6 ms·

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 contra

by 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.
- bdamm 12y ago
  Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled. Mars is vastly more difficult to get to and provides an even more severe environment. It's going to be just like the moon - once we're there, we'll wonder why we ever bothered to go to this miserable rock. Leave the private industry to go there and do as they wish. After sending a small band of rovers there we haven't found any compelling reason to go, have we? Other than exogeology? NASA should be dreaming much bigger. How about manned missions to Jupiter? Maybe after failing at the impossible for a while we'll at least get a better concept of how far away the rest of pretty much anywhere in space is, and stop thinking about planetary exploration as a lifeboat for our species.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Animats 12y ago
    Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled. NASA should be dreaming much bigger. There just isn't any good real estate off-Earth in this solar system. Relativity limits us to the solar system. Deal with it.
  - api 12y ago
    "Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled." This is a broken analogy in two ways. One is that there's a huge qualitative difference between going elsewhere on Earth and settling another planet, and I don't think you can hand-wave that away. You might have no interest in settling another planet, which is fine. There are seven billion plus people on Earth, and all we need is about 10,000 over, say, a century or two who do have that interest. I think you'd have so many applicants for a serious mission you'd have to be very picky. Secondly, it's illegal to settle Antarctica. It's all "claimed" and tied up in various treaties and conservation laws. What would happen if you opened Antarctica to settlement and allowed squatters' rights or land claim rights? I think a whole bunch of people who are interested in trying new political ideas, etc., would jump at it. It'd be significantly easier and cheaper than seasteading. There'd also be natural resources to be found, so you'd probably have a gold rush.
  - beeworker 12y ago
- hristov 12y ago
  So you want trillions of dollars of taxpayers' money to have your imagination captured? Isn't there a cheaper way? Like a good book perhaps? Is your brains power to imagine so insufficient that capturing your imagination requires an enormous government program? I am sorry about being dismissive, but I wish people would be more contemplative before sending our government headlong into the next boondogle. This is important stuff. We are talking about a lot of money here. Democracy is a duty is as well as a right. There are a lot of government agencies that would like to "capture your imagination", i.e., get you to write them a blank check, but we have to be a little more discerning.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    People wanting to explore space are asking for a fraction of what was spent in the Iraq / Afghanistan wars.
    - hristov 12y ago
      That would be a good argument against people that supported those wars, but I am not one of them. Furthermore, if NASA is serious about this, this may easily cost about as much as the Iraq/Afganistan wars. Those costs are estimated at about 4 trillion. The apolo mission cost about 100 billion in today's dollars. A Mars mission will be much more difficult and building rockets has not gotten cheaper over these years. It might be more expensive, because quality engineers are much better paid now even after adjusting for inflation. I would not be surprised if a manned mars mission costs a trillion or two.
      - waterlesscloud 12y ago
        So after all your arguing for reason, you just make up a number that feels right to you? Very reasonable.
krschultz 12y ago
That is an incredible over simplification. Guess what, the Navy doesn't build nuclear submarines. They contract companies to build nuclear submarines. The Air Force doesn't build fighter jets. They contract companies to build fighter jets. NASA didn't build a lot of the Apollo tech, they contracted companies to build Apollo. NASA also contracted companies for Constellation, the Space Shuttle, Orion, SLS, etc. It's how the government works. There are some 100% government financed research labs. There is the question of how much oversight the government has over the contractor (service vs design/build). There are different kinds of contracts (fixed price vs cost+). At no point in time was the government ever building things 100% on their own, it has always been a spectrum. We are moving towards the end of the spectrum where NASA moves one responsibility (launching unmanned payloads to LEO) to a fixed-cost low-oversight service contract. That's great. But it's not like NASA woke up yesterday and realized the private sector is good at doing this kind of stuff.
- bryanh 12y ago
  My frustration (and likely most people's frustration) isn't with the contractors - not at all. It's the politics that can change at the drop of a hat. The perceived effects of cancelled or scrapped missions is a lot of money and time spent with none of the payoff.

