargolime 12y ago
  Isn't it prudent to spread out the $1 trillion cost over a couple decades? After all, we have to borrow every dime of that from future taxpayers. I'm including cost overruns. Or are you willing to pay an extra $10K a year in taxes to get to Mars sooner?
  - istorical 12y ago
    The average taxpayer pays NASA $55 per year.
    - ArtDev 12y ago
      I pay less for my Science Museum membership. I would love to see NASA fixed (firstly) and fully funded (once its fixed).
      - fargolime 12y ago
        Well you haven't paid a dime in NASA funding yet. All funding to date has been borrowed from people younger than you or not yet born. Presumably the gov't will borrow many times more to get to Mars, than it has for any previous mission.
    - fargolime 12y ago
      You think that will pay for a human expedition to Mars and back?
    - fargolime 12y ago
      If the US wasn't $17 trillion in debt, I could agree. Pretty sure all NASA funding to date fits into that debt amount. Since it's a "nice to have", I'd say the average taxpayer has never paid anything to NASA, not even interest on debt since we borrow to pay that.
fenollp 12y ago
So uh, Mars is smaller than Earth now?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- smaps 12y ago
  Not sure if serious...
- thangalin 12y ago
  Relative sizes of planets and stars: http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/gallery/star-sizes/ http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/gallery/star-sizes/
bryanh 12y ago
Call me cynical, but I feel like NASA won't end up shuttling humans to Mars. Instead, NASA will more likely be shuttling government money between various contractors before having the program cancelled in the far-future... Politics + exploration for exploration's sake always seems at odds.
- api 12y ago
  Perhaps, but I feel like NASA is at a point where if they don't "ship" something big they're going to fade into the night. Robotic space exploration is awesome, but it doesn't capture the human imagination the way a human mission does. I also think -- and the academic types be damned -- that there is a difference between sending a robot and actually going somewhere. In the long term I think Mars will be settled by humans. Sending humans to land there for a bit is a first step, a fact-finding mission.
  - jerf 12y ago
    "if they don't "ship" something big they're going to fade into the night." If that is true, they have already lost. Doing "something big" for the primary purpose of "avoiding fading into the night" is doomed to failure. (Again, per the other comments.) Take all that money and give it to Elon Musk and we'd probably get further. And I mean, just give it. Free and clear. To spend on hookers and blow if he wants to. We'd still probably get more out of it as a species. He doesn't want to ensure the continued existence of a big bureaucracy... he wants to get to Mars. I'm sure there are people within NASA that want to get to Mars... but are they the ones in charge?
    - rinon 12y ago
      There's a way to do this... Recruit Musk as the head of NASA. That would be interesting, to say the least...
      - api 12y ago
        I doubt he'd take the job.
wpankey 12y ago
Sure! Let's destroy another planet with our insatiable resource seeking. Anyone know of any sci-fi tomes where humans play the role of an unstoppable galactic virus? If so, whoever/whomever wrote it may be onto something :(
- diminoten 12y ago
  What exactly does "destroy another planet" mean, in this context?
  - wpankey 12y ago
    Sorry, misread the reply. Mars, if found to possess materials we deem valuable, will be mined mercilessly.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      What's wrong with that?
    - jerf 12y ago
      So what? This is not something to answer snappily. It's a question that can stand up to some serious scrutiny. We are used to a default "leave it alone" argument because everywhere we can currently get to is a rich, diverse, vibrant ecosystem, or within easy reach of one. Does our default "be careful" attitude apply where that is not true? (And don't just dodge out with "Well, what if there's life on Mars?" Best evidence right now is still "no". Let's stick to best evidence for the moment. Failing that, there's certainly other places where there is no life, like the Moon. Who cares what we do to the Moon?)
      - EthanHeilman 12y ago
        Who decides what should be preserved and why? If the Grand Canyon contained no life, would it be ethical to strip mine it? Should we preserve the Mars for future generations (in terms of science, natural beauty, ethics or economics/resources)? In doing that are we harming people that could be helped today by those resources? If you find a beautiful rock in the woods is it wrong/amoral to smash it? What about fossils? Is it ethical to burn art for heat? These are important questions to ask and the answers are non-trivial.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
desireco42 12y ago
This is like Kickstarter campaign. I don't believe until I see some serious things happening. I have more fate in SpaceX or Chinese to put man on Mars then NASA.
- MrZongle2 12y ago
  Quite right. The Chinese are motivated for nationalistic and propaganda purposes, just like the United States was in the 60s. They'll eventually get to Mars. Elon Musk is personally motivated, and appears to be able to make the construction and launch of space vehicles commercially viable. If SpaceX doesn't get to Mars, it will at the very least push the commercial space industry to the point where a competitor can. NASA? They're beholden to a group of self-serving fools on Capitol Hill and the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (which changes every 4-8 years). They're subject to the whims of politicians, which can make the necessary long-term planning and execution of such an endeavor nigh impossible.
- giarc 12y ago
  What about India? Are they considering any mission to Mars?
  - seanflyon 12y ago
    They have launched a Mars orbiter. It's an amazingly well done and cost effective mission, but it's not on the same scale we are talking about here. Hopefully they will expand their program.
- efuquen 12y ago
  I guarantee you if China or India were to make strides towards a serious Mars mission (i.e. they had a Moon landing) we would have another space race with the US involved. It's exactly what happened when the USSR sparked the first space race. Whether we would win, who knows, but there is still plenty of expertise and know how in about sending humans into space in the US ... I really don't understand all the absolute trust in SpaceX, in terms of human exploration they have proved nothing thus far. Sending cargo to the ISS is a different thing than sending humans. Once they pull that off we can start talking about great strides they are making in human space exploration. Otherwise it's still a risky venture that hasn't proven anything yet, the only reason to have so much faith in them is because you're over zealously infatuated with Elon Musk. Not to downplay any of his obvious success, but I still believe in seeing results in the same way you're waiting to see if NASA is going to do some "serious things". Let's hold people to same standards, shall we?
frakturfreund 12y ago
The NASA went to the moon because the russians wanted to do it. Today's space exploration is shaped by cooperation, but sometimes a little bit of competition is needed to achive great thinks. This is why i'm really hoping for the chinese to announce a manned mission to mars. It's the red planet afterall ;), and this could be a modern sputnik shock for the NASA.
- drjesusphd 12y ago
  Sputnik had military implications. Going to Mars doesn't.
  - frakturfreund 12y ago
    That’s a valid point. But Sputnik had also a component of harmed pride (›most advanced nation‹); at least this should be reproducible.
ifdefdebug 12y ago
There's something I always asked myself about Mars expedition: well I kind of believe that it's possible to put somebody down on Mars within the next few decades. But... what about coming back to earth? Escape velocity is about > 5 km/s. Wouldn't you need to build a launch site having at least half of the power of our launch sites down here on Earth? How are they going to do that anytime near in the future? So is it going to be a on-way trip? And if so, are they going to maintain a supply chain from Earth to Mars for the whole of the life time of those explorers? Water, air, food...
- mmanfrin 12y ago
  I imagine water can be got from Mars (as there is Ice on Mars), and from that plants can grow, which will produce both air and food.
  - crpatino 12y ago
    That would be a bummer for those personally involved wouldn't it? From astronaut to subsistence farmer. At least somebody would make lots of money from the reality TV show that ensued.
    - lucaspiller 12y ago
      There's not much you can spend it on there. I'm guessing Amazon shipping fees would be pretty high too.
  - Amezarak 12y ago
    > I imagine water can be got from Mars (as there is Ice on Mars), and from that plants can grow, which will produce both air and food. I am doubtful there is enough air on Mars to sustain any Earth vegetation. The mean surface pressure on Mars is 0.6% that of Earth. Mars has virtually no atmosphere.
- MattHeard 12y ago
  Has there been any research into remotely building launch sites?
kendallpark 12y ago
We just need to pick another country to race with. "Hey China! Bet we'll get to Mars faster than you!" Then we'll have Mars 2020.
- saraid216 12y ago
  You ask the average American whether or not they'd pitch in to beat China to Mars and they'd say no. We don't have the nationalism to make that work anymore.
  - rinon 12y ago
    I'm not so sure on this... Competition is still a strong motivator, even if nationalism is waning.
    - saraid216 12y ago
      The key to why the space race worked is competition between nations. It's because the fallout from World War 2 was a strong sense of national identity. The same thing that made McCarthyism work is what made the space race work. We don't have that anymore. It was probably a worthwhile trade: there are other vectors we can get technological advance from: but if Obama made a speech about beating China to Mars tomorrow as a proof of how America is a great nation, the Republicans would assemble on the dot to burn him at the stake for it. There's still a sense of national identity, such as can be seen in the Olympics, but it's barely an echo of what it was 50 years ago. Before we lost in Vietnam. Before the Civil War was re-enacted to gain universal suffrage. Before Reaganomics. Before Cuba. Before Bosnia. Before 9/11 and Iraq. Before Snowden. Before Ferguson.
- krapp 12y ago
  It's not the same. The Soviets inspired a level of cultural disgust and existential terror in the US that China just can't match. We not only wanted to discredit communism by winning the space race, but make sure they couldn't glass us from orbit the first chance they got.
ArtDev 12y ago
It about time!
kylebrown 12y ago
What are the physics behind the 20mb/s bandwidth limit over radio? He said more than that isn't "feasible", because of power requirements or why?
- etimberg 12y ago
  The information bandwidth in bytes/s is limited by the SNR and the bandwidth (in Hz) of the radio channel. The atmospheric "window" is only so large. At the same time, antenna's can only be so focused and transmit power is only so high. If you're interested in reading more about this look up "link budgets."
dandrews 12y ago
"I have no desire to do a Mars landing on our own," Bolden said (two years ago). http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2012-08-01/NASA-mars-rover/56656270/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2012... I've more faith in Musk than in Bolden. "[going to Mars has] always been a goal of SpaceX. We're hoping to develop the technology to do that in probably 12 to 15 years." http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801-column.html http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120...
