If there not willing to give NASA more funds there almost better off pulling the plug on the thing and instead giving the money to private space companies, or retaining NASA as a purely research/ robotic exploration company.
Buzz Aldrin has said that if we send men to Mars and back once - it's an accomplishment but if we can do it three times, then we've proved that we have solved the problem. Russia is already training men to live in isolation for one hundred and five days (the duration of the Mars - Earth flight).
Why do we need to solve the round-trip problem to Mars? Many set out in the past from the Old World to the New World with no intention of returning. There are plenty willing in the near future to go one-way to Mars. "Humans in space" isn't about science ... robots do that. It's about pushing the limits of the human experience and spirit.
Mars and the Moon are well within reach. They are not a priority.
Now you can argue that the priorities are wrong, and I'll agree with you, but don't spin it that somehow it's a matter of "reach". It's a matter of will.
With the way things are going on this planet one would think this would be a higher priority.
Increasing our chances of survival as a species should be a high priority but it seems we can't see the forest through the trees.
We have developed the means to destroy the planet, yet we have no way of escaping should that ever actually happen. It's not the kind of situation you'd like to find yourself in considering all the political and religious strife prevalent across the globe.
We have developed the means to destroy the planet, yet we have no way of escaping should that ever actually happen.
I'm not at all sure that we have the means to make the Earth less habitable than the Moon or Mars. The Moon is pretty darned uninhabitable. Mars likewise.
Assuming the absolute worst of the nuclear winter hypotheses to be true, we could perhaps destroy most of the higher life on Earth. But even after a nuclear winter the Earth would still have substantial amounts of water and oxygen, and almost certainly a functioning biosphere of some sort. [1] Which is more than can be said for the Moon or even Mars.
Meanwhile, we most certainly don't have the technology to reach an extrasolar Earth-like planet, and spending tens of billions of dollars to have humans dork around in near-solar orbit won't change that fact one bit. If you really do dream of settling other planets, you need to spend far fewer dollars on far more radical experiments. Or you need to read Charles Stross:
[1] Bacteria are hard to kill. Many of them thrive on the lightless ocean floor at extremely high temperatures. And unicellular creatures built our oxygen atmosphere, so the loss of it probably won't bother them too much.
Stross' blog entry is interesting. It's good to have somebody like him lay out the math in regards to space exploration and colonization.
I agree -- the only smart thing to do is to advance research into things that lower the cost. If you asked somebody from 1850 what it would take to visit the moon, you'd get a response much like Stross': it's simply a matter of technology.
I believe that field propulsion will eventually be invented and will save the day for a lot of these issues, but I base that completely on faith in technological progress.
I guess these are nations that have something to prove in this area, especially China and India. Putting a man on Mars will certainly confirm you to the general world population as a "real" new dominant power.
From a UN Report: "More than 700 million Indians, or roughly two-thirds of the population, do not have adequate sanitation. Largely for lack of clean water, 2.1 million children under the age of 5 die each year"
My point is: shouldn't a country like India put their research and money toward solving THESE problems instead of putting a man on Mars?
I don't understand your comment. You're saying that certain research should take priority over solving internal problems, but space exploration shouldn't...? Why?
Humans in space efforts have nothing to do with research. They are now purely national prestige efforts. And I am extremely pro-space, I just don't think current efforts are doing ANYTHING AT ALL about getting us there permanently.
Also, if you can generate rocket fuel with internal labour (not imported), you can outdo the Americans in rocket fuel cost by a maybe 10x factor (I mean India here, or any economy like Thailand, with a different 'gearing' from the US dollar).
I'm confused -- is labour cost a big part of rocket fuel costs?
Actually I'd like to know much more about rocket economics. How much of the cost is in fuel vs engines vs support staff etc? If we started cranking out Delta rockets at mass production rates could we get the price down to, say, a million bucks a pop?