by bryanh 12y ago

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.
bdamm 12y ago
Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled. Mars is vastly more difficult to get to and provides an even more severe environment. It's going to be just like the moon - once we're there, we'll wonder why we ever bothered to go to this miserable rock. Leave the private industry to go there and do as they wish. After sending a small band of rovers there we haven't found any compelling reason to go, have we? Other than exogeology? NASA should be dreaming much bigger. How about manned missions to Jupiter? Maybe after failing at the impossible for a while we'll at least get a better concept of how far away the rest of pretty much anywhere in space is, and stop thinking about planetary exploration as a lifeboat for our species.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Animats 12y ago
  Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled. NASA should be dreaming much bigger. There just isn't any good real estate off-Earth in this solar system. Relativity limits us to the solar system. Deal with it.
- api 12y ago
  "Mars will never be settled any more than Antarctica is settled." This is a broken analogy in two ways. One is that there's a huge qualitative difference between going elsewhere on Earth and settling another planet, and I don't think you can hand-wave that away. You might have no interest in settling another planet, which is fine. There are seven billion plus people on Earth, and all we need is about 10,000 over, say, a century or two who do have that interest. I think you'd have so many applicants for a serious mission you'd have to be very picky. Secondly, it's illegal to settle Antarctica. It's all "claimed" and tied up in various treaties and conservation laws. What would happen if you opened Antarctica to settlement and allowed squatters' rights or land claim rights? I think a whole bunch of people who are interested in trying new political ideas, etc., would jump at it. It'd be significantly easier and cheaper than seasteading. There'd also be natural resources to be found, so you'd probably have a gold rush.
- beeworker 12y ago
hristov 12y ago
So you want trillions of dollars of taxpayers' money to have your imagination captured? Isn't there a cheaper way? Like a good book perhaps? Is your brains power to imagine so insufficient that capturing your imagination requires an enormous government program? I am sorry about being dismissive, but I wish people would be more contemplative before sending our government headlong into the next boondogle. This is important stuff. We are talking about a lot of money here. Democracy is a duty is as well as a right. There are a lot of government agencies that would like to "capture your imagination", i.e., get you to write them a blank check, but we have to be a little more discerning.
- DanBC 12y ago
  People wanting to explore space are asking for a fraction of what was spent in the Iraq / Afghanistan wars.
  - hristov 12y ago
    That would be a good argument against people that supported those wars, but I am not one of them. Furthermore, if NASA is serious about this, this may easily cost about as much as the Iraq/Afganistan wars. Those costs are estimated at about 4 trillion. The apolo mission cost about 100 billion in today's dollars. A Mars mission will be much more difficult and building rockets has not gotten cheaper over these years. It might be more expensive, because quality engineers are much better paid now even after adjusting for inflation. I would not be surprised if a manned mars mission costs a trillion or two.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      So after all your arguing for reason, you just make up a number that feels right to you? Very reasonable.

krschultz 12y ago

That is an incredible over simplification. Guess what, the Navy doesn't build nuclear submarines. They contract companies to build nuclear submarines. The Air Force doesn't build fighter jets. They contract companies to build fighter jets. NASA didn't build a lot of the Apollo tech, they contracted companies to build Apollo. NASA also contracted companies for Constellation, the Space Shuttle, Orion, SLS, etc. It's how the government works. There are some 100% government financed research labs. There is the question of how much oversight the government has over the contractor (service vs design/build). There are different kinds of contracts (fixed price vs cost+). At no point in time was the government ever building things 100% on their own, it has always been a spectrum. We are moving towards the end of the spectrum where NASA moves one responsibility (launching unmanned payloads to LEO) to a fixed-cost low-oversight service contract. That's great. But it's not like NASA woke up yesterday and realized the private sector is good at doing this kind of stuff.

bryanh 12y ago
My frustration (and likely most people's frustration) isn't with the contractors - not at all. It's the politics that can change at the drop of a hat. The perceived effects of cancelled or scrapped missions is a lot of money and time spent with none of the payoff.