ArtDev 12y ago
Cool, space launch system (SLS) is a great start! https://twitter.com/NASA/status/539814651404754944 https://twitter.com/NASA/status/539814651404754944
- antubbs 12y ago
  It's a launch platform without clear future missions or funding. After the surplus RS-25 engines from the shuttle program are used (designed to be re-usable, they are heavy and expensive and will be destroyed by the launches) it's not clear what will power the launch vehicle. It's a very expensive big rocket with an unclear future in both engineering and political terms.
hackuser 12y ago
The essential issue for Mars, as well as for most other issues, is the Republican Party's refusal to fund government programs. Until they change or are voted out of office, all planning and discussion are hot air.
- avar 12y ago
  That's not the issue at all. If you look at the historical budget of NASA[1] it has a very low correlation with Republican presidents[2]. The main issue is that they get a lot of misdirected funding that's mainly allocated as a function of short-term political interests, and that's an entirely bipartisan issue in the United States. 1. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/NASA-Budget-Federal.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/NASA-Budg... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_Unite...
  - hackuser 12y ago
    I meant now, not historically.
- danielweber 12y ago
  Neither party really cares. There has been one pro-space guy running for office in the past 15 years.
  - vtbassmatt 12y ago
    Unless you count goodspaceguy here in Seattle. http://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/candidatesonballot/pamphlet/pamphlet.aspx?cid=45691&listtype=PRIMARY&eid=1256#c20293 http://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/candidatesonballot/pa... /s
    - spb 12y ago
      Of course Mike Nelson wants to go to space. He misses his old spaceship, where he had to watch those bad movies with his robot pals. (Oh yeah, I just remembered he dropped the "Mike Nelson" part of his name years ago. Too bad.)
dyeje 12y ago
Alot of cynicism in the comments on this, so I just wanted to say I am excited and I believe in NASA.
- radioact1ve 12y ago
  Seeing as I was in my own world today, I just heard about this news. I was(still am) ecstatic and excited by the news just to be bummed down by the comments. I'm with you on this.
stevebot 12y ago
Fuck the cynicism. The fact that NASA finally has its head turned around to at least announce is indicative to me of a cultural, maybe generational shift towards giving a shit about space travel. Who cares who does it first, at least this is a trend in the right direction.
- danielweber 12y ago
  NASA has "announced" Mars timelines 20 years in the future many times before.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    Exactly. There's not even anything you could reasonably call a timeline here, either. There's almost literally nothing to it.
  - stevebot 12y ago
    I have never seen their announcements in the past. Between SpaceX, the global international space travel movement, and hey even Interstellar, there is a lot more buzz around space travel. Plus, we have landed a rover on mars, plus people have landed a rover on a comet. NASA has had a hand in space advancement. I don't give a shit if they have been wrong in the past, the growing hype around space travel is exciting, and I refuse to be a buzzkill about it.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      If you are citing Interstellar as a reason to believe this, I don't know how to help you. For anyone else: Obama in 2010: to Mars by the mid-2030's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_Barack_Obam... Bush in 2005: to the Moon by 2020, to Mars soon after 2030 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program NASA 1998: DRM 3.0 calls for first launch to Mars in 2011, human crew in 2014. http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19980218778.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1998021... Bush in 1989: 90-day report, which was a joke, but also 30 years to spend $300 billion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Exploration_Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Exploration_Initiative
return0 12y ago
Huge PR move, but i dont think it's gonna work. Do people really need to "send a human" to mars? To prove what to whom (the soviets are no more). It's not like we haven't already been there and taken our pictures. Or that we expect any surprises from this mission. How about we make a plan to terraform Mars? Or to work on more mysterious things like genomes, like the brain etc? Sending a human to mars is a PR move, maybe typical of our times, but not useful.
mp99e99 12y ago
Wow! This is amazing, glad to be alive to see this!
shirro 12y ago
Awaiting announcement of Commercial Crew to Mars program.
vvpan 12y ago
I honestly don't see the point of doing this. The scientific bounty from going to the moon was tiny comparing to the amount of resource put into it. I think poet Gil-Scott Heron does a great job deconstructing the space-exploration efforts in "Whitey on the Moon". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  What? This is nonsense. We have an social and industrial complex that would not exist if not for the space program. This internet. Your cell phone. The attempt to do great exploration begets the technology, which changes the world. This has been true since sailing ship days.
  - stevewilhelm 12y ago
    I would guess if the capital and talent marshaled to send a man the the moon had been tasked to build a global mobile communications network we would now have a better Internet and would have had cell phones a decade earlier.
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Yes in a Pollyanna ideal world you could choose what worked in hindsight. But we can't know until we try, what we will discover.
      - Retra 12y ago
        AI, underground cities, high-speed rail systems, package delivery systems, renewable energy, genetic construction, nanotechnology, infrastructure optimization, recycling, natural language, experimental schools, community integration projects, ... There are plenty of great projects to work on that will provide valuable insights if they fail, and great benefit if they succeed.
        12y ago
smegel 12y ago
Personally I would much, MUCH rather see this money spent on further exploration of other planets and their moons. Imagine having a rover on one of the moons of Jupiter. To me Mars is just not that interesting.
chrischen 12y ago
I feel like the significance of humans going to Mars is largely attributed to movies and pop culture. It's the Paris Hilton of the astronomical world. I don't want to be labeled a cynic, but do the benefits of sending humans to Mars outweigh the costs?
- sueders101 12y ago
  >I feel like the significance of humans going to Mars is largely attributed to movies and pop culture. It's the Paris Hilton of the astronomical world. I think that may be conflating cause and effect. I'd argue a manned trip to Mars is a focus of pop culture because it resonates strongly with so many. The drive to explore has always been etched into a portion of humanity. For many(myself included) Mars stands as the currently realistic pinnacle of exploration for humanity. Along with accessibility of understanding the accomplishment you end up with our current Martian fascination. >I don't want to be labeled a cynic, but do the benefits of sending humans to Mars outweigh the costs? With anything as expensive and complex as a manned mission to mars, we honestly can never know until we try. It's impossible to predict what fruits, if any, it would bear for humanity. That's the nature of exploration and discovery. For all we know there's some infeasible to overcome barrier that makes the task of manned travel to Mars impossible. Due to the intractable nature of quantifying the value of manned Mars missions I think the reasoning for doing so falls to a far more base human condition than a positive cost benefit analysis. On a personal level the desire for continued human exploration is hard to explain to those who don't possess it. There's an intensely disquieting internal sensation that comes with feeling stagnation at the bounds of human capability. It's not dissimilar to the urge for preservation of the Earth for future generations, or to rid the world of undue suffering. These drives, like exploration, aren't built on entirely pragmatic foundations. They can and do often fail to justify themselves on purely practical terms. Just for clarity, my response isn't made with the purpose of persuasion. It's to help convey my entirely subjective view of things and perhaps illuminate the thinking behind some proponents for space exploration.
  - chrischen 12y ago
    > I think that may be conflating cause and effect. I'd argue a manned trip to Mars is a focus of pop culture because it resonates strongly with so many. Game of Thrones, Star Wars, etc, also resonate with society. Things in those movies aren't necessarily worthy of exploring. Conversely, cancer research isn't represented well in pop culture... but that doesn't mean it doesn't warrant pursuit.
chatmasta 12y ago
All this means to me is that somebody in the NASA PR department is leading a push to appear competitive with private companies. I imagine very little has changed operationally in the past few months at NASA. This announcement is only meant to conform to the ebb-and-flow of media, a battlefront where private companies have been kicking NASA's ass lately. (Maybe NASA PR wants to capitalize on recent virgin crash, chink-in-armor, lol). This push is great but it's definitely a case of "fake it till you make it" from NASA vs the private companies, since they're all competing for the same funding. Honestly, I love it. It's great to see competition in the space race again. This time instead of nation states duking it out in orbit, it's private sector vs host nation state. It's great. Hopefully this leads to huge space innovations in the next decade, and we actually do send humans to Mars. Go space yay. ~= >===|=>
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
raquo 12y ago
What is this, a positive side effect of Cold War II? I'm sort of joking, but not really.
sbussard 12y ago
If you got the politics out of NASA they could do just about anything. I've worked at a couple different places in NASA and the talent varies from place to place. It's the politics that ruin everything.
Eleutheria 12y ago
Bush senior said so in 1989. Bush junior said so in 2004. Obama now says so ten years later. I'll wait for hillary to send us to mars in 2050, thanks, women have more balls.
- liquidise 12y ago
  and at the ripe age of 103 no less...
  - spb 12y ago
    We're all going to be immortal heads in glass jars by that point.
  - Eleutheria 12y ago
    No no she will promise it twenty years earlier, just like everyone else. She'll be 80 or something and everyone would have forgotten by then.
givan 12y ago
Maybe the whole NASA budget should be used for researching a better propulsion engine first, with the current technology going to mars is extremely expensive and inefficient, we are stuck with chemical propelled rockets since ww2, with a breakthrough in this area we could achieve so much more, we need to focus our resources better.
GhostCursor 12y ago
You don't have any radiation shielding. Why not try surviving under the ocean first? Fail Squad NASA.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  "If you recruited the Mars crew out of smokers and sent them to Mars without their tobacco you would be reducing their chance of getting cancer." - Dr. Robert Zubrin
ajarmst 12y ago
Yeah, I believed you guys when you told me that in early 70s. I stopped believing after the fourth or fifth time you gave up. Or maybe when it was when you stopped being able to even put people in LEO. Humans may one day go to Mars, but they won't be wearing NASA logos. Unless it's ironically.
spiritplumber 12y ago
I've done a bit of (very marginal) work for NASA, and the problem they have is that it takes 2 weeks and 5 signatures to get $200 worth of parts approved... while everyone is always in a hurry regardless. Just give your engineers $300 a month for miscellanea, it'll be faster and cheaper. I can see why being a federal agency they have to be spotlessly above-board when it comes to who does what with money, but there's a limit to that. What ended up happening with my projects (PhoneSat and a couple other things) is that I was there part time, and just bought parts on my own dime, then I sent a global itemized bill for everything. It took six months but they did pay me back.
hristov 12y ago
This is just stupid. What is the point? This will be extremely expensive, it will gut a lot of useful science programs. Send robots! They are thousands of times cheaper and they get the job done. And when they die it is not a national tragedy. Robots have been doing an excellent job of planetary exploration over the past 20 years or so. There is no reason to stop this. And this will mostly stop if nasa decides to seriously pursue a human mars mission, because such a mission will soak up most NASA resources. The only reason to send humans is to satisfy the science fiction fantasies of a bunch of stupid fan boys. And everyone knows that these fantasies can just as easily be satisfied by a cheesy movie or TV show. Now I have to emphasize the word stupid, in "stupid science fiction fanboys." If you were a smart science fiction fanboy or girl you would know that continued robotic exploration will make the science fiction fantasy of mars tourism much closer than a human mission. If we keep sending robotic missions we can study the mars soil and perhaps move on to having the robots build stuff on mars. If the robots can build a base with solar based energy gathering, oxygen generation and even perhaps rocket fuel generation, then mars travel may become a regular if expensive thing. Otherwise we will have a single mission that with great fan fare sends one or two people to stomp around on mars for an hour or two and quickly return. (Or even worse, perhaps die there). After the mission the whole thing will be scrapped and only the newspaper clippings and tv documentaries will remain. This is what happened with Apolo. It was great but it did not really lead anywhere in terms of moon exploration.
- finkin1 12y ago
  I don't think there's anything wrong with your perspective, but what do you think about the potential in-direct value that could come from a mission like this? Such as inspiring young people to pursue STEM, or the general population getting behind and funding other exploratory missions involving robots? You say that most NASA resources will be soaked up. That's possible, but what do you think about the potential in-direct benefits of getting the human race excited about space exploration?
  - hristov 12y ago
    This is a very very expensive way to do advertising. You will be able to do a lot more advertising to shape people's perceptions with just a small portion of the costs. Furthermore, government space exploration is essentially a business of elites. It is only a few scientists and engineers that are involved with the space program. It is only a couple of the most elite astronauts that will get to actually fly the rockets. The vast majority of americans will have to be inspired by watching it all on tv. This all worked out in the 60s with Apolo, but the world is changing and America is changing. Americans are watching less and less TV and are more willing to do things. If you want to inspire people to go into STEM, it will probably be better to spend money on new and interesting educational programs to get kids interested in science and engineering. Furthermore, spending money on adult education programs would probably also help.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Is there any more substantive statement than this Tweet?
agrona 12y ago
The intriguing point to me that I haven't seen addressed on any reporting of the announcement is this: Is the plan to put humans on the surface and then bring them back home? How do they intend to land and get back off of the planet? (Forgive me if they addressed this in the video; I haven't had time to watch it yet.)
tsotha 12y ago
I'll believe it when I see it. This must be about the 20th such announcement from NASA, and the other 19 have sunk into the bureaucratic morass without a trace. I see no reason to think this time is different, particularly in light of the mountain of unfunded liabilities that are going to keep budgets tight for decades.
chrissyb 12y ago
This is great but we should really colonize the moon first. It allows us to get all the necessary systems in place in a test environment. Earth is only 3 days away from the moon rather than 9 months to Mars. It also makes sense to work on the moon first so we can use it to leap frog to mars rather than sending a shuttle through earths atmosphere.
- dj2stein9 12y ago
  > leap frog to mars rather than sending a shuttle through earths atmosphere. But you still have to get the human through Earth's atmosphere and out of orbit anyways. Once you're out of Earth's orbit you might as well coast all the way to Mars because landing on the Moon doesn't gain you anything.
  - chrissyb 12y ago
    I suppose that is true, is it to early to talk space elevators? ;)
jobposter1234 12y ago
So many cynical comments in here. I can't disagree with the substance, because the past track record has been mixed, and because of the issues with NASA's political structure have been well documented. I also can't disagree with the practicalists that suggest the money would be better spent elsewhere. However, one thing I can't get past: I don't think humanity will ever escape self interested nationalism without space exploration. I have zero hope for the long term survival of our species, barring significant human cooperation. So I get all the intellectual arguments, but I also dream that space could be the one freaking thing that joins our species together -- the understanding that we really are very similar. I think only space will provide that push. My opinion is that without space, humanity will destroy itself in a matter of centuries, through environmental pollution, nuclear war, disease, or any of the other methods we've come up with in the last 100 years.
- marknutter 12y ago
  > My opinion is that without space, humanity will destroy itself in a matter of centuries, through environmental pollution, nuclear war, disease, or any of the other methods we've come up with in the last 100 years. People say this, but I don't get what it's based in. Our track record for surviving is incredibly impressive. In fact, if there's one trait we humans have that's worth noting, it's our ability to survive, no matter the conditions. I also find it amusing that predict that humanity will destroy itself in a matter of centuries after starting your post with "So many cynical comments in here." :)
  - jobposter1234 12y ago
    I hear what you're saying. I had the first thought just after making my comment, and explored it a little more. I hope you'll indulge me, because I'm genuinely curious what you think. It's really only in the last 120 years that humans have been able to inflict enough damage within a few generations to seriously damage our existence. So I limit myself to that era (and forward), because I'm focusing on human-inflicted extinction. I have 4 or 5 nuclear near-events that very narrowly started a nuclear war. (I suppose I forget that humans will survive total nuclear war, but there would be so much death that I'm not sure I'd want to survive it.) We can add in global warming, although we don't know what the effects will be. So 6 events or so in the last 120 years, 1 of which is still undecided. The "next few centuries" part was a bit dramatic -- but over the next 1,000,000 years, how many more near-misses will we have? Even if we survive 99%, there's still a pretty high chance that humanity is gone. And from reading descriptions of things like the Cuban Missile Crisis, I think the odds of nuclear exchange were much higher than 1%. I must confess to resembling the second comment. In humanity, I see a lot of hope, but I see also reason for despair. I guess the cynicism hit me a bit because it's people being cynical about the one endeavor I believe holds hope for uniting our species.
maaku 12y ago
Notice that nowhere in the graphic is there a Martian lander. This looks like a re-purposing of the Orion spacecraft into a twin configuration to support a one-off slingshot around Mars on an approximately two-year free return trajectory, with a few months spent close enough to Mars to get some science done and photaos taken. It's an idea that's been floating around for years, and not very interesting because it's a strategic dead-end. I am very saddened. When I saw the tweet I thought we finally got a commitment from high up to land people on another planet, and not just aimlessly building random congress-designed porkbarrel crap with a hope to someday do something somewhere as will be decided later. A commitment to land people on Mars on a strict schedule would do so much to overcome the bureaucratic stranglehold on doing anything interesting in space ... too bad this isn't going to be it :/
soperj 12y ago
I love all the people saying that Space-X's main goal is to turn a profit, or that they have to turn a profit. They're a private company, not a public one. As long as they still have people willing to do work for them for what they pay them(if anything) then a private company can do whatever it likes(legally) without making a profit at all. It's private, the goals are up to the whims of the owners.
Marcus10110 12y ago
2030s? Why wait 5-15 years after SpaceX gets there? I'm guessing it will be a little awkward when they try to plant the flag on Elon's lawn. side note, you can get SpaceX flags here: http://shop.spacex.com/accessories-58/spacex-flag-bundle.html http://shop.spacex.com/accessories-58/spacex-flag-bundle.htm...
- dspillett 12y ago
  > Why wait 5-15 years after SpaceX gets there? This isn't the 70s where there was political pressure to do what-ever it takes lest the damn Ruskies beat you to it and make you look weak. It is reassuring that they are planning for what they can achieve safely rather than doing what-ever is needed to get there first (assuming that is in fact what they are doing, of course). And maybe SpaceX won't get there as fast as they hope - their plans do seem rather ambitious.
known 12y ago
Will they come back?
known 12y ago
Can they come back?
known 12y ago
Plutonium: The scary element that helps probe space's secrets. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29274491 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29274491
Gravityloss 12y ago
The existence of Apollo is a curse that has made it almost impossible for NASA to plan any modest sustainable capabilities in human exploration. Instead it's often "let's build our own huge rockets and launch a few huge missions per year". This makes it expensive and unsustainable. The development, the upkeep, the operations, everything is unscalable. It's like if you want to create a new app, you decide you need custom transistors. Division of work. Added value. Concentrate on what your core competencies are. Start small and verify your solutions.
gchokov 12y ago
Love the fact that it was first announced on Twitter :)

1424 points by didgeoridoo 12y ago

Elon will beat you NASA.

Not in my lifetime. Somebody may get humans to Mars -- an effort that I'm all in favor of -- but given that NASA is kept on a short financial leash by politicians more interested in dumping money into their constituent areas than funding a long-term space policy, the odds that the United States government will be behind the effort are slim at this point.

Mobiu5 12y ago
NASA's budget is the highest of all government run space agencies and is three times that of Russia, which is number two.
- Zelphyr 12y ago
  Isn't that kind-of like saying "My water is WAY cleaner than yours!" when we both live in a swamp? My point being, sure, we spend more than the other guy on space but compared to just about everything else we spend pitifully little on it.
  - Mobiu5 12y ago
    Perhaps, but I wouldn't underestimate them! They have a lot of ground-breaking projects happening even though you don't see them in the media very often. They do a lot with what they get.
- ahoy 12y ago
  So your point is that russia's space program and the ESA (etc) are also underfunded then, yes?
  - csallen 12y ago
    No, Mobiu5 is countering MrZongle2's point that a non-NASA entities are likely to beat NASA to Mars. I happen to disagree with his analysis, however, because he's not taking non-government entities like SpaceX into account.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      I don't see him making any reference to non-NASA entities at all. All he said is that a trip to Mars made by somebody, anybody, might happen someday, but the odds of sufficient financial support for this attempt are poor.
      - csallen 12y ago
        > Somebody may get humans to Mars ... [but] the odds that the United States government will be behind the effort are slim at this point. i.e. non-NASA entities have a better chance than NASA
        mikeash 12y ago
        Doesn't follow. Edit: I see he has other replies that clarify that this is exactly what he's thinking. "I'm fairly confident that I'll see humans on Mars before I die. I just don't believe NASA will be behind the effort." I still maintain that this is not indicated in the original comment, but that starts to become unimportant.
    - Mobiu5 12y ago
      I was really just trying to point out that he was trivializing NASA. Maybe a private entity will beat them there, maybe not. But they're clearly far from being an incapable organization and still achieve plenty of cutting edge, "world-first" scientific data gathering, engineering research, etc.. As a side note. I'm willing to bet they will be the first (with collaboration between the other space agencies as they often do). Edit: Plus, I don't know of any other deep space crew carrier that currently exists. It sounds to me like they have a head start since they already have one in their possession, albeit untested.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- molmalo 12y ago
  Yes, but you have to consider the difference in costs...
Lambdanaut 12y ago
NASA pessimism is one of the reasons the politicians have little incentive to change their minds.
- MrZongle2 12y ago
  Pessimism has little to do with the actions of politicians. If Senators and Congressmen believe that a $5B mission to study lunar cheese via sub-orbital flight would drive that money into their constituents' areas, they'll support it. It has nothing to do with what the public at large thinks about NASA; it's merely a bullet point they can trot out at the next election: see, through my work in Congress I brought jobs to your area, re-elect me. And THAT is why I doubt NASA can pull this off, because it's clowns like that who control the purse-strings. It's why we junked Apollo capsules for the Shuttle. It's why we have an Orion capsule in development now to replace the Shuttle. It's why the target for HSF went from the Moon to low Earth orbit, languished there for decades, paused briefly on the absurd notion of an asteroid interception mission as being viable, and is now back at Mars. My pessimism in NASA's manned program is well-founded. They have the ideas and the know-how, but their plans are at the mercy of self-serving, science-ignorant politicians.
  - bdamm 12y ago
    At this point we have corporations that can fund space flight. Do we really need governments funding a trip to mars? I think it isn't worth it. Leave it up to those who want to spend their own money. The government should be funding climate science, geo-engineering research, studying how to avoid war, and continuing to fund research into more powerful and cost effective propulsion and energy systems that we can use in space and here on earth. I think NASA shouldn't send a manned mission to mars.
    - rgawdzik 12y ago
      > "studying how to avoid war" I'm sure it isn't that straightforward.... Say you diverted NASAs 18.4 billion yearly budget. What can you do with 18.4 billion dollars? To give you contrast of how little that is relative to other American financial concerns, the GM bailout of 2008 was 51 billion. Why not have Mars missions if the US can give car companies tens of billions?
dllthomas 12y ago
Research, development, and construction will all take place in, y'know, areas.
free2rhyme214 12y ago
SpaceX is more likely to get humans to Mars than NASA.
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  If SpaceX's approach shows promise I'd expect NASA's program to evolve to integrate it somewhat. SpaceX might become the launch vehicle for the unmanned portions, for example.
  - daphreak 12y ago
    SpaceX's approach is to reuse well understood technology but do it mostly in house instead of farming everything out. The are innovating on process and cost but nothing else (at the moment). Those are two areas where NASA certainly could learn something.
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      I really don't think you can claim they're not innovating when they've already propulsively test-landed (in the sea, but successfully) two Falcon first stages.
      - daphreak 12y ago
        They've done those landings (as tests) on land with the Grasshopper as well. The videos are super cool. NASA has propulsively landed many things (on other planets!). The fundamentals have been around for a while. What I'm trying to get at is that SpaceX is currently not the go to place for rocket science. I do think they are making mark in rocket building science which is exactly what we pay them to do.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  NASA's annual revenue is 73% SpaceX's market cap. But lets pretend that doesn't matter. Musk makes a solid ~1.1 billion a year off of various investments, and has ~11.7 billion in assets. Even if he dumped all that in SpaceX, you'd sill be ~6billion short of NASA's budget. Implying those assests could be quickly liquidated. Even if we assume SpaceX has more/better talent then NASA. Your still working with at least an order of magnitude lower budget. Which is massive, especially when we are talking about the difference between $1bil/yr and $10 billion/yr
codyb 12y ago
Well how old are you now? It's an interesting statement because technological advancements are virtually assured to keep increasing the average lifespan (especially in industrialized and wealthy countries, excuse the recent dip due to obesity) and they're also virtually assured to keep making space travel a more viable reality. Combine that with increased global cooperation (possibly deteriorating right now) and increased private competition and I think it's feasible. I'm 24. I have a feeling I'll more than certainly see humans on Mars barring any unfortunate calamity to myself. I've also been saying I'd live until I was three or four hundred years old since I was a ten years old. So call me an optimist in a variety of ways. Everything I've said is totally from a layman's perspective and I truly have not given the question much thought besides an initial excitement at the prospect upon reading this headline and checking out the news.
- MrZongle2 12y ago
  My skepticism isn't based so much off of my age (I'm in my 40s) but rather NASA's track record when it comes to manned spaceflight. I'm fairly confident that I'll see humans on Mars before I die. I just don't believe NASA will be behind the effort.
  - codyb 12y ago
    Hmm, I'm on the other end actually. I think that for humans to go to Mars it will have to eschew a profit motive, which companies like SpaceX simply can't do. As NASA is the best funded space agency for the richest and most technologically advanced nation on Earth, I'll believe the odds are stacked in their favor that they'll be behind the first astronauts there. Of course, if our politicians don't stop bumbling around we may very soon not be the most advanced nation on Earth which would be unfortunate. When it was a race, NASA did good! Hopefully other countries will join in and spur us on. Even Republicans might be able to get around to the idea of showing off American exceptionalism (I think it's bullshit, American exceptionalism has been predicated off a very rich country investing lots of money into research. But call it what you will, it is what it is.).

scj 12y ago

There are two possible scenarios where I'll get my hopes up that humans are going to Mars: 1. It is so close that it is obvious. A heavy lift human-rated rocket is in service. It is demonstrated that humans can live long duration without the radiation shielding of the Earth. The capsule is human rated (planned to happen in 2021). A robotic landing of the vehicle on Mars is done (a lot of Mars probes have failed on this step). That humans are selected / training. This goal is set for the 2030s, so it fails this criteria. 2. They announce a huge amount of funding to be spent within a few years. The pages I've read thus far don't suggest what funding levels are. I'll happily listen to what they say, but I'm still skeptical. EDIT: Expanded the conditions for point 1.

mikeash 12y ago
#2 is out of their control. I'd speculate that at least part of the purpose of this announcement is to shame Congress into ensuring sufficient funding.
- scj 12y ago
  Shaming congress doesn't appear to be effective at the moment. Bush Sr. talked about going to Mars with SEI. Bush Jr. talked about it after Columbia. Skylab (the space station in the 70s) was supposed to teach us about long duration spaceflight in order to go to Mars (and we've been parked in LEO ever since). I want to believe... And I like Zubrin's plan to go to Mars. As it could work with an incrementalist approach, and thus is pragmatic (and sounds like what they are doing). But the problem is that there is a long time before the work on the incrementalist dream starts and landing on Mars. Who knows what will happen to funding in the mean time.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    It doesn't, but what other choice do they have? If you only have one button to press, you might as well keep pressing it. Maybe it'll work one of these times.
    - 12y ago

azdle 12y ago

Looks like the briefing already happened. Does anyone know if a recorded version is available anywhere yet?

drdeadringer 12y ago
It's up on YouTube now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU

Marcus316 12y ago

I missed the live briefing ... is there a replay somewhere that I can watch?

drdeadringer 12y ago
Found it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBoj-1m-qLU

jonnycowboy 12y ago

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/01/nasa-orion-spacecraft-human-mars-mission http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/dec/01/nasa-orion-sp... It seems they're just hyping this Thursday's mission. That said, I don't know anybody could withstand a one year trip in a capsule the size of Orion...

ceejayoz 12y ago
> That said, I don't know anybody could withstand a one year trip in a capsule the size of Orion... It's possible that they'd use something like Bigelow's inflatable module for extra living space during the trip. A year in Orion without additional space and with two roommates sounds like Hell.
scrumper 12y ago
I read some of the background material about Orion. The transfer mission will include much larger structures for crew habitation. Orion is there as the return-to-Earth vehicle which also provides something they call 'abort anywhere' - the ability to pull the plug on the entire mission at any point during the flight to Mars.

skriticos2 12y ago

Sometime in the past fifty years NASA became paralyzed not by budget cuts, but by political in-fighting, fractured organizational structure and lots and lots of red tape. And then there is all that pork that goes around with the entrenched contractors. The tale of the last Mars program that NASA put together is a great example of this. They got handed a technically sound plan to get there in reasonable time with reasonable resources. Then every org-unit in NASA wanted to add their own part to stay relevant and it got so bloated both technically and financially that it had to be put to rest. So unless they convince me that they managed to get their internal structural problems under control, I don't think they get anytime to Mars within this century. And certainly not before the private sector does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program p.s.: There is a free movie on YouTube telling the tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcTZvNLL0-w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcTZvNLL0-w

higherpurpose 12y ago
I'm definitely expecting the private sector to do it at least a decade before NASA does it.
- bduerst 12y ago
  I'm curious why people think it will happen in the private sector first. Is there some applied science, resource, tourism, or other value to be had? We haven't seen a private sector moon landing yet (it's been 50 years since NASA did it) simply because there isn't much market value in putting a person on the moon. So why Mars?
  - cschmidt 12y ago
    I suppose because Elon Musk wants to go there, and he seems good at getting stuff done.
    - 14113 12y ago
      This comment really sums up the cult of personality that's grown up around Musk.

fredsted 12y ago

What an amazing time to be alive.

induscreep 12y ago

What exactly is the need to send humans to Mars? Why not robots? Is it worth risking a human's life for science, when a robot can do an equally good job?

danbruc 12y ago
Because we can. Climbing to the top of a mountain is also dangerous and usually of no practical value.
gfodor 12y ago
existence proof. a necessary step toward multiplanetary human civilization.
cryptoz 12y ago
> What exactly is the need to send humans to Mars? Lots of reasons, some below. Primarily, the reason to send humans is because we have to in order to ensure the continued survival of (known) life in the universe. Sending a few people to Mars will be the first steps in becoming a multi-planetary civilization, which will reduce our dependency on a single-point-of-failure for all known life. > Why not robots? You ask as if we haven't been sending robots to Mars for the last 3-4 decades. (Edit: We should absolutely send robots. We should send way more robots than people. But we should still send people.) > Is it worth risking a human's life for science, when a robot can do an equally good job? Not sure if trolling. Humans have collectively agreed that it's worth 10,000+ annual deaths in the USA in exchange for the convenience of cars. So yes, 1-5 human lives on Mars is worth the science that they'd get done. Also...there are no robot scientists yet. Maybe there will be in the future, but we can't bank on that and allocate budgets to imaginary robotic scientists that are better than humans. I've been trolled haven't I?
- taylorwc 12y ago
  I agree with you on these points, but think the vehicle deaths makes for a poor comparison since we're not really advancing science in the same way. I'm guessing that NASA would have its pick of qualified volunteers for a manned Mars mission because of the science involved; people who would willingly risk their lives.

cryoshon 12y ago

We have to wait until the mid 2030s (20 years!) to put humans on Mars via the government's program? I fear that this goal is not nearly ambitious enough. Set a deadline far away, and the time you "need" to spend preparing to meet that deadline will increase in order to fill the amount of time you have.

fargolime 12y ago
Isn't it prudent to spread out the $1 trillion cost over a couple decades? After all, we have to borrow every dime of that from future taxpayers. I'm including cost overruns. Or are you willing to pay an extra $10K a year in taxes to get to Mars sooner?
- istorical 12y ago
  The average taxpayer pays NASA $55 per year.
  - ArtDev 12y ago
    I pay less for my Science Museum membership. I would love to see NASA fixed (firstly) and fully funded (once its fixed).
    - fargolime 12y ago
      Well you haven't paid a dime in NASA funding yet. All funding to date has been borrowed from people younger than you or not yet born. Presumably the gov't will borrow many times more to get to Mars, than it has for any previous mission.
  - fargolime 12y ago
    You think that will pay for a human expedition to Mars and back?
  - fargolime 12y ago
    If the US wasn't $17 trillion in debt, I could agree. Pretty sure all NASA funding to date fits into that debt amount. Since it's a "nice to have", I'd say the average taxpayer has never paid anything to NASA, not even interest on debt since we borrow to pay that.

fenollp 12y ago

So uh, Mars is smaller than Earth now?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
smaps 12y ago
Not sure if serious...
thangalin 12y ago
Relative sizes of planets and stars: http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/gallery/star-sizes/ http://davidjarvis.ca/dave/gallery/star-sizes/

bryanh 12y ago

Call me cynical, but I feel like NASA won't end up shuttling humans to Mars. Instead, NASA will more likely be shuttling government money between various contractors before having the program cancelled in the far-future... Politics + exploration for exploration's sake always seems at odds.

api 12y ago
Perhaps, but I feel like NASA is at a point where if they don't "ship" something big they're going to fade into the night. Robotic space exploration is awesome, but it doesn't capture the human imagination the way a human mission does. I also think -- and the academic types be damned -- that there is a difference between sending a robot and actually going somewhere. In the long term I think Mars will be settled by humans. Sending humans to land there for a bit is a first step, a fact-finding mission.
- jerf 12y ago
  "if they don't "ship" something big they're going to fade into the night." If that is true, they have already lost. Doing "something big" for the primary purpose of "avoiding fading into the night" is doomed to failure. (Again, per the other comments.) Take all that money and give it to Elon Musk and we'd probably get further. And I mean, just give it. Free and clear. To spend on hookers and blow if he wants to. We'd still probably get more out of it as a species. He doesn't want to ensure the continued existence of a big bureaucracy... he wants to get to Mars. I'm sure there are people within NASA that want to get to Mars... but are they the ones in charge?
  - rinon 12y ago
    There's a way to do this... Recruit Musk as the head of NASA. That would be interesting, to say the least...
    - api 12y ago
      I doubt he'd take the job.

wpankey 12y ago

Sure! Let's destroy another planet with our insatiable resource seeking. Anyone know of any sci-fi tomes where humans play the role of an unstoppable galactic virus? If so, whoever/whomever wrote it may be onto something :(

diminoten 12y ago
What exactly does "destroy another planet" mean, in this context?
- wpankey 12y ago
  Sorry, misread the reply. Mars, if found to possess materials we deem valuable, will be mined mercilessly.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    What's wrong with that?
  - jerf 12y ago
    So what? This is not something to answer snappily. It's a question that can stand up to some serious scrutiny. We are used to a default "leave it alone" argument because everywhere we can currently get to is a rich, diverse, vibrant ecosystem, or within easy reach of one. Does our default "be careful" attitude apply where that is not true? (And don't just dodge out with "Well, what if there's life on Mars?" Best evidence right now is still "no". Let's stick to best evidence for the moment. Failing that, there's certainly other places where there is no life, like the Moon. Who cares what we do to the Moon?)
    - EthanHeilman 12y ago
      Who decides what should be preserved and why? If the Grand Canyon contained no life, would it be ethical to strip mine it? Should we preserve the Mars for future generations (in terms of science, natural beauty, ethics or economics/resources)? In doing that are we harming people that could be helped today by those resources? If you find a beautiful rock in the woods is it wrong/amoral to smash it? What about fossils? Is it ethical to burn art for heat? These are important questions to ask and the answers are non-trivial.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

desireco42 12y ago

This is like Kickstarter campaign. I don't believe until I see some serious things happening. I have more fate in SpaceX or Chinese to put man on Mars then NASA.

MrZongle2 12y ago
Quite right. The Chinese are motivated for nationalistic and propaganda purposes, just like the United States was in the 60s. They'll eventually get to Mars. Elon Musk is personally motivated, and appears to be able to make the construction and launch of space vehicles commercially viable. If SpaceX doesn't get to Mars, it will at the very least push the commercial space industry to the point where a competitor can. NASA? They're beholden to a group of self-serving fools on Capitol Hill and the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (which changes every 4-8 years). They're subject to the whims of politicians, which can make the necessary long-term planning and execution of such an endeavor nigh impossible.
giarc 12y ago
What about India? Are they considering any mission to Mars?
- seanflyon 12y ago
  They have launched a Mars orbiter. It's an amazingly well done and cost effective mission, but it's not on the same scale we are talking about here. Hopefully they will expand their program.
efuquen 12y ago
I guarantee you if China or India were to make strides towards a serious Mars mission (i.e. they had a Moon landing) we would have another space race with the US involved. It's exactly what happened when the USSR sparked the first space race. Whether we would win, who knows, but there is still plenty of expertise and know how in about sending humans into space in the US ... I really don't understand all the absolute trust in SpaceX, in terms of human exploration they have proved nothing thus far. Sending cargo to the ISS is a different thing than sending humans. Once they pull that off we can start talking about great strides they are making in human space exploration. Otherwise it's still a risky venture that hasn't proven anything yet, the only reason to have so much faith in them is because you're over zealously infatuated with Elon Musk. Not to downplay any of his obvious success, but I still believe in seeing results in the same way you're waiting to see if NASA is going to do some "serious things". Let's hold people to same standards, shall we?

frakturfreund 12y ago

The NASA went to the moon because the russians wanted to do it. Today's space exploration is shaped by cooperation, but sometimes a little bit of competition is needed to achive great thinks. This is why i'm really hoping for the chinese to announce a manned mission to mars. It's the red planet afterall ;), and this could be a modern sputnik shock for the NASA.

drjesusphd 12y ago
Sputnik had military implications. Going to Mars doesn't.
- frakturfreund 12y ago
  That’s a valid point. But Sputnik had also a component of harmed pride (›most advanced nation‹); at least this should be reproducible.

ifdefdebug 12y ago

There's something I always asked myself about Mars expedition: well I kind of believe that it's possible to put somebody down on Mars within the next few decades. But... what about coming back to earth? Escape velocity is about > 5 km/s. Wouldn't you need to build a launch site having at least half of the power of our launch sites down here on Earth? How are they going to do that anytime near in the future? So is it going to be a on-way trip? And if so, are they going to maintain a supply chain from Earth to Mars for the whole of the life time of those explorers? Water, air, food...

mmanfrin 12y ago
I imagine water can be got from Mars (as there is Ice on Mars), and from that plants can grow, which will produce both air and food.
- crpatino 12y ago
  That would be a bummer for those personally involved wouldn't it? From astronaut to subsistence farmer. At least somebody would make lots of money from the reality TV show that ensued.
  - lucaspiller 12y ago
    There's not much you can spend it on there. I'm guessing Amazon shipping fees would be pretty high too.
- Amezarak 12y ago
  > I imagine water can be got from Mars (as there is Ice on Mars), and from that plants can grow, which will produce both air and food. I am doubtful there is enough air on Mars to sustain any Earth vegetation. The mean surface pressure on Mars is 0.6% that of Earth. Mars has virtually no atmosphere.
MattHeard 12y ago
Has there been any research into remotely building launch sites?

kendallpark 12y ago

We just need to pick another country to race with. "Hey China! Bet we'll get to Mars faster than you!" Then we'll have Mars 2020.

saraid216 12y ago
You ask the average American whether or not they'd pitch in to beat China to Mars and they'd say no. We don't have the nationalism to make that work anymore.
- rinon 12y ago
  I'm not so sure on this... Competition is still a strong motivator, even if nationalism is waning.
  - saraid216 12y ago
    The key to why the space race worked is competition between nations. It's because the fallout from World War 2 was a strong sense of national identity. The same thing that made McCarthyism work is what made the space race work. We don't have that anymore. It was probably a worthwhile trade: there are other vectors we can get technological advance from: but if Obama made a speech about beating China to Mars tomorrow as a proof of how America is a great nation, the Republicans would assemble on the dot to burn him at the stake for it. There's still a sense of national identity, such as can be seen in the Olympics, but it's barely an echo of what it was 50 years ago. Before we lost in Vietnam. Before the Civil War was re-enacted to gain universal suffrage. Before Reaganomics. Before Cuba. Before Bosnia. Before 9/11 and Iraq. Before Snowden. Before Ferguson.
krapp 12y ago
It's not the same. The Soviets inspired a level of cultural disgust and existential terror in the US that China just can't match. We not only wanted to discredit communism by winning the space race, but make sure they couldn't glass us from orbit the first chance they got.

ArtDev 12y ago

It about time!

kylebrown 12y ago

What are the physics behind the 20mb/s bandwidth limit over radio? He said more than that isn't "feasible", because of power requirements or why?

etimberg 12y ago
The information bandwidth in bytes/s is limited by the SNR and the bandwidth (in Hz) of the radio channel. The atmospheric "window" is only so large. At the same time, antenna's can only be so focused and transmit power is only so high. If you're interested in reading more about this look up "link budgets."

dandrews 12y ago

"I have no desire to do a Mars landing on our own," Bolden said (two years ago). http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2012-08-01/NASA-mars-rover/56656270/1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2012... I've more faith in Musk than in Bolden. "[going to Mars has] always been a goal of SpaceX. We're hoping to develop the technology to do that in probably 12 to 15 years." http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801-column.html http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120...

ArtDev 12y ago

Cool, space launch system (SLS) is a great start! https://twitter.com/NASA/status/539814651404754944 https://twitter.com/NASA/status/539814651404754944

antubbs 12y ago
It's a launch platform without clear future missions or funding. After the surplus RS-25 engines from the shuttle program are used (designed to be re-usable, they are heavy and expensive and will be destroyed by the launches) it's not clear what will power the launch vehicle. It's a very expensive big rocket with an unclear future in both engineering and political terms.

hackuser 12y ago

The essential issue for Mars, as well as for most other issues, is the Republican Party's refusal to fund government programs. Until they change or are voted out of office, all planning and discussion are hot air.

avar 12y ago
That's not the issue at all. If you look at the historical budget of NASA[1] it has a very low correlation with Republican presidents[2]. The main issue is that they get a lot of misdirected funding that's mainly allocated as a function of short-term political interests, and that's an entirely bipartisan issue in the United States. 1. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/NASA-Budget-Federal.svg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/NASA-Budg... 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_Unite...
- hackuser 12y ago
  I meant now, not historically.
danielweber 12y ago
Neither party really cares. There has been one pro-space guy running for office in the past 15 years.
- vtbassmatt 12y ago
  Unless you count goodspaceguy here in Seattle. http://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/candidatesonballot/pamphlet/pamphlet.aspx?cid=45691&listtype=PRIMARY&eid=1256#c20293 http://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/candidatesonballot/pa... /s
  - spb 12y ago
    Of course Mike Nelson wants to go to space. He misses his old spaceship, where he had to watch those bad movies with his robot pals. (Oh yeah, I just remembered he dropped the "Mike Nelson" part of his name years ago. Too bad.)

dyeje 12y ago

Alot of cynicism in the comments on this, so I just wanted to say I am excited and I believe in NASA.

radioact1ve 12y ago
Seeing as I was in my own world today, I just heard about this news. I was(still am) ecstatic and excited by the news just to be bummed down by the comments. I'm with you on this.

stevebot 12y ago

Fuck the cynicism. The fact that NASA finally has its head turned around to at least announce is indicative to me of a cultural, maybe generational shift towards giving a shit about space travel. Who cares who does it first, at least this is a trend in the right direction.

danielweber 12y ago
NASA has "announced" Mars timelines 20 years in the future many times before.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  Exactly. There's not even anything you could reasonably call a timeline here, either. There's almost literally nothing to it.
- stevebot 12y ago
  I have never seen their announcements in the past. Between SpaceX, the global international space travel movement, and hey even Interstellar, there is a lot more buzz around space travel. Plus, we have landed a rover on mars, plus people have landed a rover on a comet. NASA has had a hand in space advancement. I don't give a shit if they have been wrong in the past, the growing hype around space travel is exciting, and I refuse to be a buzzkill about it.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    If you are citing Interstellar as a reason to believe this, I don't know how to help you. For anyone else: Obama in 2010: to Mars by the mid-2030's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_Barack_Obam... Bush in 2005: to the Moon by 2020, to Mars soon after 2030 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program NASA 1998: DRM 3.0 calls for first launch to Mars in 2011, human crew in 2014. http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19980218778.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1998021... Bush in 1989: 90-day report, which was a joke, but also 30 years to spend $300 billion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Exploration_Initiative http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Exploration_Initiative

return0 12y ago

Huge PR move, but i dont think it's gonna work. Do people really need to "send a human" to mars? To prove what to whom (the soviets are no more). It's not like we haven't already been there and taken our pictures. Or that we expect any surprises from this mission. How about we make a plan to terraform Mars? Or to work on more mysterious things like genomes, like the brain etc? Sending a human to mars is a PR move, maybe typical of our times, but not useful.

mp99e99 12y ago

Wow! This is amazing, glad to be alive to see this!

shirro 12y ago

Awaiting announcement of Commercial Crew to Mars program.

vvpan 12y ago

I honestly don't see the point of doing this. The scientific bounty from going to the moon was tiny comparing to the amount of resource put into it. I think poet Gil-Scott Heron does a great job deconstructing the space-exploration efforts in "Whitey on the Moon". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
What? This is nonsense. We have an social and industrial complex that would not exist if not for the space program. This internet. Your cell phone. The attempt to do great exploration begets the technology, which changes the world. This has been true since sailing ship days.
- stevewilhelm 12y ago
  I would guess if the capital and talent marshaled to send a man the the moon had been tasked to build a global mobile communications network we would now have a better Internet and would have had cell phones a decade earlier.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Yes in a Pollyanna ideal world you could choose what worked in hindsight. But we can't know until we try, what we will discover.
    - Retra 12y ago
      AI, underground cities, high-speed rail systems, package delivery systems, renewable energy, genetic construction, nanotechnology, infrastructure optimization, recycling, natural language, experimental schools, community integration projects, ... There are plenty of great projects to work on that will provide valuable insights if they fail, and great benefit if they succeed.
      - 12y ago

smegel 12y ago

Personally I would much, MUCH rather see this money spent on further exploration of other planets and their moons. Imagine having a rover on one of the moons of Jupiter. To me Mars is just not that interesting.

chrischen 12y ago

I feel like the significance of humans going to Mars is largely attributed to movies and pop culture. It's the Paris Hilton of the astronomical world. I don't want to be labeled a cynic, but do the benefits of sending humans to Mars outweigh the costs?

sueders101 12y ago
>I feel like the significance of humans going to Mars is largely attributed to movies and pop culture. It's the Paris Hilton of the astronomical world. I think that may be conflating cause and effect. I'd argue a manned trip to Mars is a focus of pop culture because it resonates strongly with so many. The drive to explore has always been etched into a portion of humanity. For many(myself included) Mars stands as the currently realistic pinnacle of exploration for humanity. Along with accessibility of understanding the accomplishment you end up with our current Martian fascination. >I don't want to be labeled a cynic, but do the benefits of sending humans to Mars outweigh the costs? With anything as expensive and complex as a manned mission to mars, we honestly can never know until we try. It's impossible to predict what fruits, if any, it would bear for humanity. That's the nature of exploration and discovery. For all we know there's some infeasible to overcome barrier that makes the task of manned travel to Mars impossible. Due to the intractable nature of quantifying the value of manned Mars missions I think the reasoning for doing so falls to a far more base human condition than a positive cost benefit analysis. On a personal level the desire for continued human exploration is hard to explain to those who don't possess it. There's an intensely disquieting internal sensation that comes with feeling stagnation at the bounds of human capability. It's not dissimilar to the urge for preservation of the Earth for future generations, or to rid the world of undue suffering. These drives, like exploration, aren't built on entirely pragmatic foundations. They can and do often fail to justify themselves on purely practical terms. Just for clarity, my response isn't made with the purpose of persuasion. It's to help convey my entirely subjective view of things and perhaps illuminate the thinking behind some proponents for space exploration.
- chrischen 12y ago
  > I think that may be conflating cause and effect. I'd argue a manned trip to Mars is a focus of pop culture because it resonates strongly with so many. Game of Thrones, Star Wars, etc, also resonate with society. Things in those movies aren't necessarily worthy of exploring. Conversely, cancer research isn't represented well in pop culture... but that doesn't mean it doesn't warrant pursuit.

chatmasta 12y ago

All this means to me is that somebody in the NASA PR department is leading a push to appear competitive with private companies. I imagine very little has changed operationally in the past few months at NASA. This announcement is only meant to conform to the ebb-and-flow of media, a battlefront where private companies have been kicking NASA's ass lately. (Maybe NASA PR wants to capitalize on recent virgin crash, chink-in-armor, lol). This push is great but it's definitely a case of "fake it till you make it" from NASA vs the private companies, since they're all competing for the same funding. Honestly, I love it. It's great to see competition in the space race again. This time instead of nation states duking it out in orbit, it's private sector vs host nation state. It's great. Hopefully this leads to huge space innovations in the next decade, and we actually do send humans to Mars. Go space yay. ~= >===|=>

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

raquo 12y ago

What is this, a positive side effect of Cold War II? I'm sort of joking, but not really.

sbussard 12y ago

If you got the politics out of NASA they could do just about anything. I've worked at a couple different places in NASA and the talent varies from place to place. It's the politics that ruin everything.

Eleutheria 12y ago

Bush senior said so in 1989. Bush junior said so in 2004. Obama now says so ten years later. I'll wait for hillary to send us to mars in 2050, thanks, women have more balls.

liquidise 12y ago
and at the ripe age of 103 no less...
- spb 12y ago
  We're all going to be immortal heads in glass jars by that point.
- Eleutheria 12y ago
  No no she will promise it twenty years earlier, just like everyone else. She'll be 80 or something and everyone would have forgotten by then.

givan 12y ago

Maybe the whole NASA budget should be used for researching a better propulsion engine first, with the current technology going to mars is extremely expensive and inefficient, we are stuck with chemical propelled rockets since ww2, with a breakthrough in this area we could achieve so much more, we need to focus our resources better.

GhostCursor 12y ago

You don't have any radiation shielding. Why not try surviving under the ocean first? Fail Squad NASA.

seanflyon 12y ago
"If you recruited the Mars crew out of smokers and sent them to Mars without their tobacco you would be reducing their chance of getting cancer." - Dr. Robert Zubrin

ajarmst 12y ago

Yeah, I believed you guys when you told me that in early 70s. I stopped believing after the fourth or fifth time you gave up. Or maybe when it was when you stopped being able to even put people in LEO. Humans may one day go to Mars, but they won't be wearing NASA logos. Unless it's ironically.

spiritplumber 12y ago

I've done a bit of (very marginal) work for NASA, and the problem they have is that it takes 2 weeks and 5 signatures to get $200 worth of parts approved... while everyone is always in a hurry regardless. Just give your engineers $300 a month for miscellanea, it'll be faster and cheaper. I can see why being a federal agency they have to be spotlessly above-board when it comes to who does what with money, but there's a limit to that. What ended up happening with my projects (PhoneSat and a couple other things) is that I was there part time, and just bought parts on my own dime, then I sent a global itemized bill for everything. It took six months but they did pay me back.

hristov 12y ago

This is just stupid. What is the point? This will be extremely expensive, it will gut a lot of useful science programs. Send robots! They are thousands of times cheaper and they get the job done. And when they die it is not a national tragedy. Robots have been doing an excellent job of planetary exploration over the past 20 years or so. There is no reason to stop this. And this will mostly stop if nasa decides to seriously pursue a human mars mission, because such a mission will soak up most NASA resources. The only reason to send humans is to satisfy the science fiction fantasies of a bunch of stupid fan boys. And everyone knows that these fantasies can just as easily be satisfied by a cheesy movie or TV show. Now I have to emphasize the word stupid, in "stupid science fiction fanboys." If you were a smart science fiction fanboy or girl you would know that continued robotic exploration will make the science fiction fantasy of mars tourism much closer than a human mission. If we keep sending robotic missions we can study the mars soil and perhaps move on to having the robots build stuff on mars. If the robots can build a base with solar based energy gathering, oxygen generation and even perhaps rocket fuel generation, then mars travel may become a regular if expensive thing. Otherwise we will have a single mission that with great fan fare sends one or two people to stomp around on mars for an hour or two and quickly return. (Or even worse, perhaps die there). After the mission the whole thing will be scrapped and only the newspaper clippings and tv documentaries will remain. This is what happened with Apolo. It was great but it did not really lead anywhere in terms of moon exploration.

finkin1 12y ago
I don't think there's anything wrong with your perspective, but what do you think about the potential in-direct value that could come from a mission like this? Such as inspiring young people to pursue STEM, or the general population getting behind and funding other exploratory missions involving robots? You say that most NASA resources will be soaked up. That's possible, but what do you think about the potential in-direct benefits of getting the human race excited about space exploration?
- hristov 12y ago
  This is a very very expensive way to do advertising. You will be able to do a lot more advertising to shape people's perceptions with just a small portion of the costs. Furthermore, government space exploration is essentially a business of elites. It is only a few scientists and engineers that are involved with the space program. It is only a couple of the most elite astronauts that will get to actually fly the rockets. The vast majority of americans will have to be inspired by watching it all on tv. This all worked out in the 60s with Apolo, but the world is changing and America is changing. Americans are watching less and less TV and are more willing to do things. If you want to inspire people to go into STEM, it will probably be better to spend money on new and interesting educational programs to get kids interested in science and engineering. Furthermore, spending money on adult education programs would probably also help.

dredmorbius 12y ago

Is there any more substantive statement than this Tweet?

agrona 12y ago

The intriguing point to me that I haven't seen addressed on any reporting of the announcement is this: Is the plan to put humans on the surface and then bring them back home? How do they intend to land and get back off of the planet? (Forgive me if they addressed this in the video; I haven't had time to watch it yet.)

tsotha 12y ago

I'll believe it when I see it. This must be about the 20th such announcement from NASA, and the other 19 have sunk into the bureaucratic morass without a trace. I see no reason to think this time is different, particularly in light of the mountain of unfunded liabilities that are going to keep budgets tight for decades.

chrissyb 12y ago

This is great but we should really colonize the moon first. It allows us to get all the necessary systems in place in a test environment. Earth is only 3 days away from the moon rather than 9 months to Mars. It also makes sense to work on the moon first so we can use it to leap frog to mars rather than sending a shuttle through earths atmosphere.

dj2stein9 12y ago
> leap frog to mars rather than sending a shuttle through earths atmosphere. But you still have to get the human through Earth's atmosphere and out of orbit anyways. Once you're out of Earth's orbit you might as well coast all the way to Mars because landing on the Moon doesn't gain you anything.
- chrissyb 12y ago
  I suppose that is true, is it to early to talk space elevators? ;)

jobposter1234 12y ago

So many cynical comments in here. I can't disagree with the substance, because the past track record has been mixed, and because of the issues with NASA's political structure have been well documented. I also can't disagree with the practicalists that suggest the money would be better spent elsewhere. However, one thing I can't get past: I don't think humanity will ever escape self interested nationalism without space exploration. I have zero hope for the long term survival of our species, barring significant human cooperation. So I get all the intellectual arguments, but I also dream that space could be the one freaking thing that joins our species together -- the understanding that we really are very similar. I think only space will provide that push. My opinion is that without space, humanity will destroy itself in a matter of centuries, through environmental pollution, nuclear war, disease, or any of the other methods we've come up with in the last 100 years.

marknutter 12y ago
> My opinion is that without space, humanity will destroy itself in a matter of centuries, through environmental pollution, nuclear war, disease, or any of the other methods we've come up with in the last 100 years. People say this, but I don't get what it's based in. Our track record for surviving is incredibly impressive. In fact, if there's one trait we humans have that's worth noting, it's our ability to survive, no matter the conditions. I also find it amusing that predict that humanity will destroy itself in a matter of centuries after starting your post with "So many cynical comments in here." :)
- jobposter1234 12y ago
  I hear what you're saying. I had the first thought just after making my comment, and explored it a little more. I hope you'll indulge me, because I'm genuinely curious what you think. It's really only in the last 120 years that humans have been able to inflict enough damage within a few generations to seriously damage our existence. So I limit myself to that era (and forward), because I'm focusing on human-inflicted extinction. I have 4 or 5 nuclear near-events that very narrowly started a nuclear war. (I suppose I forget that humans will survive total nuclear war, but there would be so much death that I'm not sure I'd want to survive it.) We can add in global warming, although we don't know what the effects will be. So 6 events or so in the last 120 years, 1 of which is still undecided. The "next few centuries" part was a bit dramatic -- but over the next 1,000,000 years, how many more near-misses will we have? Even if we survive 99%, there's still a pretty high chance that humanity is gone. And from reading descriptions of things like the Cuban Missile Crisis, I think the odds of nuclear exchange were much higher than 1%. I must confess to resembling the second comment. In humanity, I see a lot of hope, but I see also reason for despair. I guess the cynicism hit me a bit because it's people being cynical about the one endeavor I believe holds hope for uniting our species.

maaku 12y ago

Notice that nowhere in the graphic is there a Martian lander. This looks like a re-purposing of the Orion spacecraft into a twin configuration to support a one-off slingshot around Mars on an approximately two-year free return trajectory, with a few months spent close enough to Mars to get some science done and photaos taken. It's an idea that's been floating around for years, and not very interesting because it's a strategic dead-end. I am very saddened. When I saw the tweet I thought we finally got a commitment from high up to land people on another planet, and not just aimlessly building random congress-designed porkbarrel crap with a hope to someday do something somewhere as will be decided later. A commitment to land people on Mars on a strict schedule would do so much to overcome the bureaucratic stranglehold on doing anything interesting in space ... too bad this isn't going to be it :/

soperj 12y ago

I love all the people saying that Space-X's main goal is to turn a profit, or that they have to turn a profit. They're a private company, not a public one. As long as they still have people willing to do work for them for what they pay them(if anything) then a private company can do whatever it likes(legally) without making a profit at all. It's private, the goals are up to the whims of the owners.

Marcus10110 12y ago

2030s? Why wait 5-15 years after SpaceX gets there? I'm guessing it will be a little awkward when they try to plant the flag on Elon's lawn. side note, you can get SpaceX flags here: http://shop.spacex.com/accessories-58/spacex-flag-bundle.html http://shop.spacex.com/accessories-58/spacex-flag-bundle.htm...

dspillett 12y ago
> Why wait 5-15 years after SpaceX gets there? This isn't the 70s where there was political pressure to do what-ever it takes lest the damn Ruskies beat you to it and make you look weak. It is reassuring that they are planning for what they can achieve safely rather than doing what-ever is needed to get there first (assuming that is in fact what they are doing, of course). And maybe SpaceX won't get there as fast as they hope - their plans do seem rather ambitious.

known 12y ago

Will they come back?

known 12y ago

Can they come back?

known 12y ago

Plutonium: The scary element that helps probe space's secrets. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29274491 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29274491

Gravityloss 12y ago

The existence of Apollo is a curse that has made it almost impossible for NASA to plan any modest sustainable capabilities in human exploration. Instead it's often "let's build our own huge rockets and launch a few huge missions per year". This makes it expensive and unsustainable. The development, the upkeep, the operations, everything is unscalable. It's like if you want to create a new app, you decide you need custom transistors. Division of work. Added value. Concentrate on what your core competencies are. Start small and verify your solutions.

gchokov 12y ago

Love the fact that it was first announced on Twitter :)